host: associate professor of sociologist baruch college at new york city-cuny. thanks for being part of our conversation. guest: thank you for having me. host: we are joined by shawn harper, from the west coast, with the university of southern california. we have been going across the country this morning, talking about relations, race relations and maybe more specifically police and community relations. give us a sense of how things are in the southern california region, on race relations? guest: thank you for having me. before i answer that question, i want to respond to something that a previous caller said in w e withe equated crim black people and suggested the reason there was no crime in his community was that there were no black people. i think that is part of the problem here. associations,e implicit and explicit associations of black people with crime. the realities and facts are that poor people are more likely to commit crimes than are black people. people across all racial and ethnic groups commit crimes,; here is that it's not just black people can

aost: we are joined next by sociologist professor at peru college -- baruch college at cuny-new york city, joining us this morning with input on race relations across the country, specifically about where things stand in new york city since the strength relation death of eric garner. how would you rate the state of race relations, police relations with the community in new york city? guest: we have definitely had problems, continue to have problems there. with the case of eric garner, it is connected to one of the big issues within new york city, gentrification. eric garner was killed in st. george, an area of staten island right next to the ferry to manhattan. developers are very much interested in that. in new york, we see a lot of stories about the tactics used to promote this gentrification and real estate development. things like landlord's not doing repairs on apartments, turning off the heat, making living conditions unbearable for tenants to leave. he and others -- like him -- [no audio] trump is certainly in support of these real estate practices. he and his father in the 1970's