karen: today on "cityline ," difficult questions on black lives addressed by academic and civic leaders. our city and our country need to begin a real conversation about race. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] karen: hello, everyone. i am karen holmes ward. welcome to "cityline." 2015 saw a social justice movement like no other. charges of police brutality and an epidemic of officer involved shootings dropped the nation. no indictments returned from grand jury' s in the case of

ice left communities demoralized. as grassroots efforts group in the struggle to affect systemic change. there is one outlet or some feel they have been making headway, the internet. please be advised, some of the images you will see may be graphic for some viewers. >> do you think that culture is under attack? -- black culture is under attack? >> [laughter] of course, right? yeah, i do think black culture is under attack. >> that is a provocative question. i think like people are under attack. karen: according to "the washington post," only nine days separated each police shooting and death of an unarmed black man as of august 2015. mappingpo liceviolence.o states

this roll call of names in the spotlight has produced accurate proportions. we know them . 18-year-old michael brown on the streets of ferguson, missouri. 25-year-old freddie gray in a police car in baltimore. 50-year-old walter scott in a park in north charleston, south carolina. 56-year-old eric garner on a corner in staten island. 12-year-old tamir rice on a playground in cleveland. the stories stretch across the nation. many gained immediate attention, while many more may go unreported. each one is met with our reaction of anger and fear. each one ignites communities to demand change from what they believe is a broken criminal justice system is each one galvanizes youths to speak up and speak out against what they see as a never-ending cycle perpetuated by racism and

>> my brothers deserve to be street. t seem to matter because they are being doesn' t seem to be any type of ending here in the united states by police officer. ant that is supposed to be serving and protecting the community. >> as long as you continually racially profile, especially black men and latino and black men and women, you will come into these troubles. karen: the violence is nothing new, says the boston naacp president. >> it didn' t start with tray von, it didn' t start with michael brown. this has reawakened the conversation around

karen: what is new is the access to transparency and the immediacy of technology. >> i called social media the fifth estate. karen: brown' s body lay on a hot asphalt of the ferguson neighborhood for four hours, captured on camera by numerous neighbors and posted on social media. without these images circulating on the internet, with the outcry have been as loud? would it new york city streets have swelled in protest if a mobile phone hadn' t captured eric garner' s last words, "i can' t breathe"? >> we want a reliable account of we can hit social media and be in the thousands making a statement. karen: street journalists taking to social media, bringing light arrived. of activism, but is it enough to'

guilty and 90' what happened in staten island, jury, it was connected to black twitter. >> a lot of the work we have done, the huge response to the non-indictment of darren wilson, was through social media. yeah, it was a h the streets. >> we don' t have to organize a march to take a week or two weeks or a month to organize. karen: they has cultivated a community where so-called truth can be questioned and racism, whether over or settled, can be challenged by inquisitors faster than the speed of light. >> it is a way to get your voice out without a filter. happens on twitter when people are engaged through hashtags. otherwise hear from. >> when you all-out anyone with

mobile phone or smartphone or axes to a computer to express changed the way that we live nowadays. where the conversation comes into focus, twitter, black twitter particularly good this social time. -- according to the black lives matter boston founder and lead organizer, black twitter is not a monolith. it is a haven for inside jokes, social inquisition, and civic engagement. >> it is not necessarily one thing could it is a place for people can watch "scandal" and "empire" and life sweet it -- live-tweet it. which is what we are not allowed to do in other spaces, beautiful dth of

karen: an expert on the power of twitter, easy is the value of black people working there weight through the platform. >> black twitter evolves from people of color being on twitter and situations would occur around them that were being properly documented. historically, they don' t get covered documentation in terms of being able to express what really occurred. i became much more of a movement where people started realizing that the media wasn' t there to themselves to report it. karen: black twitter has been the birthplace of taglines such down" and of course, "black ice -- "black lives matter." look back at the history books, will mean something in particular, and the fact that you can communicate that with

>> all this far-reaching analysis that you will never see reported in the media. it is a game changer because people know they don' t have to listen to the lies. >> i think it is awesome. i consider myself a part of it could it is a great way to upload our narrative, a great way to affirm each other.

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only at a sleep number store... find the lowest prices of the season, going on now. save $600 on the #1 rated i8 bed. know better sleep with sleep number. karen: campaign zero is a site devised by social justice activists to fight police brutality. they met with democratic presidential candidates hillary

regarding adding a platform to their campaign which they hope will address key issues within policing. if i left the site also strives to begin a much-needed dialogue about -- the site also strives to begin a much-needed dialogue about the criminal justice system. but how ready are people to discuss race and how early should we be talking about it? political talking heads, community organizers, and crusaders for criminal justice reform , they have all called for an open dialogue on race in america. one to have. this country has never really conversation, and it is being forced to. lives matter movement has crystallized this conversation. the lead organizer and founder in direct action. >> use nonviolent and civil disobedience. disruption is the direct action wins.

-- that made national airwaves. the seattle black ice matter movement interrupted presidential candidate senator bernie sanders at a recent political rally. senator sanders: there is no candidate for president who would be stronger in fighting against institutional racism. >> the very next a he came out with a platform so you can' t say it doesn' t work. karen: the boston black ice matter brought their concerns to mayor marty walsh' s doorstep. t heard anything about the limits, there is a lot of folks in the city who didn' t want it. karen: while they did not participate in the -9 i-93 protest, boston black lives

>> is really -- if you really understand the urgency where facing in america in 2016, it gives you a different perspective on these disruptions. >> there' s not much we can do to stop the violence against -- karen: with the presidential election looming, politicians are likely to confront this is a platform issue. black voters are a leading group that will help to determine the 2016 outcome. young people are also huge voting bloc. >> we need>> new ways of doing things and sometimes it will be a shutdown, sometimes it will be a quiet conversation. karen: at the m.i.t. sloan school of management, a professor of organizational studies helped discover that this unwillingness to talk about race casts a wide net that age. well are we preparing the next generation to deal with issues

karen: recent study found that children of racial minorities avoid a or speaking openly about race. the data was collected using a question picture game, giving children ages nine through 12 to finish the game by using race as the target response. >> the motivation of research was to get at the fundamental question of how the racial minorities reconcile the conflict between who they are telling them is appropriate. you are supposed to use the questions you can in order to m holding. half the pictures were of white individuals and half were individuals. if all you cared about was eliminating the pictures as quickly as you could, this allowed us to look at children' s

be really conducive for completing the tasks. we found the rate at which children asked about race is four times lower than that of gender, despite the fact that they are equally useful for cleaning the task. the vast majority of children did not talk about race. karen: the concern behind these results, the dispenser racial identity. >> on one hand, the racial identities central to the lived experience. it is part of how they are seen, source of pride, linked to a unique cultural heritage. having a strong sense of racial identity is linked to a number of different positive outcomes. and really, this study is suggesting we need to ask several questions about how the broader societal norms that essentially say we should not be talking about race, which is so closely linked to the children' s identity, what health publications or development of applications that may have. karen: who should facilitate this conversation?

acknowledges that parents have great influence over their children' s comfort level discussing race. >> we know from past research that so that together are very reluctant to talk to their kids about race. i think there are two main reasons. for many white parents, race is irrelevant. "why would i talk about that with my children?" second, there is this sort of lay theory that if i bring attention to race, my child will all of a sudden become racist or pay too much attention to differences, which is not supported by science in any regard. karen: teachers play a part as well. >> teachers are in a unique position to set the norm for what is appropriate when it comes to raise, because teachers establish what should and should not be talked about in a setting in which there is a diverse group of children sitting in the classroom. karen: child' s inability to state known as colorblindness.

optimistic. it is still problematic. >> colorblindness is easy, with race. what we know from research is it is often not the best way. productive and paradoxical effects of colorblindness. interactions, trying t even notice the race of the person i' m talking to actually makes interaction more anxious and awkward and can make you look more prejudiced, not less. t solve many of the fundamental issues. karen: fundamental issues that could impact people of color succeeding in and benefiting federal agencies. >> stakeholders are all of us. we live in a racially segregated city. country. why public schools failing? why are so many black people in prison? we have to have substantive

important because they are talking about how we can quo of the united states, change for the better, one that elevates racial and cannot justice and equality for all people. karen: he speaks for himself when it comes to looking forward to a brighter future. >> i still want flying car, but i would settle for people understanding each other and being harmonious in the way we communicate. we don' t have to agree, but i think being able to understand each other is the first step to being able to live in a harmonious life. karen: , in the case of should independent prosecutors

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karen: from michael brown to eric garner, sandra blanda to tamir rice, prosecutors have police officers held responsible for their deaths. going to a report by "the washington post," at the hands of single shootings in 2015, most of them were cleared or acquitted. should there be some changes to how these cases are handled? provide some insight, we are n espinoza-madrigal , executive lawyers committee for civil in boston. welcome. i am from cleveland, ohio. i was in cleveland when tamir rice was shot over thanks giving. -indictment decision came down cleveland was very upset.

perspective in terms of how it was handled. iva n: this is a very important case. today, karen. 12-year-old black boy who was playing with a toy gun in a playground, and he was shot by seconds of the police arriving at the scene. of course there has been a lot police knew at the time. karen: the dispatcher did not the police when they pulled up iva about 911 miscommunication. did the dispatcher provide important details like it is a s a fake gun? so there has been a lot of back-and-forth about how much information the police actually

appropriate for them to come into the scene that progressively. -- that aggressively. this happened very quickly . within two seconds of police arriving at the scene. karen: when the prosecutor looked at the facts, there were suggestions that he had spent extra money to bring an expert witnesses that would support the police i of the case -- police side of the case, he was leaking information to the local cleveland media prior to the outcome of the grand jury. this led the community to feel process already favoring the police and not looking at the facts or presenting fair and iva n: that' s right. at the community level but also conduct.

whether grand non-indictment. it is important to note the traditional role between prosecutors such as mcg the grand jury' police. works very closely with police on day to day work tried to put away criminals, giving evidence and testimony for indictment and conviction. get his job done. iva relationship. it raises eyebrows to see that or that we wouldn' t have an independent or special prosecutor assigned here. think about it -- drawing an analogy, if you had to indict your own colleagues for your

iva n: the idea is even if there is no bias -- karen: there is subconscious iva conflict of interest, there is a perception of that. people' s views , not just the rice family, but even within the civil rights community, we think it is really important to have transparency. we believe that the process is just as important as the outcome. karen: "the new york times" has called for independent prosecutors. how would that work? iva n: it is fairly straightforward and really about best practices into policing. -- in 21st century policing could instead of having a prosecutor connected with the local jurisdiction, you seek out

in who doesn' t have these potential or perceived conflicts of interest. i think that gives us a lot of peace of mind. it has a lot more buy-in when decisions are made so that the community sees that there is transparency, con ability -- accountability. karen: with the independent prosecutor be from another county, another state? where would the independent prosecutor pool be drawn from? iva and many states handle this in different ways. neighbor, sometimes prosecutors are drawn from other counties t have a connection with that particular jurisdiction. there have been recommendations also that the state open up an office of police misconduct matters that would be charged with investigating and prosecuting these types of

prosecutors. there can be many different models to explore, but the linchpin here has to be an independent prosecutor who is also provided with resources and independent investigations so that we don' t have to rely on that local jurisdiction investigation and information. karen: very quickly, what is the status of independent prosecutors here in massachusetts? iva n: well t have any law requiring independent prosecutors in massachusetts. been seeing movement away from this, s are being taken out altogether. like i said, in connecticut, we have outside prosecutors who are involved. t seen this type of movement, but i come out in front of these issues in anticipation of any

it is appointed about the that we don' when we actually need to conduct these types of very delicate investigations that are very serious for all of us. karen: thanks for being here today to talk with us about this topic. you can learn more about everything we have featured on s program by logging on to our "cityline" page at wcvb.com and join the conversation on her facebook page and on twitter. thanks so much for watching.

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