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good morning. i'm melissa harris-perry. attorney general loretta lynch announced a civil rights investigation has been launched into the policies and practices of the baltimore police department. >> this investigation will begin immediately and will focus on allegations that baltimore police department officers used excessive force, including deadly force, conduct unlawful searches seizures and arrests, and engage in discriminatory policing. baltimore mayor stephanie rawlings-blake announced they launch an investigation. on friday the six officers charged in the case of freddie gray who died of injuries sustained while in police custody, asked a judge to dismiss the charges against them. the back drop to the days of protests in baltimore over gray's death looked like this. boarded up windows, vacant lots struggling communities. but not a lot of baltimore looks that way.

some of it looks different. like tree-lined streets, green lawns, and big brick houses. we used google street view to check out some of the streets in north baltimore, guilford neighborhoods of north baltimore. some house holds bring in more than $75,000 a year. and the unemployment rate is 7%. most people own the homes they live in. three miles to the south is winchester, the neighborhood where freddie gray lived. the majority of children there live in poverty. more than a third of the residential properties are vacant and abandoned. and the unemployment rate is 23%. compare the people in north baltimore live longer. they get better prenatal care. they are more likely to go to college, much less likely to be the victims of violent crime. 75% of north baltimore residents are white.

97% in south baltimore are black. the problems are not solely the result of decisions made long ago by people long dead. they have been reaffirmed and compounded again and again and again into the present moment. in the early 1900s, sections of what was a fast growing city of baltimore had become slums. some were populated by african-americans. others by recent immigrants from europe. most suffer from overcrowding lack of san taeugszitation and tuberculosis tuberculosis. when black families tried to move into formerly all white neighborhoods, some of the white neighbors started objecting. in 1910 baltimore passed a city law instituting residential segregation. making it illegal for a black

person to move into a majority white block and vice versa. it was the first such law in the country. and it was sold in part as a way to contain the problems of the slums to the slums, blaming the people in these areas instead of the living conditions themselves. of course forcing african-americans into increasingly crowded spaces by limiting where they could live and made their living be conditions worse and neither germs, crime nor uprisings could be contained by the lines on the map. and if demand high and supply limited, the representatives went up. but baltimore didn't end its experiment in segregation. even after the supreme court struck down residential segregation laws the city kept enforcing segregation by other means. city police inspectors threatened code violations against property owners who rented or sold homes in white neighborhoods to african-americans. city officials and the real

estate industry worked together to impose contracts on the sale of homes in white neighborhoods contracts that prohibited the home so ever being sold to african-american buyers. and the city was no rogue actor. in the 1930s, the federal government reinforced the boundaries of segregation in baltimore and elsewhere. new federal agencies were formed to ensure more stable mortgages to help homeowners struggling through the great depression. they wouldn't insure just any mortgage. they were discouraged from making mortgages in run-down areas or undesirable population. the agencies drew maps rated by risk to the banks. those riskiest areas, often with a high african-american population were marked in red. here's one such map of baltimore from 1937 created by the federal home owner loan corporation. this red and yellow area that's

present day winchester. in other words, freddie gray's neighborhood. yellow means the area will likely be infiltrated from an unpopular area. marking the black areas in red, known as red lining. the federal loan guarantees made it more affordable for certain families usually white families to own homes. the neighborhoods where our banks wouldn't lend and where black families were forced to live. most of the weight of middle class families in this country is the direct result of home ownership. and that wealth, or the lack of it passes from generation to generation. and so denying african-americans the ability to buy homes in the 1930s, while making it easier for whites to do so affected children, grand guerin and great grandchildren.

but what we see in baltimore is not only a ripple effect from misguided policies instituted 80 years ago. black and other poor communities have been decimated right up until now. by housing policies at every level of government. in the 1940s and 50s. they backed the urban renewal projects in which cities demolished whole neighborhoods and built anew. by 1957 125,000 families had been displaced. 50% them nonwhite. in the 1970s, cities experimented eliminating services. new york city closed 50 firestations in overcrowded neighborhoods. civilian deaths in fires doubled. people fled entire neighborhoods. entire neighborhoods were lost and abandoned in a decade. in the 1980s, they tore down

buildings and replaced with mixed income developments. the cities do not have to are place each unit one to one, meaning thousands have been displaced. then the subprime mortgage crisis. they had higher rates and fees because the borrower was a higher credit risk. according to the justice department, banks like wells fargo, pushed afternoonrican-americanafrican-american especially women. baltimore, ground zero. the city claimed in a 2008 lawsuit that wells fargo closed on 400 homes financed by mortgages that were designed to fail. eventually wells fargo paid $175 million to settle the discrimination claims in baltimore and elsewhere, including money for down payments for people who lost their homes, but the bank did not even admit to any wrongdoing. as people defaulted and the

subprime bubble burst and almost overnight so much of that home equity that household wealth was wiped out. the median net worth of families, all families dropped 40%. although the wealth of white families has leveled off, even growing slightly in recent years, african-american families have continued to lose wealth. from 2010 to 2013 the median wealth of black households dropped by a third. and this is supposed to be the recovery. the gap between white and black wealth is the highest it's been in 30 years. when we look at baltimore, freddie gray's neighborhood and so many like it we have to look at how decades of local and federal policy made it what it is today. to explain the riots of 1964 what white americans have never fully understood but what the negro can never forget is white society is deeply was implicated

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more than 100 years of housing policy from segregation laws to restrictive cough tphapts to the subprime mortgage crisis created a baltimore that is segregated and deeply unequal to this day. a new study of economic mobility by harvard researchers found out poor children from baltimore face the worst odds for escaping poverty in the country. associate professor at the university of connecticut and contributor for "the new yorker".com. thomas is professor of history

and sociology. and the legal defense fund. you heard the long story before the break. what did i miss? are there things in this or specificities in baltimore that we really need to understand? >> there is one thing and it's literally the houses in baltimore are full of lead paint. there was a lawsuit that freddie gray's family actually brought of the sky high level of lead poisoning in their veins. they have been discriminated against by the very houses they live in. >> if you're poor and trapped and trying to raise your family and make the choices all families make the very house you're living in poisoning your children. here's one word whenever i tell a story like that. it makes it feel as though the

communities have no resources, no assets. on the one hand i want to tell the story of massive in equality but i want to tell about vibrant communities even in the context of this poverty. >> if you think about baltimore, it has produced some of the nation's greatest african-americans. thurgood marshall came out of baltimore. >> the same as freddie gray. >> there are people who can tran accepted but there are so many who cannot because of everything you just explained. it is not just integration for integration sake that people are talking about. we're talking about keeping poverty in these concentrated places that winds up having a cyclical effect for generations. that's a denial of wealth, of adequate education denial of housing and health. >> this wealth piece feels important to me. we talk a lot about income and

the idea of growing up getting a good job. but i don't know that we are as clear about the ways that wealth is -- that it compounds over the years and becomes basically an impossibility to close in a generation. >> the wealth gap is enormous. african-americans have 4% of the household wealth of whites today. that's the consequence of generations of systemic housing and segregation. we own most of our assets in the form of our real estate. we pass it down to our kids. we take loans off of it to pay for college, to pay for medical emergencies. we pass it down to our children and grandchildren in the form of inheritances. in places like winchester it is nil. you don't have those resources to fall on when you have a hard time. >> part of what happens with the segregation. if you do the thing that americans are meant to do and you own your own home even if it is dilapidated, this is

supposed to be the thing that builds value. blackness actually drops housing values because of the nature of how blackness is understood. then your very ownership of the thing makes it less valuable. >> this is the crucial point about baltimore. when we talked about that 1910 segregation ordinance, it was in direct response to an african-american attorney who purchased a home in a white community. >> yale educated, right? >> yale educated. and the "baltimore sun" said he is causing a deficit. in the an object lesson in the monetary value associated with whiteness. that's what we're actually talking about here. >> location location, location. it has to do with belief about what is desireabledesirable.

whether or not living close to the urban center is valuable and hip or exit and move to the suburbs, right? that idea then again, it feels so overwhelm something deep and entrenched does that make people say, never mind. what in the world am i supposed to do about this level of policy program. >> well, you need a change in government policy. it's not that black people are in neighborhoods and just somehow through and property values go down. they will not give loans in certain neighborhoods they say if you buy, your loan terms will be less favorable. we have government policies that have done this. this is not just happenstance or random circumstance. it is deliberate policy. the current commission set it.

it's as true today as it was in 1968. we are condoning this as a society. we have institutions that maintain it and support it. >> so what are the policy dissolutions if the government has created this or deposits have created this? what do they need to un-do it? >> cities are not being invested in. the harvard is study on escaping poverty talk about your chances go up so much to a better neighborhood. >> you have to make the neighborhoods where people are. >> where we all live. and also if blackness depreciates value and then all the black people move in all the white people will move elsewhere and we keep going. we need to invest where people are. we need to give them affordable housing and make sure they have a access to loans. but also access to things like a school that is not completely under funded and jobs that will pay a decent wage. >> we have seen obviously the question of policing. but i keep wondering if we're

not telling the story that is a disinvestment in cities municipalities, paying less having longer -- so this is not a meaning to excuse what's happening but to help understand the police officers municipal workers operating in a space where we have stopped investing. >> this is the one institution you can reliably expect to have contact with. chemical contact. and so with being very conscious with the implications of my words, in some ways police have been given an unfair share of this burden. i have talked to police officers saying this. people are disinvested in schools and communities, and all these other services. and i've talked to african-american officers who said, look we understand exactly why we're here and the purposes that we're serving, but you never see the policy people who put us in this position. so we are the front line of conflict.

>> from mental health to environmental injustice the, lead poison. and who do we end up in contact with? armed and meant to be doing law enforcement, not social service work. what happens when you replace it with mixed income house something does what brice say just happen and people move out?

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attendant: welcome back. man: thank you. it's not home. but with every well considered detail . . . it becomes one step closer. no wonder more people. . . choose delta than any other airline. one big target of housing reform the past 20 years has been the large public housing projects that for many are symbol of urban poverty and crime. the federal government spent billions of dollars supporting efforts to replace public housing with mixed income developments. but the results can sometimes be mixed themselves. a recent article in the chicago reporter takes a close look at the 1995 demolition of one of chicago's most in famous housing projects the towers. 20 years later, the revamped development includes middleclass

residents and homeowners. but how much has changed for the low income families living there. joining me is the author of the article jonah newman. what did you find in your reporting here? >> first of all, thanks so much for having me melissa. it's an honor to be here. what i found was exactly what you said. the results are mixed. henry horner was one of the first social experiments of replacing public housing with mixed income developments. it's a concept that has spread rapidly around the country from chicago's plan for transformation, which was sort of spread it city wide to other similar initiatives in cities all over the country. but what the researchers who have been looking at this have found is that a lot of the theorized social games that were supposed to come from deconcentrating poverty in this way haven't necessarily

materialized. >> let me ask. when we talk about mixed income housing you end up with a level of kpheubg integration. but are these communities also racially integrated? or do we find there are people of color living there? >> i think it's mixed. there are certainly white homeowners. one of the problems i found when i was doing my reporting about the former henry horner homes is that the new development sort of came online just before the housing bubble burst. so people who had bought in you know, right sort of at the peak of the housing bubble then found themselves either in foreclosure, a lot of them or you know with a house or a condo that was now worth a lot less than what they paid for it. so you did see people either moving out or turning around and renting it out to students who, you know are mixed race but

don't actually bring the same economic integration that you might be hoping for. >> hold on, jonah. don't go away. there is a quote by jamie calvin journalist and activist jonah talks about in the piece. he said it's fundamentally disrespectful. this is a community like any other community, with the full spectrum of everything human beings are capable of. but that is so far removed. the only thing to do with poor people is destroy the houses and send them a off rather than having an assets-based understanding that yes, there's poverty but there's also value. >> as opposed to investing in schools, they shut them down. the same logic when you deal with poor people. and the same kind of flaws. as opposed to gaining an understanding of this community. and so i've been in lots of poor communities in my life some of

them i grew up in. i have known the story is much more complicated. there is also a social network that may be hidden that keeps the community intact. people have been in these communities forever can tell you how things operate and so on. they never seem to be taken into account on a macro level of policy and planning. we see the same problems pop up again and again and again. >> brice, it's interesting in jonah's piece about the era of a democratic president. and public housing is housing for people on the precipice of homelessly is something we should be taking down instead of building more of is still the course with presidential candidates. we need to put more units online for poor people. >> well right. from both parties we get this misunderstanding and somehow integrate them were.

housing is not for the most needy. it new york, there's a building with with a poor door and you have to make at least $30,000 to get a poor door apartment. we're not building the housing for the people who are the most vulnerable. we have funds set up at the federal level that could build this kind of housing. we just don't invest in that way. >> jonah, let me come back to you and ask this question. if i were to go to the people who were removed from those homes right now and say, was this a success, what's their response? >> so, again, i think it's mixed. certainly there's no question that the circumstances of former henry horner homes when they were standing were dire. you only have to read "there are no children here" to get a visceral sense of how terrible it was to grow up there. but exactly, like you said there was a community.

and i think that people kind of pine for that. they miss it. the ability to go upstairs and power flour from a neighborhood or go down the hall and pick up a game of cards or something. a associateologist i spoke with mary poe tell low said why don't we invest as-is? why do we have to bring in higher income mostly white people. >> anybody who quotes mary potella is welcome back here any time. >> thank you. >> is there anyone with a plan to fix all of this? you know the new york city thinks it has the answer. we'll tell you what mayor bill de blasio is all about next.

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according to a report in the "new york times" the mayor is calling for an overhaul of tax incentives to spur the construction of tens of thousands of apartments for poor new yorkers, teachers firefighters, and other workers who increasingly find themselves out of a booming real estate market. the "times" reports that developers reserve 20% or 30% for poor and working class residents in order to get city tax breaks. de blasio has plans for a mansion tax to target poor doors, separate entrances of residents or high-end units. the question i want to put out to my were panel is is it too late? i mean is new york at this point so unequal quickly that

this kind of tax incentive can even work? >> i don't think it is too late but it is tinkering around the edges a bit. housing activists are saying why do we have this credit for builders anyway? we lost a billion dollars in revenue to this credit last year. why don't we get rid of it. it was instituted in the '70s to spur construction. we don't need to spur construction in new york. people know this is a valuable place to build. what we need is to have the government build in places that are actually affordable to live in. >> it has to be affordable for the wages we are paying people in new york not relative to this outsized new york market. the rents here are so far beyond what would imagine could be possibly affordable for a family. we have to ensure when this housing is set aside for families that it really reflects the income that they actually make, that most poor people in new york make and $2,800 unit two bedroom unit is not going to

be affordable for the average poor family in new york by any stretch. >> so i wonder if that kind of disconnect between our notion about who working class people are, if that has always been a problem of government policy or this is something new. i wanted to listen to president obama talking about his grandfather who was able to take advantage of an fha loan post world war ii. let's listen. >> when my grandfather came back from world war ii the government gave a chance to buy a loan for his first home with the fha. for him, home was proof where if you worked hard if you're responsible, it was rewarded. >> i didn't want to miss the point. in this case that home becomes inter generational wealth. it becomes president obama. it actually matters. and i wonder is it that once there was racial integration of

affordability we actually got away from affordability. >> it is a reminder of the ways federal housing made it possible for working class americans to get a hold of the wealth that accumulated in real estate. to use it for a basis for upward mobility to pass it on to their kids and grandkids. it was after all his white grandfather. >> right. i'm with you. it is a reminder that public policy made it possible for a specific segment of working class americans to live comfortably near where they worked. today we have a question of

working class affordability. people live in the old industrial cities of new jersey and long island because they simply can't afford to live closer to the places they work in the center of new york. they have to pay extra transportation costs. >> take it beyond new york. we get from d.c. new york baltimore. y'all think manhattan is a valuable place to live but that lives crazy to me. thank goodness i live in some place that is more open, more space, moreland. surely we don't have these same kinds of problems. >> back when obama's grandfather was getting a house, we had a surplus. today we have 5.5 million unit deficit. so, again -- >> that we made in part by taking down -- >> right.

we have taken down the ones that are affordable. when we put it back up we don't make as much. suburban poverty has been climbing maybe even higher than urban poverty. it's unaffordable to live in a lot of places in this country. >> it will always be this kind of gut punch to me that one of the first things that new orleans city council did after qaakatrina was to take down so many public housing as though it had been waiting. that's why the discourse of how we talk about poverty in poor communities matters. when a disaster comes, people see it as an opportunity to get rid of, to remove. up next we're going to go to the ground in texas where residents are preparing for potentially deadly weather today. the author of the new book "living in the crosshairs" untold stories of anti-abortion terrorism.

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late friday, part of oklahoma stau saw golf ball-sized hail and deadly floods. and there were preliminary reports in three tornados touching down in texas overnight. joining me from wichita falls, texas is nbc news correspondent sandra dallof. >> reporter: good morning, melissa. deja vu for residents gearing up for another day and night of extreme weather including hail high winds and the possibility of tornados. the good news here we have had rain on and off this morning. it lowered the temperature, which is lessening the risk of seeing tornados later today. last night we were under a

tornado watch. video captured one funnel cloud forming in the skies in hainesville 30 minutes from here. no major structural damage reported however, the conditions were strong enough to snap trees down power lines. the area was also under a flash flood warning. they are in a drought. they certainly don't need so much so quickly, or the lightning, winds, hail that come with the rains. daily life is going ahead as scheduled. they have several festivals in the day today. officials keeping a close eye on the weather. they want people to go out and enjoy themselves but they want them melissa, to be safe at the same time. >> must be a scary time. thank you, sarah, in wichita falls, texas. still to come this morning, does president obama talk about race the way you want him to?

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viability is say complicated medical concept that determines when a fetus can survive outside the womb. it is the point after which states may restrict abortion as ruled by the supreme court in roev. wade in 1973 and reaffirmed by plant parenthood in 1992. it limits abortion in 21 states which most consider to be 24 weeksment the new study in the new england journal of medicine thursday found some infants a born at 22 weeks can survive after aggressive medical intervention. it has boiled over into violence

against abortion providers. over the years, some have been victims of arson, vandalism, stalking murdered all for just trying to do their jobs shielding health workers and patients can be. some broader approaches like massachusetts abortion clinic buffer zone law has been blocked by the courts and often the burden falls to the workers themselves. you chronicle the story in "living in the crosshairs." so if these are the untold stories, what do we need to know? what are the stories we ought to be telling? >> we ought to be talking about the fact that this is an ongoing problem for abortion providers in red states blue states alike. and that people are living

with -- in fear of having people come to their home to be picketed, their children being stalked at schools, death threats through the mail on the phone, being followed to and from work. this is the reality. not for every provider but for a lot of abortion providers around the country, this is their day to day life. >> i wonder if technology makes it worse in part. i have a colleague and friend who is having a problem with someone printing his address on twitter. he's not an abortion provider. >> we have heard countless stories of anti-abortion activists who target through all types of media. publishing addresses. they dig up personal information about providers and publish them on social media sites. some published books. some have web sites dedicated solely to a specific provider or clinic. as david mentioned, this type of

personalized targeting goes beyond what's happening outside of abortion clinics. this is when the protesters follow providers home and learn all of this personal information and use almost any type of media they can in order to further their intimidation and harassment of providers. >> so you used the language of intimidation, harassment and stalking but you also used the word "terrorism." target theed harassment of abortion providers fits basic understandings of terrorism. because the people who engage in it face the predicament that most terrorists do how to accomplish the desire to change when legitimate avenues have failed and popular opinion has not moved toward your position. so that's why it is terrorism? >> for the extremists they want complete abolition. abortion is still legal in this country. >> inaccessible but legal.

>> extremists want to get rid of it entirely. public opinion has not moved with them. they are trying extra legal means and intimidation means to accomplish what they can't in the political arena. people trying to instill fear fear of violence because they draw on the past murders and they draw on the sense that you cannot be safe to instill this fear in people and try to accomplish what they can otherwise. >> there is the other aspect of it that is terrorizing, the idea it is both directed at the individual and the whole collective which leaves me wondering why stay in the business. this is answering that question in your book on page 269. i could have been a dermatologist and nobody would care. i didn't choose this because i wanted controversy. i thought this was the right thing to do the. it matters for the health of the woman. it matters for for the health

for her family. it matters for the health of our society, and now it matters for freedom. >> in our study and the people we interviewed were so committed to the work that they do and so committed to the patients that they didn't let their day-to-day experiences deter them. >> but that's pretty stunning. to do your job and for your children to also face this. >> absolutely. providers hemmed extensively to the extent to which their children were affected by the protesters tactics. we heard countless stories of children being followed to school, of protests at back to school nights or pto meetings. we have heard stories of provider's parents nursing homes and intruding the nursing home facility. all of this collectively, as you said instills a great sense of fear and uncertainty in providers across the country. >> is there a class bias here? part of what i'm wondering is there are termination services

provided in private hospitals when a woman walks in and man walks in. some people are getting leg surgery, cancer treatments and some people are having their pregnancies terminated. but it is really those only providing them for the poorest, marginalized, without insurance who can be targeted. we know what they're doing when they walk into the hospital. >> for people who go to hospitals and work in hospitals and provide abortion services they have the protection of an institution and a building that doesn't just do abortion services. but it sets them up to be a target. because you can identify it. the people going in here are for reproductive health services. sometimes abortion. the people who work here are the people rear going to target. that's the mind of the extremist. >> i understand why the free-standing clinics. but it makes me wonder if in

part we have to create some level -- the thing about terrorists, there is no fighting the terrorists in a way that necessarily pushes it back forever. i wonder if there's a way to create structural safety. what are the things we ought to be doing? >> first and foremost thank you for having us here. it's important that we're talk building these and conceptualizing what's going on as terrorists. let's please understand what's happening to providers and are more able to understand. there are all sorts of forms that could be effective. defining this as terrorism, thinking of this as terrorism. law enforcement in communities often establish task forces relating to helping providers. and providers that live in those communities reflected really positively on those experiences.

>> so they end up with a relationship with the police. in order to get effective law enforce. you have to have a relationship with law enforcement. thank you for the book. i think it's important to frame this. have a robust public debate on a meaningful public policy issue. terrorism is not okay. >> exactly. >> thank you to david and krysten. "living in the crosshairs the untold stories of anti-abortion terrorism" >> up next when the president talks about race, who is mad about it? who is happy about it? how brave does he have to be? and does he do it often enough? and teachers spending their own money on students because local government won't do it.

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at 62,000 brush movements per minute philips sonicare leaves your mouth with a level of clean like you've never felt before giving you healthier gums in just two weeks. innovation and you. philips sonicare. welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry. in 2004 barack obama became

only the third african-american to be elected by popular vote to the u.s. senate. when he won, be black senators and governors were so rare that every student of american politics could recite the conclusions of the article, can black candidates win statewide elections? black candidates could win statewide, but they had to follow a strategy of deracialization. unlike african-american mayors vying to lead majority black cities but powerful symbolic campaigns of civil rights campaigns. serious candidates wanted to win a big stage needed to deemphasize race. be black, sure. but not too black. this advice must have been echoing in senator obama's ears. sure, he had been elected

statewide. his owe pontiac in the 2004 race was also african-american. this time the stage was far bigger and the competition much stiffer. so senator obama began his campaign as political advisers must have told him to deemphasizing race by showing his own buy tpwraefepbwn biography. >> you came here because you believe in what this country can be. in the face of war, you believe there can be peace. in the face of despair, you believe there can be hope. >> and he won in iowa. i mean such style in new hampshire it didn't seem like a win. when race showed up in south carolina it wasn't candidate

obama who evoked it. he would keep on winning until this. >> [ bleep ]. it's in the bible for killing innocent people. [ bleep ]. america for treating our questions as less than human. >> when reverend jeremiah wright's sermons. should he do this? >> race is an issue that i believe this nation cannot ignore right now. the comments that have been made and the issues that surfaced reflect the complexities of race in this country that we have never really worked through. a part of our union that we have not yet made clear. and if we walk away now, if we

retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care education, or the need to find good jobs for every american. >> and that march 2008 race speech in philadelphia worked. the advice had been wrong. it was okay to talk about race frankly. the campaign regained its footing and went on to make history that few would have imagined possible a few months earlier. president obama has not talked about race in the same way again. there have been well-timed punch line, dotting the correspondent's dinners in recent years. mr. obama is still unique among presidents in his insist answer on american stories. yes, he even settled on my brother's keeper as his legacy project. but nothing is quite like what he did in philadelphia. not when he assessed that rich

police acted stupidly for arresting professor gates in his own home. or if he had a son that son would have looked like trayvon martin. or indicting the officer who shot and killed michael brown. and the president saying it was an understandable reaction to be angry. in each of the moments he was talking about policing or the personal experience of public grief, the under underpinning of the rule of law. race sat maybe just below the surface. but the president hasn't gotten quite so close to the fire of scorching race talk as he ever did in 2008. but maybe now it's time. in his second term he has nothing to lose and only a legacy to build. or maybe looking to a president is the wrong way to direct the national gaze. perhaps president obama has already done his part and only we can do the work of truly

addressing what is left. joining me now juan manuel benitez from new york 1. giuliani cobb contributor for new yorker.com. and thomas professor of sociology at the university of pennsylvania. i know not everybody likes the speech. but i always felt it was the leave it all on the floor. even if we lose it's going to be okay because i wasn't supposed to win anyway. he has never quite done that again. i wonder do we feel like he needs to do it. >> do we need obama to talk about race again? american public is fascinated with the topic of race. but do we need him to talk about it today? he's an executive, the president of the united states. enough with the talk. we need policies.

another beautiful speech is going to inspire people. maybe he will show empathy to families of these teenagers or young man that are dying in many place in the country. but at the same time that's not going to change the policy. we're going to keep seeing over and over that things are going to repeat because the system is not going to change. >> so i feel you. 99% of the time i sit on this show and i say we need policy structural change. jelani, i went back and i was reading it carefully. i was like all right, he wasn't just like -- he actually took the pen away from his speech writers. he wrote it himself. it was all like professor obama up in there. there is something about as fascinated we are with it how poorly we do it. it really was a display of like at least a smart way to do it even if one doesn't agree with everything that was said. >> what i took from that speech is he was a better writer than the people writing for him. that is an enviable position.

i think even if that speech as he was leaving it on the floor was a harbinger of the constraints. >> sure. >> so there have been points in which he has hinted at some things. when people talked about in the instance of trayvon martin when he was killed. and the refrain on the right is what about black on black violence. and he said do you think these two things are unrelated? it is directly connected to this devaluation of black lives we have seen historically. i thought that was insightful and profound. at the same time in the race speech, he gives a false even handedness. he did this in 2004. black america or white america, there's a united states of america. that's completely untrue. >> i know there is a critique that that '08 speech isn't aoe

equivocating equivocating, white folks are angry because of this and black folks are angry because of this. it felt not political in the sense that it felt genuine. i guess that's part of why i'm wondering -- if not president obama, do we need a way when we're talking about the big policy changes. for example, the question of policing. do we need some kind of vocabulary to also have a race talk while we do it? is it that resentment anger language help to go provide a vocabulary. >> in that speech in 2008 he talks about reconciliation. he talks about changing the hearts and minds of white americans. he talks about race really as a problem in the heart that needs to be overcome. that's uplifting. it's important. it's a message we need to hear. but it's not a message that easily traps lates into public

policy initiatives. >> let me push back. he spends all of his social capital to pass the affordable care act initially. that is not a race-targeted policy but nonetheless has extremely important implications for under verting racial in equality. if life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then it starts at the life piece. >> there would be political dead ends. but they do have a consequence for working class americans of all races in terms of improving the life circumstances, giving them access to health care that they didn't have before. but there are larger issues in the united states that aca or the stimulus package or other programs have not adequately been able to deal with. we are looking at

african-american rates that are twice that of white americans. >> they have always been that. >> it's a trap to ask obama to talk about race. whenever we talk about race and we want to talk honestly about it, you're going to get into the divisiveness reaction in the public. black people want obama to talk about race so they can say something to the people basic live punishing them. you remember the 2008 race speech. there was a lot of backlash after that speech. >> sure. >> obama talked about how his ailing grandmother -- >> clutched her purse. >> she was fearful. they said obama, through his ailing grandmother under the bus.

>> but i think that's okay. i don't see that as a trap. i see it as precisely what race talk ought to do. it should provoke it. if we don't talk about it there's never provocation. but if we provoke it we can allow and see what that provocation uncovers for the thing that is race. hold on for me. we have more to do. we want to take the the race talk and switch it just a little bit around public policy here. up next just a couple weeks into her job as the nation's attorney general, loretta lynch makes clear friday that she is on the case. dentures, for the best first impression. love loud, live loud polident. ♪ ♪ fresher dentures...

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today the department of justice is opening an investigation into whether the baltimore police department has engaged in a pattern or practice of violations of the constitution or federal law. this investigation will begin immediately and will focus on allegations that baltimore police department officers used excessive force, including tkedzly force, conducted unlawful searches seizures and arrests and engaged in discriminatory policing. >> that was attorney general loretta lynch. the department of justice is opening an investigation into the baltimore police to determine whether the department violated the community's civil rights. less than two weeks and attorney general lynch is out front and center to address the unrest that erupted following the death of freddie gray. i'm fascinated in this in part because eric holder was sort of

the racial doppelganger. when there's riots on the day you get sworn into office this is the role you end up playing. i wonder how community and policing works out in the obama administration. >> i think it's interesting. i hesitate to say what will come out of this. this is not the same dynamic as ferguson. it's a little bit more complicated. at the same time it is not at all surprising that in the first black presidency the point, the flashpoint has consistently been the attorney general's office around these issues around the issues around law enforcement. >> it is a little bit fascinating from a historical perspective. when msnbc was covering the march on washington. attorney general eric holder walks out and you get this huge round of applause.

the lead law enforcement official just got a standing ovation at the march on washington? that would not have been true 50 years prior? >> it certainly wouldn't have been. he faced a lot of pressure though. one of the lessons of 1963 and a lesson for now, unless there's pressure protest, disruption or threat of disruption. and attorney general lynch had to deal with this in her first week in office because folks went to the streets. >> and black communities have come to see lynch's position -- it became a racial cause. because of the long delay in her confirmation process. it wasn't like an easy transition. now there's a sense that there was activism to get her confirmed and therefore that has to be repaid.

on this question of how we want to think about race. for lynch, who is in a position to enforce laws bring new report should it be a conversation about policing or race? i'm wondering how we see an effective approach occurring. >> i think it should be about policing. we are reacting about something that happened. why not be proactive? look how race is handled all over the country before any other tragedy occurs. so that goes back to the policy change. and i wanted to go back to my brother's keeper. it is such a beautiful initiative. private companies are participating. putting in money. 6 they are putting money on this

goodwill initiative. are they putting it on congressional campaigns and senate campaigns that are going to support candidates are going to bring about change in policy? >> any time you want to make a critique of my brother's keeper you may have the floor to do so. i am not a fan of my brother's keeper for exactly these reasons. the corporate piece of it. i understand once you're in office you have to find a place in institutionalize. in order to fix it instead of trying to fix the in equalities you try to fix the young men who themselves are being victimized. >> try to retrofit them into a narrow set of slots. this can't bring institutional and systemic change. one of the most staggering depressing statistics that came out of baltimore is that last year there were 211 homicides in the city of baltimore. 189 of them were black males. so the entire -- every other

demographic in the city of baltimore accounted for just 22 homicide victims. so when you look at those kind of numbers; that a problem of my brother's keep senator it doesn't get to the heart of the multiple systemic and institutional failures that culminate in that disparity. >> i'm not a fan of fix the folks who are themselves victims. by making that point, the vast majority of those 189 black men who were killed were not killed for example, by police officers or in police custody. so when we come back we're going to kind of dig into that question of who should be seen as a victim in these questions. because millions have seen the dance but do we really know about the bobby shmertas of the world.

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he's a young internet sensation from east flat bush who signed a seven-figure multialbum deal with epic after his hit song went viral. it is known as hot boy debuted the schmoni dance, popularized by beyonce and rihanna. i've been trying to get my 15-month-old to do it. today he sits in a jail cell on conspiracy to commit second-degree murder and second degree assault and faces 25 years in prison. in december he was arraigned in state supreme court in manhattan, with other members of the gs9 group lincolned to a murder and several shootings. he has plead not guilty. his bail is $2 million. pollard's name isn't lumped in

with other names in the black lives matter movement. we want to ask, why is he not a widespread symbol of social injustice? some believe it is the pollards of the world that need to be part of the conversation that we're now have. a lawyer for pollard. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> it makes sense that he is not in a conversation with young men whose lives are gone, right? but you want to suggest that actually there's ways in which his life has been so constrained. >> when you look at these communities, compton, gary indiana, they are all constructed through state and federal policy through racist real estate policies defacto segregation, through a number of things.

and it has created an urban landscape where these kids are under siege against each other and against the state. and it's pretty clear that if you look at it only in that limited way of oh well well let's just only discuss the guys who got shot by the police i think it's very short sided and probably part of the problem why most of these neighborhoods -- i grew up in brownsville. so i'm aware of the obstacles that are there. you know, it's a very comp indicated thing. and it's something that unfortunately as our society has evolved, no one is concerned about drawing it back. >> i think that's true right? i grew up in south queens. and the era of the boom bash crew. the crack era. the fact of the matter is even as we have people dealing with public policy dealing with

racism, dealing with systematic problems we do have people in the community who are not facilitating the benefit of these communities. i think we have to be very clear about that. morally speaking there are people in my community dangerous to other people in my community. >> absolutely. that's always the case. i think if you read wretched of the earth he talks of the phenomenon what happens when you take a people under siege and put them in a place where there's no job, bad schools, bad health and heavily policed and then there's an injection of drugs and guns. a president who is celebrated who said hey, a take my part in the mass incarceration problem that exists now in these communities. obviously you have to police. obviously there are dangers. but for us to take children and what we're doing. i'm also a former prosecutor. and i've been doing this defense for a very long time.

police officers if you want apples, you go to an apple orchard. if you want rest arrests, you go to baltimore, east new york brownsville. kids are honed in on simply because of where stkpher wherethey are and where they live. we don't celebrate young men who have somehow luckily got out of this. we celebrate young men who pop culture and celebrity culture says, hey, be like that. so we can tell these kids all day, hey, go to school do this. when the president's favorite play list is 50 cents what do you think these kids who are going to school where you have books that are from 1955 and you have teachers who are reluctant to teach there, what do you think they're going to look at. >> i think you lay out extremely complicated set of questions. on the one hand, we want to --

and much of the first hour we talked about. we want to talk how the structural in equalities impact people's lives in a material psychological, emotional constraint. on the other hand, we also don't want to make a claim that to live in this space is determine active of every possible life outcome. only in part because at least one set of people will therefore understand the solution to be extermination. so if once you've lived in the space, there isn't anything there can be we have to funnel in all people into this space, into this space. >> i totally agree. i think what needs to happen is a renaissance in these communities that no one else cares about. mentoring or apprenticeship programs. >> that does sound like my brother's keeper. >> no, not at all. no, no. i'm talking about people who live there. not a politician who is lining his pockets or doing a press op.

these young kids who have all of this vibrant energy labels are looking for the bobby schurma's that everybody has a problem with. >> you think we like to consume the version of blackness that is this but also punish. >> everybody is uncomfortable with black men painting their own narrative if it doesn't fit the way people are used to seeing us. if they turned their backs on celebrity and pop culture and got with the older people and people with different perspectives and they began reflecting the hard truths and realities of which they live you're talking about a group of people who are essentially has been blocked out of the private sector where all the money is made. >> all right. this will keep going on in the commercial.

barack obama and the burden of race. still to come this morning. teachers in mississippi digging in their own pockets to give students a chaps. as we go to break, i want to listen to senator obama talk about the fact that it is just going to take longer than just one election cycle. >> this is where we are right now. this is a a racial stalemate we have been stuck in for years. contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, i have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle.

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threat of tornadoes appears somewhat less likely in some areas. steve, what are you seeing on the map that tells you that something in this area will be lowering the tornado threat? >> good question melissa. these storms that you see right now are the answers to that question. the storms are robbing the energy stealing the show from the afternoon. normally if you want a severe weather outbreak you need sunshine. that's one key ingredient. we just don't have it. a lot of clouds these thunderstorms this morning are preventing a widespread outbreak this afternoon. still, we have threats out there. we have to cover the heavy rain potential. north of dallas look at the lightning show. a lot of lightning strikes there. also in north texas. there is a severe weather threat here this afternoon. the primary threat will be heavy rain strong gusty winds and large hail stones. so you see enhanced risk for severe weather. that's the mid-scale range here. a high threat no longer in

place. gusty winds, hailstones heavy rain. just a nuisance of a saturday. these spots have been pummeled with heavy rain day after day. we need a break. by the time we get into monday we'll start to see a break. mom's day tomorrow. a lot of you heading out to brunch. severe storms in the middle of the country. east and west coast, your best here. last but not least, tropical storm ana pushing off to the northwest. winds 60 miles per hour. a soaking rain for the coastal carolinas this weekend. if you have plans with mom, keep her off the beach this weekend and keep her inside. it looks like it will be a wet day. melissa. >> i saw these crazy flash floods on monday. i live over in north carolina can't go there right now. up next in an msnb original report, wyethors in mississippi are practically begging their

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because they work in dangerous conditions minorers took canaries into the mines with them. if deadly gases would leak the canary would die. children are the canary of our fragile economy. the most vulnerable find they are still exposed to the noxious gas of in equality. they spend less hand they did before the great reis session began. of the state's investing the least is mississippi. it has low academic outcomes.

a report from the education week research center gave a grade of "f" for achievement in grades k-12. what do educators do when they see the canaries threatened with the deadly gas of under investment? no they don't try to save themselves, they try to clear the air for the kids digging into their own pockets to make up for the most vulnerable. >> since 2009 mississippi public schools have been underfunded by $1.5 billion. according to the mississippi association of educators. as state lawmakers debate the future of education, local districts like carroll county have been forced to do more with

less. assistant superintendent rona mitchell sees every facet of the school system struggling. >> there are so many schools who do not have textbooks, do not have basic infrastructure that is conducive for learning. we in our elementary school have leaky classrooms. the roof has not been replaced in almost 30 years. some of our buses travel up to 70 miles a day. we have to replace them off. and so when you have a general fund that includes every expense, things like that are priority. we're having to make decisions about student learning based on finances. but that's the bind that we've been put in. >> i think the situation now is worse than it's ever been and i started in 1969 before total integration.

>> billy joe ferguson is superintendent of the carroll county school district. >> just a raw deal that we're getting here in mississippi by our leaders. they know we do not have enough money to operate. and really to me it just stinks. >> superintendent ferguson wrote a letter to mississippi governor phil brian bleeding for additional state funds. he even included he slashed his own salary to a mere $18,000. the superintendent tells us his salary had been over $85,000. >> when did you write the letter to the governor? >> february of 2015. >> andave you had any response whatsoever from the governor's office? >> none. >> democratic lawmakers in the state say the response from their republican colleagues is not surprising. >> in mississippi, we have a formula that sets the floor, not

the ceiling mind you, but the floor. if you fund at this minimum level it will be an adequate education. for years and years and years, my republican colleagues have said we want to fully fund education. in fact, what they would rather do is have voucher programs and take their mope and go the a private school of their choosing. >> the suggestion that the republican-led house doesn't want to fund education is simply false. wells said there had been record funding for education the past four legislative sessions and more money put into maep this year than any other year of the formula. the principal witnesses the lack of funding on a daily basis. >> tel about the after-school programs in in the beginning there was a grant we used to

order to fund our after-school programs who intervened with the students who struggled academically. once that grant was over we had to survive on our own. we reduced two two teachers working under two days. we were going full days and saturdays our test scores were so much better. >> to make up for the money they haven't received from the state. chris dahl d the unn and amber tucker must dig into their own pockets. >> most of the teachers before the school year is out, we pay for paper, ink for our printers out of our own pockets. marshall elementary is considered poverty level. most of the children that come in, probably 90% to 95%, they have free and reduced lunch. so i buy pencils for my

students. >> a lot of them have is a mind-set that they will do whatever their parents have done in the past. well, in some cases that may not be a good thing. but if we can take them other places to see what the world actually has to offer them besides what's here in carroll county, i think being able to see the world would motivate some of them to be great. >> what have you learned since that trip? >> well it was only yesterday, melissa, we finally got a statement from the governor's office mississippi governor phil bryant. the statement reads in part under governor bryant and the mississippi legislature maep funding is at its highest level in mississippi history. improving public education has been a priority for governor bryant since he took office. but in order for maet to be fully funded each year there

would have to be tkra cone yann cuts to all other state agencies. >> i think that may be okay. >> superintendent ferguson still as of last night has not received a response to his letter. >> we're talk anything that case -- part of what is so challenging about this piece is the idea of these educators taking paycuts, buying pencils, paper. and we know they don't make very much money. and there they are trying to do the best for their students. >> that's correct. they feel like they have no other choice. and it's only when you see these teachers melissa, do you see how much they care. kristel dunn was the first example. when her kids were flooding me with hugs and kisses she was crying in the corner.

they come from single-parent house or just having a grandparent take care of them. >> grandmamas are pretty good about the hugs. we have to have pencils and paper and functionalbuss. >> and some of these kids are commuting two hours a day on buses that are just not running properly. it's a little saturday morning perspective, pencils. >> just to have pencils in an american town. yeah. thank you. don't forget you can catch the docket tuesdays at 11:00 on shift.msnbc she was born into prison. now it's where she is doing some of her most important work. boys? stop less. go more.

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[♪] and in the restless depths of human hearts... [♪] the voice of the wild within. tomorrow is mother's day. for some people who are

separated from their loved ones it can be a difficult holiday. that is especially true for mothers who are incarcerated. in the last three deckids the number of women behind bars increased and the number of children with a mother in prison has gone up by 131% since the early 1990s. now uses her own personal story to help mothers who are behind bars and their children. deborah is the founder of the unprison project. she joins us from minneapolis, minnesota. thank you for joining us. your story is pretty heroing. can you share some of it with us? >> thanks for having me on. the parts that i know is my birth mother was a heroin addict. she was pregnant in one of her

sentences. i was born in prison with her. she got to keep me for a year. like kids today i entered the foster care system. unlike many kids around age 3, 4, 5 adopted into a family that gave me education so i had a new trajectory but a broken beginning. >> when you talk about that foster care system it is important just to remind people we talk about the number of moms in prison the impact that that has not just on the moms and the children but on so many of us. >> well and tax dollars. for every kid that goes in it is a burden on everyone else paying taxes. if no one is caring about the kids and moms in prison they care about where tax dollars are going. it's a burden on schools, communities, everything. my call for action is to have community treatment and alternatives and not prison for mothers like mine birth mothers

like mine. >> talk to me a little bit. your unprison project has that big goal of moving away from incarceration as a solution to public health problems and other issues that are particularly impactful for women. in the meantime you have partnered to talk about the possibility of mothering and parenting by reading. talk to me about that. >> i have learned -- i have kids myself and one of the early things we do with kids is read books. many of the visiting rooms and nurseries have dog eared books. it's not rocket science. i partnered with the children's book council and they put together their member publishers. we have hundreds of books that i hopefully will deliver in person. it's bonding for the mother and child. it's teaching literacy. i think education is the way out of that rut. that is one of the ways out.

>> i love the idea that as we move towards mother's day tomorrow that even when separated by realities of incarceration that moms can read to their children and they need high quality books to do it. >> for some kids that is the only time that they have reading with their mother. >> and i know it can be hard to do that kind of reentry, that conversation, that reconnecting the kids been gone all week and maybe all month or longer. the book gives you a way to break the ice between the mom and child. >> exactly. it is something to talk about. visiting rooms are vacant with conversation sometimes. what is to talk about? i have been in here for ten years so a book is exactly something to talk about that is outside of ourselves. >> thank you to deborah in minneapolis, minnesota for your work with the unprison project and specifically for your work here in this partnership.

>> thank you so much. happy mother's day to every mother in prison tomorrow. >> we will send that out along with you. that's our show for today. thanks to you at home for watching. i'll see you tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. eastern. now it is time for a preview. >> thanks so much. a new question about body cameras on police. who gets to see the footage and when? we will tell you about a new attempt to keep the public from seeing the video. the price of beauty. i speak with the author of a "new york times" piece on nail salons and the alleged abuse of practices some say they endure. >> a report says women ceos are getting paid more than women. mr. wonderful will tell me why they deserve it. don't go anywhere.

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. weather warning. parts of the midwest and plains facing potentially severe

storms. heightened alert. the pentagon raises terror threat level. how many isis militants are in america right now? a brazen daytime attack on a teenager captured on video. we will tell you how these pictures may have helped solve the case. and a big response to my question of the day. did tom brady cheat? i will read some of your answers ahead. it's high noon here east. a severe weather threat from the southern tip of texas north to nebraska. tornadoes, large hail and thunderstorms are possible. the storm threat comes days after a weather system produced more than 50 tornadoes across the plains. >> big-time weather on the way for oklahoma. >> every night when we go to sleep we see the storms. i can hear the sounds of the

tornad