hello and welcome to cross off where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle the primary purpose of history is to understand the past as a guide to understanding the present and future history should not be seen as feel good nostalgia because a lot of history is painful and shame so how should we find the right now once it's statue side the right answer.

crossed knocking statues side i'm joined by my guest cleo voluntary in new york she is founder of the company there have been champion which teaches social emotional learning in schools as well as diversity and inclusion in companies and government agencies and yet in las vegas we cross out of our it he is an assistant professor of african american and african diaspora studies at the university of nevada las vegas all right cross uprose in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want rouse appreciate greatly let me go to you in new york how does taking down statues and we can talk about which ones change the condition of people of color in the united states and does that something is that just a political statement because we're in a great recession we're in a pandemic and working people or people are being horrendously hit by this and i just have to ponder is statues the 1st thing we should be banking about go ahead

. well sure i mean i think i would defer to the former mayor of my state in new orleans mitch landrieu who courageously took down the confederate statutes in new orleans a few years ago and his argument was essentially that you know we are a melting pot as a city and we really celebrate that but we should not force our citizens to look up to have to look up at you know monuments of confederate soldiers whose goal was to uphold slavery and this is a thing certainly a traumatic experience for someone to see and someone especially someone of color will inevitably see that and wonder well am i actually in a place where i belong culturally does this place actually represent my values if it's willing to you know have a monument that celebrates my ancestors and slaves meds and i think that culturally and psychologically it is important to make sure that those kinds of monuments do not remain are going to those those that using money means came down after

a broad community discussion correct sure because they would see this is well you know i have no attachment to confederate statues and monuments 0 i don't i simply don't i was born that outside boston massachusetts ok and so i don't have that kind of. on the ground cultural history however tyler my point in asking this was that you know it should be communities that decide because people come together and they make a decision if they want to remove it have it moved someplace else as a historical artifact because we all except the fact that slavery did exist in the united states and we should never forget that it did and ensued through history particularly at it after the civil war there were political reasons why these statues were put up some i'm reading put up during the civil rights movement as a as a protest and we need to understand we have to understand where these statues came

from i don't think they should be. destroyed i think we should preserve them and understand them ok well i think that the us has a lot of reminders of the consumer see out the monuments now on the one hand for tribune are to make that. front and i'm sort of saying america's history wasteland a lot of people prefer to just get rid of things rather than deal with them and there's some debate to suggest that that is what's going on with what we call the market wars not on the other hand i advise for people who want to tear down these monuments simply because a case example being the university of north carolina there is a structure called silent sound which was supposed to represent all of those who fought for the concern to receive that attended that particular school and if you look at the history behind i mean the speech that was given when it was read to us actually horrendous and recent it made it very clear what the intention was an honoring the confederacy and it was deliberately white supremacy now when the protesters asked for it to be removed or when they actually removed it themselves

there was a deal struck between the university administration and a local group of those who were sympathetic to the confederacy memory so wish it was going to be over a $1000000.00 to essentially preserve the monument that was going to be i think they are the taxpayers expenses or through the jewish and it was paid by the students so i understand the argument that communities should decide but on the other hand it seems that it's a number of people who are at the top who are making these decisions are more interested in just getting the problem away and willing to donate money for that which i don't think represents the community's interests and i think that's a disservice to history is well ok i mean like i said in my introduction we don't remember things just fairness 1000 to feel good about something we actually remember most things because they're very painful and i think the if i go out i think it's really important you know when this actually that was just mentioned here i think that and i want in your opinion of course to preserve that and explain

why it was put up what the meaning was then and how we should interpret it now i think that's it i his be last and all and it all in itself. so i can't speak to that particular statue but i will say that i do agree with putting confederate statutes and museums so all that we can still preserve that history and understand that history in the proper context but to have those statutes put on pedestals and to have the confederacy and its value celebrated and glorified is an obvious problem and i would echo the professor's point that there is an issue when you have you know institutions claiming to be for justice and for equality but really they're just trying to silence people from protesting more sort of divert attention away from what's going on by whether it's donating money to people who are interested in preserving the can or glorifying the confederacy as legacy. of perpetuating other issues so i hear what you're saying about community input and i

agree obviously if that's what happened successfully in a war lens but i do think that the statute should be put in museums and that is the proper context that they should be observed there it's going to go step through the current let's say look at robert e. lee ok one of the most important if not the most important very general during the civil war but he also was commandant of west point before the civil war and he's now in for reforming it in some of those reforms down to this base of his legacy and west point for example to be wiped away disappear well i think what's interesting about robert levy is i believe she said himself shortly after the civil war to not correct. for concern or said he was he was very clear that what happened was traders add to the fact for us for gave him and so many others it is reflective of how i think a number of people want you gone now with the monuments being read to that was

a deliberate act much of the view of the united daughters of the confederacy in the early 20th century was an expression that they expected and wanted to maintain america as a white. premise this country in the intro it's black people throughout all of these airlines was never considered and i just want to go in this point of you know cultures g h i mean we talk about the wrecking of culture all the time and i think that's a misunderstanding of the term culture is not static i mean what we believe now versus 100 years ago i think is drastically different and has progressed to a large degree and i think that's a good thing and so when people talk about preserving heritage well we have to be honest about what their parents are just and since the mid 20th century america is a very different place as far as diversity than it was prior to $965.00 so the degree to which any of these monuments represents the communities under which they were placed is now questionable and i think within this particular moment

communities are rising up because they feel that they have an actual voice and input that is now it's value it's those who are leading clear how can how can we can't with physical culture remember this is a whole war what is a way what is an obvious to do that without glorifying or without dividing us so i think there can be an educational approach to this and addition to putting these confederate statutes in museums there should be an educational push to have folks really esteem those who fought on the side of the union who learn we can learn so that we can learn more about these individuals. and really uphold though the values of those individuals this summer actually read team of rivals which was about you know the political sort of strategizing of abraham lincoln and his character and what what shaped him and as a president as well as his you know upbringing and it seems to me that we don't actually teach that much about these individuals again who fought on the side of

the union so i think that if we could have approached our education system by emphasizing the values of the union and emphasize. those soldiers who died on behalf of america and who did not you know prove to be a traitor so the country i think that would provide a good balance and again to reiterate putting those confederate statues shouldn't be destroyed but should be put in his saddle so that they can place in the proper context colors it should we read show actively people 100 years ago by their words and their way their way their viewpoints but equally on race i mean even as abraham lincoln if you look at very closely i mean he he he believed ending slavery was in principle as a christian thing but he didn't particularly like black people ok but he did it on principle all right and if you go to his leg recent things like that it doesn't come off as this you know this squeaky clean abolitionist ok i mean he had he did

it on principles and i think are universally agreed now i mean obviously but he was a pioneer and particularly the president of the united states living as far as judging people who passed under present circumstances i think most historians and most people who think about this would generally agree that it's not if you really believe that in the end and they kind of atmosphere that we live now i mean the statues are being to face the abolitionists are being defaced ok francis scott key ok i'm sorry to interrupt but i think that you know we have to be very careful that's why we're doing this program well i think it's an indictment against can history traditionally it's hot the generic sense that we've been getting i think ever since we've been attached to monuments throughout the u.s. as we valorize individuals and i think that's always a problem i mean if you're going to position marty minute around a particular individual's memory the idea behind that is this is a mess this is a person's message histories to how you're supposed to perceive them now i can't speak for all protesters or people who are facing monuments but one thing that i

would suggest is you cheat and judge people based upon the circumstances of their own time and what i what i'm seeing with you know discussion. about washington or jefferson is not that what they eventually did was a terrible thing as far as writing the constitution or the declaration of independence which eventually will open up freedom and liberty to numerous people is that they were talking about freedom and liberty while who explains so the the indictment against them is that they were hypocritical in their entire process how they conceptualize freedom and what's asked suggest to descendants of slaves people or descendants of indigenous people or anyone else who's been marginalized the prestons country is that there were a number of men who were not willing to extend the full benefits of all the body they were talking about to sort out. and they were aware of that at the time and if

you look at the debates they look at the federalist papers you look at the then it's the basis even of the declaration of independence i mean basically we're going to kick the can down the road they were over where they can say they didn't know any and they were very strong abolitionists and there were those there of course works we're going to on that jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue work its question on statutes i'd say. beyond the one. they want to know where this is headed and my hands are when i stand the going to get rid of where they were rapidly and they're putting their sounds together courting very slowly this pandemic is making them be even more careful they will continue to be careful and they may. not least

a decade new a generation where salad partnerships. 54 jets and more than 1300 military personnel are headed to heal some air force base in alaska where is that to say come on i'll show you what's the reason for any type of enhanced u.s. military presence in this area rush up. what is it suddenly about the south china sea that makes it so that it 11000000000 barrels of oil. take a look at this map who really owns what kind of says no it belongs to us india says no we claim that that belongs to us both of these countries have nuclear weapons capabilities there is reason for concern so that's why we're going to drill down on the story for you today right here on the news with rick sanchez where you know as

we always like to say we do believe by golly it's time to do news again. welcome back to process things are considered remind you disgusting statutes. we used to have to chloe in new york. at the very end of the 1st part of the program we're talking basically about the founding fathers state the framers in your mind in this out mysterious the whole bill of rights in question now because some of the. signatories and writers of those of the bill of rights were slave owners now and i have to say i think on this point i disagree with the professor i don't think i think if the standard is do not put up statutes of any human being

period i think that's a consistent standard but if the standard is do not put up statutes steaming the founding fathers because they were hypocrite. it's i think that's a bit of a slippery slope because who knows that we will be able to esteem our own values in 2020 and moving forward who knows that we were not also proved to be hypocrites and trying to stem the values of morality and equality moving forward and i think that the statues that were put up to honor jefferson and washington and the founding fathers in contrast to those put up to honor the soldiers of the confederacy were not put up to celebrate their vices but to celebrate their virtues and to celebrate the ideals that they represented in spite of the fact that they fell short of those ideals and i don't think that there's anything wrong with that and i also don't think that there's anything wrong with putting up a plaque next to them to highlight the hypocrisy and to expand upon the complexity of their of their lives and what they did in the brutality that they did uphold but

again if the standard is to not put up statutes of people who are hypocrites then there will be no statutes of anyone and perhaps that is the way we should move forward and that's an argument that's that's worth making perhaps but again i don't personally have a problem with the actions that were put up or not of the founding fathers but kind of it will sex a lot of people do and this is one of the things like i said at the very outset i don't mean to be can can better it's that is and monuments at all 0 but all of you there are people that do that and what bothers me is that in what we've seen during the last few weeks is that this is kind of bled over to all down his bitter bitter somehow. a day are going to fight with the establishment or traditional history and it seems to me this is a slippery slope that people are going down i mean some of the graffiti written on some of these statues were written by people that are illiterate i mean do they

know what they're doing or is this just some kind of rage go ahead well i think once again it might be time to he goes through american education system and then i think a lot of younger people. the lie too in that they have not received the full context of what the us has done and allowed people to do i mean the fact that a traitorous region was then reclaimed and defended in their envisions to put up confederate monuments not just within their region but all over the united states i mean there are reflections of this in california even in las vegas where i live to the degree that what we are seeing is a number of people feel that this is something that should have been it should have been reckoned with and it should not not have been tolerated it's rather early 20th century in the war was over but a number of people wanted it to be alive and even in the textbooks of that time that for trade a very benign version of slavery so i say that we have

a lot of reminders of the confederacy and that's inference in american history now in regard to the degree to which they should be moved to museums i sense who agree with that but we also have to recognize that moving these to museums requires a lot of money and a lot of museums as you just said that they received calls from state legislatures who say look we want to get rid of this money keeps a good they say no we're not equipped we don't have the finances so if the state wants to actually invest in the preservation of monuments and build museums there it's all the truth about the confederacy or it's just that i think what's happened within the united states is that government funding has not been sufficient to actually sell the history of the united states for those who go to these places to try so learn about it so what i see with what young people are doing is that they might be destroying monuments as a way to get attention to i think larger issues this might be symbolic and literal toppling the confederacy in its nunnery but also ensuring that structural change is

actually implemented by the government funds clearly what about the federal statues because we've been talking all about statues that are in cities and. they're under a local administration in control and this is turning into a really heated debate right now because some of these statues are federally owned and they're protected in the taxpayer subsidises them how do we deal with that i mean would you like to see congressional action. order how would you see this play out. yeah i mean it's an interesting question in terms of the process that would need to be embarked upon to take down problematic statutes that are put up under the jurisdiction of the federal government i'm sure that's a conversation we can have in congress we've had congressional testimony is what's a guide to reparations for example i'm sure there can be another kind of session in congress that where we can talk about this and perhaps secure that finding that for us or just mentioned to put that in place i don't see why it should be such

a barrier in theory just because we're talking about statutes that are held under federal jurisdiction why do we stay with you why is this so how can he now i mean. he was like i mean we just got to see i think it's been a complete 3 years that we've been talking about now is often only very very i mean we are living in an extremely charged political environment and obviously we're going to win elections is this part of this also keep going well yes i think it's the election cycle it's also the case that we are a nation that has been dealing with the adverse effects of coal that 19 we've been you know trapped in our homes many of us are unemployed many of us are trying to figure out where we're going to get food where we're going to get work and then we have these racial tensions that are sort of put into the spotlight because of the murder of george floyd the murder of almost arbor a the murder of brown and teller and so this creates

a cascading effect where i many people feel that enough is enough the compounds the situation and people go out and they many of them rightfully protest because this is just too much to deal with but on the other hand i would have to caution against how some of those protests might manifest themselves in some nihilistic pathological tendencies whereby we are saying to your earlier point folks try to pull down not only sections that belong to the confederacy but that's just actually represent emancipate. that you thought actually represent the antithesis of the confederacy west of jess that for some of the people who are pulling down these statutes there is no moral ethic at all i mean it begs a question as to how one can claim a promote the taking down of a statue of jefferson davis for example i also promote the taking out of the statute that celebrates the emancipation of slavery or of slaves or other that is a contradiction in terms that suggest and illiteracy as you say and actually

supports the professor's point that there has been there does need to be an indictment of the educational system in this country 'd but but much more much more consistently and much more thorough than perhaps we thought of not just to the extent that we critique obviously and condemn the confederacy but to the extent that people are even aware that you know frederick douglass and dr martin luther king jr invoked thomas jefferson in order to criticize thomas jefferson and so we need to be educated not only on the historical facts on the complexity in nuance of who are our states men and women who lead us so i agree with them for sometimes of the education that men but it's far more reaching that well i think all 3 of us are uniformly integrated been down there and i was you know even one of the reasons why i may be very different reasons if i may let me go to things like you know many new some said on fox news he's a black man or we are he said it change doesn't happen that quote we will burn this

system greenwood might not be ready. agree with me remember you know i think he's probably talking metaphorically i mean the system could go to a number of things i mean if the system is an equal does mistreat people are going to be marginalized people then that is a system that you want to get rid of and so i'd have to hear a whole concert so what mr newsome was saying but i think a lot of people have a similar sentiment that if if our education or health care systems are scaling of our political process. yes it's fairly certain groups that is a system you want to get rid of now burn the system i think has maybe some rhetoric used to invoke a seriousness of the nature of what i assume that he means is that you burn the system by placing leaders in place that are actually going to change or rather than what we might call the corporatists who have made a number of promises but as soon as they get into congress the senate or the presidency they essentially just aligned with the same people who were there who

made laws that are largely been some in social change rather than literal so i agree with the sentiment that burning the system might be 11 way forward in actually remedying the process and you know america will no longer just be the history wasteland in which people for sweep things under the rug which rather than actually deal with the classroom well being a train has part of his story when i hear things like you know we will burn the system it's revolutionary rhetoric and i'll tell you in the modern period at least revolutions usually go well they never work out they end up eating their own all right but how does that mean i feel like i don't understand what you're saying but i think that many people saw the civil rights movement as a wake suburban system going to know what is it's going to burn jim crow is going to overthrow it it was going to eradicate it and so i think there is a certain social context that we always have to be mindful of people say. i mean

but there was a goal i mean like the voting rights act i mean these are a positive face of ok i don't know what the goals are except for burning down and people are angry and there's some people use it for criminal activity that's something that i not exactly will but i agree with you that the civil rights movement is a model that had positive goals and they were achieved and we should all be proud of that. if the movement remains under fire. and there are reasons for people to question that aren't requests from so if people are saying we're going to erm system but not replace it with something that is a problem and not just used to be changed when we finish up for us no i mean i would i would echo tyler's last comment i think that there needs to be a moral ethic at the heart of a movement and it needs to be very clearly defined because without that this will just have as you said a tendency to eat itself to the center and to nihilistic rage when i actually hear

the term burn the system i am reminded of the film black panther and let's kill mongar also wanted to burn the system down and by that made destroying everything that his ancestors had created and that was obviously a problem and didn't end so well for him so i agree that we must you know him as us and our and and those who are protesting for right but we must also make sure that they're educated there are a literate enough to hold that moral ethic of justice and equality in high regard and to act to advance yeah when i when i hear burn burn it down i reminds me of a place where i live here in russia and that's when the pulse you dig said it and they earned it down and they brought a. totalitarian regime that lasted for 70 years so we careful what you wish for i guess ok that's all the time we have i want to thank my guests in new york and in las vegas i want to thank our viewers for watching as iraqis see you next time remember.

the one guy you appear he was a nation around him literally dead like this standing. a guy over here his girlfriend they were found in their part of that they just. cuddled up and they were dead for like 3 days of holding each other this wall so people who. have lost her life so early today she yet this is for america. that crown is better known as the meth capital of hio it's a city where the number of drug addicts keeps growing every year. i came up here i was 14 in my whole family were drug addicts. throughout much of the 1990 s. and beyond and the doctors were incursion in some cases incentivized to

overprescribe. i mean enough to sedate a small country where you should also hear about people buy all that's there good stuff man we gotta go get dead go crazy get you but you know when to do it. and they're succumbing you know one after the next. ah no 2 no crow. no shots no. action belts because. well it's true no 1st. point ch your thirst for action. thousands of american men and women choose to serve in the country's military and the decision that has shattered lives every one came to

a complete. the day that i was raped to be instructed here you know told to shut up or they'd kill me and i see how it destroyed my life any screamed at me and he made me come in the gram my arm and he write me with his birth ink area if you take into account that women don't report because of the extreme retaliation and it's probably somewhere near about half a 1000000 women have now been sexually assaulted in the us military rape is a very very traumatizing thing tat happen but i've never seen trauma. like i've seen women who are veterans who have suffered military sexual trauma reporting really is more likely to get the victim punished to be a friend and almost 10 year career which i was very invested in and i gave a sex offender who was not even put to justice or put on the registry this is simply an issue of our in violence male sexual predators for the large part of target whoever is there to prey upon whether that's men or women.