and, you know, there are other like that like the letter you cited james baldwin to, his nephew, he knew that letter would would be read was for public audience. the idea of these intimate letters you learn so much about people because you don't have that self-consciousness that you have when you know that there's an audience right, it's just your heart. can i say just that in this day and age, anything digital is public can be. yeah, yeah. so just be mindful that your private thoughts are not always private these days that you want to end. now, i just a funny story because i write historical fiction and where i get most the information is from letters that they left behind. so i just finished a harlem renaissance novel about the black woman, discovered every harlem renaissance writer, edmund fawcett, who was much involved with w.e.b. so i have some of their letters and reading some of their exchanges and his exchanges with other women. i, my daughter that she gets no money from me unless she makes sure that every email, every text, everything i've written is gone somehow, someway, or sh

this year, the geniuses banning these books have now added books by authors that include james baldwin, alex haley, and w.e.b. dubois and other classics we have all read like a tree grows in brooklyn, seriously. donald trump and his future staffers at project 2025 would like to nationalize these fascist purges and want to prosecute librarians who allow students to choose banned books because it's supposedly poisoning our children. the second most banned book in the united states in 2022, all boys aren't blue, by george m. johnson, is banned in 29 school districts because it deals with race and queerness. johnson has said that we owe it to next generations to give them the tools to build a better, more robust world, and books are those tools. in that vein, johnson has a new book titled "flamboyance, the queer harlem renaissance i which i had known" which celebrates black and queer artists, writers, and activists whose full stories have remained in the shadows. george m. johnson joins me now. great to see you, not just running into you in the train, but seeing you. we do run into each ot

. >> you were interviewed for time magazine in march and it had some james baldwin vibes. americans acted in the face of a book ban. you said "conservatives are loud about it but what i feel are liberals also agree with them secretly and i have not seen enough, especially on the level of prominent government officials defending the books or other rights in the same way in which someone like florida governor ron desantis has opposed them. they are not vocal about protecting the books that are being under a ban. talk to me about this more. >> one, i want to say a shout out to house are presented to presley. she is the one house representative who has put a bill together to try to fight against book bands. but in all actuality, the best way i can liken how silent certain liberals are work when it comes to the situation is when you think about roe v wade, you have people that are pro-life or pro-choice. but realistically, the opposite of pro-life is pro- abortion. not pro-choice. a person can say, i'm pro- choice even though i don't agree with abortion. and so i feel like that

and then quote james baldwin there's never a time in the future in which we will work our salvation. the challenges, the moment, the time is, always. now there were people in san francisco who said, well who are you to run for district attorney? why did you feel it was maybe necessary for you to jump in and run for attorney? i'm sorry for district attorney of san francisco, so i. in 2003 decided to run for district attorney of san francisco and challenge an incumbent who comes from an old political family in san francisco. he had been in office for two terms his nickname is k.o. because he was known as being a boxer who knocked people out and i decided to run because i thought that i could do the job better. people said to me, well, you know, nobody like you has ever done this before. they're not going to be ready for that or, oh, you're too young. why don't you wait some time? or, oh it's not your turn. people would say, oh, it's going to be so difficult as though we run away from hard work and and i didn't listen and i was all excited and then i was sitting in a room waiting for my

part of the book is really a confrontation with our incubus city to to witness and to stay with james baldwin always talks about we must try to bear it and and part of the american logic might be that we're not very good at trying to bear it. you walk through walk us through just his diligence when he gets out of prison in terms of which first trying to get recompense is that he goes to magistrates, he goes to try and get a haircut to clean up he goes to try and get a job as a farmhand. so there's this real for a person who comes out of prison and is disorient that in all of the ways having spent went in that was it 1515 right it comes out five years later the town has changed. he's lost most of his and yet he has this kind of deliberateness about trying to build life as a citizen, as compere located as that word can be, he's trying to do right by being a citizen and one of the axis to say i want to be paid for my labor. and he goes through all of these process, these. and so it's amazing in the book to have you juxtapose that diligence against this larger racist narrative of it's either it's

how can we sort of center that within medicine so that sort of so it's inspired a little bit by james baldwin but also by the idea of mental illness being unseen, but but obviously very important for us to sort of be faced him and i have to say i love title because i saw it on on multiple levels of, you know, the unseen in the way you were talking about it. but it's i mean, just on it, you can think about it on a societal level, can think about it on an individual. so i thought it was a great title and i thought the the subtitle did a good job in clarifying what it is we're talking about here. yeah, you know, it's funny, just off off the cuff here. so, you know, book titles. both book titles sort of came to me when i was in after taking a shower. i guess it's something, you know, the shower is must be to help your body. but i there's something about the mind, too. i'm all about this old body thing, right? and so it just is there's a certain certain clarity that kind of guide from into one day and they both just kind of make sense i think i really appreciate your insights on that. yeah. you ot

i learned from james baldwin back in the 1960's he said that we will be free when a black man can propose marriage to a white woman and she can say no. [laughter] lucas: we are going to draw a lesson for ourselves on that? bob: to the answer about integration, i just think one of our authors in the book, job butler, uses the word homofly. it's we come together because we have mutual interests. because the opposite is -- i argue of segregation is desegregation. i want to know not only are you not my -- are you my color, i want to know are you my kind. that's the basis from which we should establish friendships. is are you my kind. do we have that in common. rather than artificially saying well, if it's all white folks and black come together, this, and white folks, i don't want to be around. and black folks i don't want to be around. lucas: question in the back. thank you. >> my name is bob, i teach at george washington law school. i'm attracted to the narrative that you are putting out. in fact i heard it for the longest time from my father who was a world war ii veteran who, unfortunatel

powerful about the moment, and it's a complex one, and there's this line in many thousands gone by james baldwinsh my face blank in order to wash away your guilt. i have to leave the particularity of who i am at the door as a precondition for my entree into the room. but what kamala harris's campaign does, it seems to me, it suggests, maybe i'm projecting, i don't know, is that i'm not leaving the specificity of who i am. i'm bringing the fullness of who i am in the room. being my full self without having to wash myself blank in order to make folk comfortable. and that is a shift, i think. >> and that's the joy piece. that's how i hear the joy piece. >> exactly. laugh my full-belly laugh. >> she got the whole country laughing at him. i think we call that a last laugh. oh, my god. i feel like we need another hour. can we pick this up again? kimberly atkins stohr and eddie glaude, thank you for spending time with us. just ahead for us as the ex-president continues to claim that we're experiencing a crime wave there are some new numbers we need to tell you about. that's next. u about. at's next. yo

it is a whole wide world out there to them a lot more interesting than the subtleties of james baldwin'srom having your own on you to not for the whole 90 minutes in class. but, you know, you kind of get used to it. >> reporter: they understand the reason for the ban, they say, but wish for more autonomy. >> they can be distractions but i feel like there are certain times where you should be able to use them. >> if you've done your work, you aren't in a rush. >> what if an emergency happened? what if somebody texts me about something important. >> i feel like being completely against it you should try to integrate it, not just completely shut it down. >> reporter: students who resist the changes can get creative. >> i have had students try to turn in phones that don't work. >> i have had multiple students turn in a fake phone. >> reporter: their teachers say they wish they focused some of that creative effort into their classwork instead. >> i feel like i have been able to build more meaningful relationships because i have their attention more. >> reporter: with students better focused,