we'll never give up the fight ♪ >> i'll always be doing this until, you know, the day comes where, you know, no child has to be fearing for their lives every time they're sitting in their classroom. the following is an encore presentation of a special msnbc town hall event. "everyday racism in america" begins now. before you call the cops, i just want you to know, i'm a christian. i am often asked if i am muslim. i'm okay with that. i'm pretty much convinced if you met my mother you'd automatically become a better person. i can tell you every single word off the nwa "straight outta compton" album. i can also sing you every single word from "oklahoma." i don't hate our president, i

hate that anyone at all might possibly be afraid of me. i'm a proud man. i'm a proud black man. i just wanted you to get to know me better before you call the cops. >> i don't want to sound racist. >> i get nervous. >> i'm always met with suspic n suspicion. >> i have a right to be here. >> i was just shopping. >> i don't have a racist bone in my body. >> i work here. >> why is everything about race? >> this is "everyday racism in america," an msnbc town hall event from philadelphia. here are joy reid and chris hayes. >> all right. thanks for joining us from the prince theater here in center city, philadelphia. tonight, big news, as you've probably already heard, abc canceling one of its biggest shows after its star's racist tweet. we are going to talk about that. but as starbucks shuts down 8,000 stores across the nation for anti-bias training, we're holding our own discussion,

talking about the kind of racism that occurs every day in this country in hollywood and coffee shops and public spaces. >> they didn't do anything, i saw the entire thing. they asked to use the bathroom and the woman said it's for paying customers only then asked them to leave. they didn't do anything. >> we're talking about the kind of everyday racism that led to the arrests of two black men who were simply waiting for someone to show up at a business meeting at a philadelphia starbucks. >> and the more blatant kind, like the kind of hate, frankly, roseanne barr put on display today. she tweeted out a racist and personal attack on one of our guests joining us tonight. >> valerie jarrett is a former senior adviser to president barack obama. also with us al sharpton and sherrilyn eiffel, the director counsel of the naacp defense and educational fund.

thank you, all, for being here. >> thank you. >> so, valerie, we want it give you an opportunity to respond to all that's happened today, not just the tweet but abc's response. >> first of all, i think we have to turn it into a teaching moment. i'm fine. i'm worried about all the people out there who don't have a circle of friends or followers who come right to their defense. the person walking down the street minding their own business and see somebody cling to their purse or want to cross the street or every black parent i know who has a boy who has to sit down and have a conversation, the talk, as we call it. as you say, those ordinary examples of racism that happen every single day. i think that's why i'm so glad to be here this evening talking with all of you. >> for those of you who have not heard, this morning actress roseanne barr tweeted this. "muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes had a baby equals v.v v.j." it was only after immediate backlash that barr tweeted this, "i apologize to valerie jarrett

and to all americans. i'm truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. i should have known better, forgive me, my joke was in poor taste." >> hours later abc canceled her show saying roseanne's comments were, quote, abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values. you think they did the right thing? >> i do. and i want to mention bob iger, who's the ceo of disney, called me before the announcement. he apologized. he said he had zero tolerance for that sort of racist, bigoted comment and he wanted me to know before he made it public that he was canceling his show, so i appreciate that they did that so swiftly. >> and you have been in the middle of these kind of coroveies before people remember the don imus siion. you'reften called upon to talk to corporations and industry -- people when they find themselves in situations. do you think abc did the right thing? >> oh, they did the right thing. and i think it is important, the statement they made, because

what i think we're dealing with is those who are still trying to turn us back into a kay thday t considered normal. and i think we can't get away from the fact if it starts raining you look for clouds. the clouds that have been put over this country to try and bring us back to where this is normal. to take a well educated, beautiful woman like valerie jarrett, which they did similar to michelle obama and president obama, and equate them with monkeys, is not acceptable and we cannot tolerate it. when you have a president that started his political career on birtherism saying that he's not one of us, when he did everything he could to do dog whistling around this issue of race, people like roseanne feel they're empowered. well, they got the memo today you're not empowered, people are not going to take it.

>> i wonder if you agree. do you feel like this president has set a tone that has made people feel increasingly empowered to say those kind of things? >> this is what i think, chris. i think tone does start at the top. we like to look up to our president and feel as though he regrets the values of our country, but i also think every individual citizen has a responsibility, too, and it's up to all of us to push back. our government will only be as good as we make it be. and as reverend always taught me, you have to be -- people on the inside have to push hard and people on the outside have to listen. and i think that i'm heartened by so much of what i've seen over the last several months. those young people from parkland who were able to force florida to change a law that they had no intention of changing before the tragedy shows what happens when ordinary americans lift up and have their voices heard. >> and, sherrilyn, it's not just the rhetoric, it's also the policies, and many of those are underpinned by the law.

you spend your career trying to fight to make sure inequity doesn't get baked into the system. what are the risks that the attitudes people may have toward people of color then wind up being reflected in the law? >> well, that's why this is so important to push past just the politics of what's happening in this country and really deal with the reality that i think valerie raised early on, about what happens to ordinary people. because let's be clear, racism did not begin with the current president. what has happened is that the tone that you're describing has unleashed something that we had achieved some progress with. that is that there was a taboo, there was some -- there was a velvet rope across a certain kind of public rhetoric and dialogue about race that has been removed. and that does have real consequences. it has real consequences, first of all, in terms of the danger to ordinary people. we have seen an exponential rise in hate crimes since the end of 2016 and that is real. that's about african-american, that's about muslim americans, that's about members of the lgbtq community.

there's something that has been unleashed in this country that has real consequences for the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. then when you think about the kind of comment roseanne barr made today, something that feeds into an old stereotype that did not begin with her and donald trump, that dehumanizes black people, when you dehumanize people, you can do anything to them. you can lock them away for years for minor offenses and think their lives have no value. you can punish black girls in a way that you would not punish white girls. you can drag a black girl in a bikini and pin her down, right, and treat her like a criminal as a police officer. you can shoot a 53-year-old man running away from you in the back. you can do all of those things because you don't think they are exactly human. and so this rhetoric has real consequences to the legal landscape that we face, when people see these things on their television, it begins with a message that has been sent about who we are. and to the extent that we are othered in this way, to the extent we are regarded as something less than human, something less than a full citizen, something less than a

person entitled to full dignity, it puts people in danger. >> and it's not new. i can still recall the cartoon that was -- the monkey cartoon about president obama. i mean, early on in the administration when you would google michelle obama and look at the twitter images, it was horrific. it's not so much new. but do you get a sense that there is a more per missive atmosphere toward it? >> it was on the fringe and some of it has been as a result of social media being weaponized. it can be an incredible force for good but it can dehumanize because it's distant. you don't have to look at the faces of the person you're attacking. i would remind everyone it was ten years ago this year president obama gave his race speech right here in philadelphia and it was a unifying speech and it was one to try to help educate and have people appreciate diversity as a strength, that we all are a result of our upbringing but that we can change, we can be better and it appealed to our

better angels and we have to get back to that again. >> yep. >> but i think what's important is when we talk about this tone, ten years ago president obama made his speech here in philly and some blacks were saying don't be that conciliatory. but he set that tone. you can't imagine this president making a speech about race in a city of brotherly love. and that is what we've got to deal with, which is why i think this dialogue today is important because we don't to agree, but we don't have to get ugly. and we don't have to start bringing us back to the country that did not elect and re-elect a black president because we did that. we made a lot of progress. we have a long way to go, but we made some progress and some of us are not going back. >> indeed. when we come back, we're going to hear from the head of starbucks about what his company is doing today to combat the bias that happened here in philly. >> more from our msnbc town hall when we return.

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turning now to the reason we are in philadelphia, today's racial sensitivity training at starbucks locations across the country. >> this after an employee in april called the police on two black men who were sitting in the store and had not yet purchased anything.

rev, you got the call not long after the outcry. what was the ask? >> he asked me what did i think. many of our activist groups, our chapter here and others were involved in the marching and i said that this is not about sitting down with civil rights leaders, he called many of us, writing a check, this is about y'all have got to deal with the culture in your stores. they said that's what we want to do. and as they went on and they said they were going to do this day and got credible people like sherrilyn, like eric holder, involved, then many of us said this seems to be a genuine effort, but it can't be a one-day thing. it has to be a beginning, not an end. but i must say, they put people on that if anybody's been in the room with sherrilyn and eric holder, they know that's not an easy room to be in. >> you recently sat down with kevin johnson, the ceo of starbucks. >> i went to seattle last friday and met with him and howard schultz and i asked him would he do an interview that i could

confront him on is this a one-day feel good thing and let me show you what he said about some of this. people don't understand that when you are black in america, women, you have to get up in the morning and get yourself geared up for a different environment. that you're going to be looked upon as a suspect rather than a customer. you're going to be facing all these things and the anger and the resentment that builds up even subconsciously comes in and then you're facing people who have inbuilt fears and warning signs and collisions are going to happen until we deal with the root cause of where all of us come from, which is a culture of race-based prejudices and presumptions. >> well, that's one of the learnings that we have woven into this is the term "racial anxiety" and how that affects

different people and different races in different ways. being able to have those conversations and being able to listen for understanding and start to understand how other people, people that have differences can better interact in a more comfortable way, a more transparent way, a more understanding way, that starts to bring those barriers down and create a different way for people to connect. >> so, sherrilyn, you worked on the training here and i was really -- to the rev's point, i was interested when i saw you were included because you work on the structural features of racism and white supremacy in america and it's hard to square that, i think, in your mind about bias training which seems sometimes like it's just about manners. so i'm curious about what you wanted to make sure was in that training that people took away today. >> first of all, i'm not a trainer, i'm not a bias trainer and we were very clear about that from the beginning. this is not what i do. mostly i've been in a posture of suing corporations engaging in discrimination, not training them. >> that's one way of training

them. >> what we said we would do and the reason i wanted to be involved is that this company articulated a desire to address directly first of all the issue of racism which is -- i mean, i don't want to just move past that like that happens everyday. number two, they recognized that this could not be managed with a one-off and they were open. they wanted to know what should we be doing? which is a very different thing than saying "i want you to help me with this." they wanted to know what they should be doing. so what we signed up for is to help them think through a whole variety of things. they announced they were going to do this training on 5/29. we agreed we would get them the people that are the most important, the most credible in our communities that understand this kind of work but all of us understand training alone is not enough. certainly not one day of training. i think it was a powerful statement and is a powerful statement and, therefore, important. but as you know in any job, training requires repetition.

it requires supervision. it requires discipline when you don't adhere to the training. most important, it gibbegins wi the policy of the company. there has to be a policy review and policies have to be enacted if the company wants to inculcate this value of inclusivity that they have articulated. so we're doing a review. we are talking with our allies in the field and have been getting their input on the kinds of things they want to see. we think it's important to remember that starbucks is located in 8,000 communities around this country. i don't know another corporate actor located that ubiquitously throughout the united states who has articulated the desire to deal with racism so it was worth a try. and it's worth a try not only for them to work internally, but also for them to think through what is the relationship that they should be having with the communities in which their stores sit? >> let's look at that first step, a portion of the training material that was shown today to starbucks workers. >> i have to make sure i have that enough space between myself and another patron or commuter on the train just ensure that

i'm not making someone uncomfortable. i have to make sure my hands are visible when i walk into certain places so they make sure i don't -- am not stealing. i watch my tone to make sure i don't come off as threatening. just leaving the house some days, sometimes it just keeps you at home, keeps you away from everything. >> it's depressing, right, to hear the fear that people have to be in public spaces. i mean, you're shaking your head, valerie. >> because i think about what that's doing to the heart and soul of our young people to grow up in a place where you feel, as sherrilyn said, like an other, or less than human or threatening when you're trying to go about your day-to-day life. and it disheartening, but i do give starbucks credit. they stepped into the fray and they said what they were going to do and they made not a one-time commitment but a long-term commitment and hopefully they're leading by example and other companies will see they have to do the same. disney did that today and hopefully we're beginning to change the tone.

but it's going to take everybody putting pressure and we can't just rely on our civil rights leaders to carry this, alone. every single one of you has a responsibility as a citizen to get involved and say something. >> can i just jump in on this? because the part of the -- the excerpt that you just showed is actually from a film that stanley nelson has created that's going to be released tomorrow. this is something i thought was really important because i fear that we may not recognize how long this struggle around how black people are treated in the public space has been with us. this is a core element of the civil rights movement. if we think about the freedom rides, if we think about lunch counter sit-ins, rosa parks on the bus, the essence of the struggle was about our kdignity in the public space. and right to be treated as full citizens and this is on a continuum with that. >> one of the things that's been fascinating about this cultural moment, and i think frankly for a lot of white folks who have been watching it is that that video precipitated this sort of explosion of both videos and

reported experiences of, look -- >> testimony. >> testimony. there was this incident that got some attention also following the starbucks, it happened at yale university, a black graduate student taking a nap in a common area, a thing i am proud to say i've done many times at college, happens in colleges all the time but she was questioned by her white peer who then called campus police. she joins us in the audience today. lolade, i was curious after that incident happened what the backside of that looked like, because we got to see in the video what the trauma of it looked like and how awfully othering it was and -- but what happens on the other side of an incident like that?

>> on the other side, you mean what was i going through? >> yeah, and like afterwards. after the video had gone viral and you're back in the community and back in the common room. >> well, i literally just got back to yale this past weekend. i had plans to leave. the day this happened was my last day on campus. i had plans to leave for nigeria for my father's birthday the following day, so i had to just stay on autopilot. so when the whole thing blew up i hunkered down with my family and i was just like, you know, this is crazy, but, you know, i have to keep on living my life. i've been working with students on campus to organize, to demand a response, an appropriate response, from the university. we're still waiting for that. >> they haven't done anything like this? >> say that again? >> i want to be clear on terms of the record what yale's response has been. there has not been anything similar to, like, what we are

seeing today. >> well, they haven't once condemned the actions of the student who called the police on me. they haven't once condemned the actions of the police. they have found explanations of the behavior of the police. so for me that's not sufficient. >> i always wonder in these interactions because so many are public and you never see this person again but this is on a college campus where presumably you could see this person again, interact with this person again. have you interacted with this young woman who called the police, and if so, what was that interaction? >> fortunately for me i haven't. but if you know the story then you know she called the police on a friend of mine just months before and he kept -- >> some friend. >> -- running into her. even a week after my incident, he saw her on campus. and so for every black person on campus who understands what type of person this is, you are

retraumatized every time you see her because you know that if the school has not condemned her action, then she is in power and people like her are empowered to to it again. you know it can happen again. if it happens again, maybe we'll be fortunate that the police officers who respond to the call will be behave with, you know -- will behave well and maybe we can't. maybe what happened at harvard will happen again. >> i think that this is why we need to really have conversations like we're having tonight. this is why it's important what starbucks is doing. this is why it's important what we're doing on the air. she said it could happen again. it may have happened and someone didn't videotape it. if we don't put a spotlight on it, it doesn't force some institutions to deal. that's why people say to me why do you march, you just want publicity. that's exactly what i want. i want to put publicity on what they're doing. >> absolutely. well, we have jermaine lee in the audience with additional

stories of these day-to-day interactions. >> that's right. we heard about the big explosive cases of racial injustice in america but that's not what most black people in america deal with. you deal with what we call microaggressions or a thousand cuts of racism every single day. i'm here with elta jackson henry who recently moved from seattle. tell us about your experience with microaggressions in america. >> very subtle. i thought is there a chip on my shoulder? am i imagining something? but i live in the brooks county area, i like to go out to lancaster to these small areas and go shopping. i noticed when i'm finished with my purchases, when i'm done with my shopping and i'm the only one there and the sales associate is checking me out, when someone comes behind me, i notice that i'm looked past or i'm asked to step aside and there's an apology given to the person behind me. "i'm sorry, i'll be right with you." or if someone sees me in line they entertain a question of the next person behind me before i'm even done. like i'm not significant.

my purchase isn't important. you know, just move out of the way. like i'm just invisible. i feel so insignificant. and it's hurtful. being from seattle, that's a whole other story. [ laughter ] but i thought i was important. >> we don't have the time. >> i had a very overprotective mother who made me feel like i was special. i come here and i feel like, i'm -- i don't matter. and i'm going to address it. i'm getting empowered to say listen, i am important. i need you to be attentive. customer service means finish with me. my dollar is important. you know, and you need to -- [ applause ] >> i can see the tears in your eyes welling up right now. >> it hurts, it does hurt. i'm not so much angry, i just feel like when is -- when will i feel important? when will i be important to you? and i'm not looking for gratification, but i just feel like a child, you know? as a child how do we help our little girls feel like they're important? you know, so, thank you for

letting me share. it does help. >> thank you for your story. thank you. this feels like the public accommodations when you look at the old black-and-white videos. it was ignoring the person at the lunch counters, pretending they weren't there if not outright kicking them out. it feels like we're sort of back in a fight over whether or not black people are going to have full access to public spaces. >> yeah. i think that's right. i think, you know, it's important for us to acknowledge the way this makes us feel and the internalization that can happen. i also think it's important for us to acknowledge that this has hard consequences for us. let's take a place like starbucks that lots of people go to for lots of different reasons. these two young men went for a business meeting. lots of people don't van office, meet me at the starbucks. your roommate is making too much noise, i'm going to finish my paper at starbucks. writing a screenplay, i set up my stuff there. this is an actual place where people are getting a benefit.

and everyone should have the opportunity to have that benefit. so it's not even just about our feelings. if i have paid for something in that store and purchased thinged, i should also be able to eat my lunch at that counter rather than go someplace else because i also have meetings. every time a cab passes me by in new york city with the light on, it means i'm late for a meeting that i need go to and i'm a person who runs an organization. so in some ways we want to make sure internally in the family we talk about the way in which it makes us feel but i think we have to quantify that this is about dollars and cents. this is about our ability to function in society, our kids and what they have access to, about your ability to write that paper someplace, your ability to raise money and so forth and i think sometimes we get away from that and i think it's important to ground ourselves in the reason for those battles. the reasons for the lunch counter sit-ins, freedom rides, wasn't just about our feelings and dignity. it was partly about that, what does it mean to be a full citizen with all the benefits, the brprivileges of that? >> sherrilyn, appreciate you being here. sherrilyn eiffel, thank you so

much. rev and valerie, stay with us. up next, we explore the psychology behind why people call the cops when no crime is being committed. as we go to break, we went around the country listening to stories of bias in everyday life. here's one. >> it was surreal, looking around and seeing all this activity and understanding immediately what was happening. >> when did things go wrong? >> we were packing our vehicle, we are driving out, out of the blue police cars swoop down in front of us and behind us and cops are jumping out of their vehicles, hands on their holsters pointing into the car, hands up, hands up, hands up. >> at that point i didn't even think he was talking to us because in my opinion we're just coming from airbnb going to where we are going. >> the policeman said do you guys know what's happening? and he said yeah, the neighbor called and said there were three black people stealing stuff. >> they said luggage and stuff. >> because there's three black people in the neighborhood. >> we tried over and over again to prove who we were, why we

were there and they still didn't believe us. >> what would you say to those people who say it was an incident, move on? >> i would say i hope this never happens to your child so you never have to understand what it feels like to be defenseless in a moment when you are right and they are wrong and because of the color of your skin, your voice, your words, are not enough. [ doorbell rings ] janice, mom told me you bought a house. okay. [ buttons clicking ] [ camera shutter clicks ] so, now that you have a house, you can use homequote explorer. quiet. i'm blasting my quads. janice, look. i'm in a meeting. -janice, look. -[ chuckles ] -look, look. -i'm looking. it's easy. you just answer some simple questions online, and you get coverage options to choose from. you're ruining my workout. cycling is my passion.

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not going to make a bunch of noise here. >> what exactly happened? >> i was halfway through my move, i'm tired, moving boxes up and down, i get into the lobby and i look at the door and i see blue and white. i see police. i look to my left, i look to my right and i looked inside. i'm like, they're here for me. what's the problem? i live here. >> we have to do an investigation. >> what are you guys investigating? >> listen, listen, listen. >> they immediately start asking me, who are you, what are you doing here? then they played the dispatch. >> somebody was trying to break into the door. >> responding to someone banging on doors, has a weapon on them. >> doing my job. that's it. >> who called you? >> someone called us. >> this was somebody in the building who did not want me there. people don't realize the consequences of their actions. when you profile and act on that profiling, you're reporting a crime and reporting a crime that might not be in process. >> your crime was living while black. >> living while black. in this case moving while black. >> welcome back. so many incidents start with one simple phone call to the police,

which is presumably there to protect and serve. >> but in a world where folks are encouraged to say something if they see something, the question is when should people call the cops? >> with us now is the district attorney for philadelphia, also a professor in police inequity at jon jay college, and tim wise, an ainnti-racist educator and the author of the forthcoming book. "white lies matter, race, crime, and the politics of fear in america." we're hearing stories about everyday racism from the perspective of the black experience. these interactions have two parties. filmmaker whitney dow has been exploring these issues in a documentary series in which he talks to white americans about race. >> i think about race a lot. i do feel a common bond with other white people because that's primarily who i find myself being around. >> i feel more comfortable

around more people of my race. i hate that it's like that, but it is. i think it's a lot -- we're more comfortable around each other because we -- it doesn't seem -- and i may be wrong, it doesn't seem that there's as many whites that are out doing crimes and murdering and causing trouble and doing a lot of those things. >> and filmmaker whitney dow joins us now. whitney, i wonder if you could talk about the process of getting white people, frankly, to talk about race and how you get them comfortable enough to be open and honest about issues of race and racial bias? >> i think white people are desperate to talk about race. i think white people don't know how to have that conversation. but when you create an environment where they can talk honestly about it and talk about how they feel, how they've -- that they really want to have the conversation. >> and i'm wondering how much of the way they react to people of color is rooted in sort of misinformation, you heard the last guy saying black people are committing the crimes and how much of it is learned behavior

and in your view, how much of it is outright bias? >> i think there's an incredible amount of fear and i think there is a lot of outright bias but i've been thinking about this. i just came back from wyoming where i spent about a week interviewing 50 white people and partially white people talking about their experience living in almost all-white community but i think that what is really interesting to me is that they -- is that they're in a community where there's almost no people of color and all the information they get is from the media. so the media they're seeing over and over these images and one of the things i've been thinking about is all these videos that have come out showing police attacking people of color that have kind of finally let white people understand and see in reality how black people experience the police but they're also doing something else, they're also showing on a loop black people involved with the police. and for a certain segment of

society, that actually triggers them and says, look, this is actually true that black people have more interactions with police than white people. >> you were just shaking your head, phillip. you do this work with police departments around trying to get officers to think in a sort of different way and with people in general about when they're calling the cops. >> that's exactly right. and whitney is exactly right. some of the benefit of exposure is that it's waking america up to what black communities have been dealing with since black communities have been communities in the united states. but he's also right that the learned association of black plus police plus black plus police, that's how you form implicit biases. right? absolutely when they go unchecked, implicit biases become explicit action. >> i'm curious to hear from you. you're the district attorney in philadelphia. you're doing something really interesting. you ran on a reform agenda. you're trying to transform the vision what that office of prosecutor looks like. what's the answer to the

question of when someone should call the cops? >> the difficulty is that as people feel suspicion, they're tapping into their biases and it is not a situation in which most people have no bias, the truth is we're constantly bombarded with bias, with prejudice, it's almost like fighting germs to keep these away from us. it takes a certain amount of work so the difficulty is when you have a society as we do which has an incredibly high level of incarceration, extreme involvement of police in fairly everyday things and unfortunately, to their detriment, a at of police have become the first responders for mental health issues, family disputes. it used to be if there was a fight in the schoolyard, this was a disciplinary matter and that turned into a school-to-prison pipeline. well in the same way, just normal disagreements and disputes and curiosities in society have turned into individuals making phone calls because frankly they find the race of the person they're watching to be inherently suspicious. so it's a problem and it does require the participation of everyone not to tap into their biases and to look at what's

really happening. >> tim, for a lot of black people, the idea of the police is, you know, quite frankly intimidating, frightening, the idea of calling the cops on someone is almost threatening. >> right. >> but for white americans who are comfortable with the police, it seems like a problem. it seems like a solution to this person shouldn't be here. >> i like how you look at me like i'm comfortable with police. you know me better than that. >> i do. >> well, here's the thing, white america has been raised to believe, "a," the police are always the good guys and, frankly, that black lives matter less than white comfort and until we deal with that, until we deal with the reality -- because here's the problem. [ applause ] when you -- when a white person calls the police on a person of color over a barbecue in a park, sleeping in a common room at yale, sitting at the starbucks or whatever it is, knowing that tamir rice's life was snuffed because someone called the cops on a 12-year-old boy playing

with a toy gun, something that white boys do all across this country without fear of being shot and that's a national story. you can't tell me you didn't know that happened. when john crawford -- the cops are called on him at the walmart also in the state of ohio, not to pick on ohio, and he's standing there with an air rifle that he pulled off the shelf at walmart, he's talking to his girlfriend or whatever, and the cops are called on him, they come, they shoot him. when you know that is what happens, what you are saying is my discomfort with you right now is worth more than the potential that your life could be snuffed in ten minutes. until that stops, nothing is going to change. [ applause ] >> part of the common -- part of that sort of common theme in a lot of these stories, you come upon someone napping in a common room, it's like, you can just talk to the person. you don't have to -- there's -- the discomfort is so intense,

right? the discomfort is so intense than rather be like, hey, what's up, to whoever you want to have a conversation with, you're going to call 911, an emergency line, to report something. >> so one of the things i will never forget about one of the first conversations i had with the police chief was the thing that would make my job so much easier is if everybody just took social relations classes. because almost 90% of the things my officers are getting called for are things that you could just go up and have a conversation if you weren't so scared of your neighbors. and the rest of it, right, that causes so much terror amongst the community is stuff that police could never be trained for. right. so the chief that was telling me this, right? former chief in salt lake city says you shouldn't call me and my officers unless you want an armed response because while we get training in mental health, we get training in substance abuse, we get training in family planning, we are also trained in deadly force. if you don't want it, then don't call for it.

>> you also have the issue of police officers who exhibit fear toward the people they're stopping, the philando castile case. so i wonder why there isn't a legal prohibition against a nuisance call, calling the police for something that isn't a crime. >> right. right. [ applause ] >> that's a really good idea. although we have to admit, the nature of criminal prosecution is intentional acts and an awful lot of what we're talking about is ingrained bias, it's prejudice that is breathed in and just seems to express itself in these ways but fundamentally you are talking about a society in which there is an incredibly high level of suspicion and willingness to subject someone who is other -- and this could be a mentally ill person or a person or color or someone who is in any other way presumed to be threatening because of youth or whatever it may be, you're subjecting them to incredible dangers in a militarized police system. >> there's also the fact that there's a policing model in this country, it started with broken windows policing in new york

city in the 1990s. it spread everywhere. that part of policing is, quote, quality of life. and quality of life is i feel uncomfortable. >> right. >> that's the definition of quality of life. literally. and your office and the offices of district attorneys around this country are processing thousands and thousands and thousands of people a day who are doing things like break dancing on the subway or selling m&m's or something like that. >> fortunately fewer here than some other places, but yes. no question that what's been done traditionally is that prosecution, the little stuff, something that tends to pick on something in poorer neighborhoods, often black and brown. it tends to be ignoring massive crimes committed at a white collar level by prosperous people and corporations. that's the nature unfortunately of what prosecutors have done for a long time is that they have been the face of a government that is going to treat certain people a bad way. >> i do have to ask before we go to break, we need to go to break, how much of this is about gentrification? we had issues in a neighborhood where somebody who would have been familiar to the residents

is unfamiliar to the people who moved in and are uncomfortable with the process. >> the irony is, the gentrifiers of today, their parents are grandparents ran away from the city to get away from black and brown folks. and now their children and grandchildren are saying, oh, the suburbs, there's only so many olive gardens i can go to so i need to go back to the city and get my life in the city. but when i do that, i need to have my hot yoga studio and my pottery studio and my stuff represented and if you intrude on that, i will then call the police. this is all part of a larger problem. we cannot solve it just in the prosecutor's offices. we have to look at it as a housing issue and education issue. >> thank you both, gentlemen. really appreciate your sometime. >> thank you. much more from philadelphia coming up, including what is the path forward? jardiance asked- and now you know. jardiance is the only type 2 diabetes pill

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as black people and as a black woman it feels incumbent upon us to take the high road. >> how does that play out in very real ways when you're talking about at the restaurant, at the grocery store? how does is actually work

maneuvering in these spaces? >> i was at a social venue, a music venue. and i had put my purse down and i went back to go get my purse and there was a white woman had sat down with some of her friends and when i went to grab my purse, she actually snatched my purse away from me and accused me of basically trying to steal my own purse. and so she did not give me my purse back until she had cleared with all of the people that she was with that the purse did not actually belong to them. >> what were you thinking at the moment and how do you handle something like that? >> with that instance in particular i was extremely angry. i left, i had tears in my eyes, i was shaking because i felt very confident that in that moment had i reacted the way that i wanted to react then the narrative becomes different, right? then it becomes angry black woman this and i do feel like i have to internalize it. it's become even more frustrating and exhausting. >> wow. well from stories to solutions, what is the path forward and the

way that we interact with each other across racial lines? >> we're joined by demos president heather mcgee who advised starbucks on its anti-bias training. she's also an msnbc contributor. heather, you come from a policy shop where you think about concrete policy solutions to things. what is your thinking in that vein on this set of problems? >> so i think there are a lot of things we can do, and i think we have to have the message that we can do better, that it is possible to make progress. and one of the pieces is that this moment of popular education, the fact that the country is having this conversation is so essential because the fact is the idea of the hierarchy of the human value, the idea that some groups of people are simply worth more than others is a very well marketed idea in our media, in our politics. i think things will start to really change when we put more blame on those that are selling that idea for their own gain

than those who are desperate enough to buy that idea. >> let's go back to trimane, because he has another person in the audience. >> i'm here with aliya kabhir. being black in america can be complicated. how have you experienced america? >> well, prior to the one year of the trump campaign and then the one year of the administration, for me living in philadelphia, a place where african-american muslims are prominent, you know, it really did not phase me that much. i was aware that i'm a black woman. but being a black muslim woman was not a big issue. now after one year of a campaign and a year of the current occupant of the oval office, it is very clear that people now feel emboldened to say whatever they want to whoever they want, however they want. it is very common to be called a terrorist. it's very common for people to tell me to go back to my own country, although i was born in north philly.

very common for people to assume that i don't speak english. very common for people to think that i am uneducated, of course, because they have other stereotypes about muslim women being oppressed, uneducated, oppressed by our religion, oppressed by our men. so they become very surprised when they find out i have masters level education. so it is -- it is something that you are -- i am more conscious of, more cautious about. i would not stay fear because i try not to let it place fear in me. >> and valerie, one of the most potent attacks on president obama was the saying that he was muslim, even though he is not, but is trying to make that a pejorative. so that was a part of the attack on him. >> it's a double attack. it's trying to attack him, but it's also attacking her. there is nothing wrong. we should be embracing our muslim american citizens. they're like all of us. you're right.

it's from exhausting to dangerous and everything in between, right? and you feel like do i have to do this again? do i have to really gear up to go out of the house? and i think what the solutions are, forums like this, ways of raising up the people who have been attacked and making everybody, not just minorities standing up, but everybody standing up and saying this is not who we are as a country. and we have to lift those voices and let everyone be heard, and hold people accountable the way disney did today, the way starbucks is doing and say we have the ability to shift our culture and make us better. >> and one of the things i think is often overlooked is we are so poorly educated in this country about the basic facts of what -- who we are as a country, what our history is. you know, a lot of people in this sort of elite media are saying oh, this anti-bias training, it's not going to matter. and i said, you know, people

outside of liberal elite colleges often haven't had the kind of basic information about where stereotypes come from in our history, the way that this is not just common sense, but this actually was used to perpetuate and justify an economic and political order, and is so today. we have to give people the gift of that kind of education so they know their place in the world and feel empowered to change it. so i think this country is overdue for a truth and reconciliation process in every corner of this country. >> and of course one of the things that we want as part of that process is for people across racial lines to step forward. we have two women in the audience, michelle sahin who was one of several people who shot the now infamous videos of the arrest inside that philly starbucks. but it wasn't until her friend posted them that the story went viral. we have them in the audience. very briefly, how did you come together and what do you want to

do going forward? >> well, you know, people of color have been talking about these everyday instances of racism forever, right? and to that day, michelle spoke up first, and then i shared that video. and really, that's the first time that i've seen that it's entered the public consciousness and created that kind of a conversation. to be real, we think it's because someone who looks like me shared it. there are not nearly enough white people speaking up. >> yeah. >> share. >> and michelle, were you surprised when you spoke up and white patrons jumped in? >> i spoke up. i took her lead. i spoke up and look at the conversation that started. >> and i really want to be a landing page for educational resources. because i grew up in an almost all white school in pennsylvania. and my black history teaching was minimal at best. it was harriet tubman, rosa parks, mlk, done. almost everything that i know about black history, i had to learn on my own.

so i don't always blame people for not understanding. but they don't really realize that racism is built into the fabric of our society. there is environmental racism, educational racism, the foods that we eat, the health care that we receive. so i also want to encourage other black people to speak up about their experiences of microaggressions that we experience every single day and really speak out and be the change that day. and we're going to keep talking about it. >> thank you, guys, for what you're doing. a big thanks to our guests heather mcghee, valerie jarrett and tim wise as well. >> we'll be right back. directin but in very different ways and pampers gives all of them our driest best fitting diaper. pampers cruisers with three-way fit. they adapt at the waist, legs and bottom with up to twelve hours of protection for all the freedom to move their way in pampers cruisers only pampers diapers are the number one choice of hospitals,

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you know, one of the things that occurs to me, joy, as we're in this room with these great people is how few integrated spaces there are in american life, and how important and central that is going forward. >> and how few integrated conversations about race there are. black people talk about race all the time and are talking about these experiences constantly.

it's drawing in our white brothers and sisters into these conversations. >> white people talk about it too, as we saw today. >> separately. >> it gets pretty polarizing sometimes. >> pretty good thing. can't solve it all in one day but this is a good thing. >> we want to thank all of our guests for joining us tonight. >> and a big thanks to our wonderful audience here in philadelphia. for chris and for myself, good night. what i think is quite clear is the country wants to move in a different direction. >> a half century after his death, robert f. kennedy remains a hero to millions of americans. he was tough. >> whose back are you going to break? >> yet compassionate and idealistic. >> negro citizens are being treated as second class people. that's something that needs to be done about it.