Between the World and Me

all right my name is Ted ham I'm the chair of journalism here at st. Joseph's College I want to welcome you to the College this next year will be our 100th anniversary so give it up please it's [Applause] clearly one of the most anticipated excited events that we've had in that century and I just want to say very very quickly that one of the great things about Brooklyn is that one day you can be a delivery man in Park Slope and before you know it you are you can become a world-famous author and that's what you have here tonight and it's my pleasure to bring up Jessica Stockton bagnolo the co-owner of greenlight bookstore who's going to introduce tonight's event Jessica good evening everyone I'm Jessica Stockton vignola as Ted said and we are so pleased tonight to be hosting Donna huzi coats in Brooklyn to present his new book between no other means he's gonna be speaking tonight with James Bennett of the Atlantic so you're in for an excellent evening we are so grateful for this partnership with st. Joseph's College which allows us to bring you these events in the Brooklyn Voices series in this beautiful space that has a lot more seating capacity than we do in our bookstore on Fulton Street we've had a great fall season already this year with Jonathan Franzen and Patti Smith and we're looking forward to some more great events this fall we have musician Kristen Hirsch of throwing muses to talk about her memoir of a chestnut on October 21 and the creators of the podcast a novel welcome to night Vale on November 12 you can find all the event details and ticket information on our website at green light bookstore calm so before I turn the stage over to the speakers just a few little housekeeping things first please silence your cell phone or other electronic devices and note that there's no photography during the event if you purchase a ticket to this event you should already have received your copy of between the world and me additional copies as well as other titles by coats are available for sale at the greenlight table throughout the evening there's no book signing tonight but all copies of between the world and me have been pre signed by Tana huzi coats please also note that some index cards were passed around before we started if you have a question that you'd like to have coats answer in the Q&A please write it on the card we're going to be collecting those and James Bennett will select some questions to be answered toward the end of the event if you didn't get an index card and you'd like one just wave your hand and someone from green light will bring you a card we'll collect those a little later in the evening please also note that this event is being recorded by c-span and brick TV as well as live stream to st. Joseph's students here on campus now let me introduce tonight's speakers I actually had this whole great introduction written and tana huzi Coates is like no you're not allowed to say that so here's what I'm left to it our interview of this evening is James Bennett who's the president and editor-in-chief of the Atlantic he'll be speaking with Donna huzi Coates who is a national correspondent for the Atlantic he's the author of between the world and me which he's recently received a MacArthur Fellowship the book has been recently nominated for a National Book Award and we just found out this evening the book just won the Kirkus Prize tonight so for the rest leave me I'm gonna let the Tata housing speak for himself so please join me in welcoming to the stage James Bennett and Tana Hosie coats [Music] [Music] hello everybody Thank You Jessica Thank You Ted Thank You st. joseph´s and green light for convening us and thanks to all of you for being here and for your interest in Tennessee's work I think you wanted to make a statement as you passed a in this is my manifesto I wanted to talk about why I wrote between the world and me and today before I sign those 900 books between books I stopped at a book Court and I signed nearly 100 books that was awesome but David there was a young lady who's the book buyer there now who I remembered from 20 years ago as a 5 year old girl she worked in a bookstore called vertical books in DC and I used to be in your Dupont Circle and I worked there for one summer summer 1995 literally 20 years ago I was a horrible bookseller it's just you know awful awful book seller you can only love books so much and be a great book seller right because if you love books and you're deeply interested in books in fact be be interested in doing the things that books do you tend not to pay attention to things like shoplifters so you know I wasn't very good I did it that summer but you know I had a 30% discount at the store and I probably spent about 30% of my check on books you know just just buying buying books and so you know I was so good to see Sophie that's the young lady's name you know I went upstairs and I was looking through some some some of you know just the books that they had there and I saw it this book which is so important to me and it's a book of poetry by this woman our Karlin for Shane it's called the country between us and it's a book of poetry i read all right Jesus I might have been 18 years old you know I just got in the Howard and I had been surrounded by this great immunity and kerala for say is such a beautiful beautiful writer and she wrote in such a way that I didn't understand everything that she was saying but the pain that angst and I have to say the violence now reminded me of something that I that I just so deeply deeply identified with and she wrote in such a way then I would read a poetry and I would walk away and as I said I would not understand what she was saying but I would think about it you know and I would go to bed thinking about it's what I was saying other night James and I would wake up thinking about it maybe weeks later and even if I didn't understand what she was writing about I would think about it I just I'm in trouble you guys by just reading a quick poem of hers because I was just so moved and I tell you this is all gonna make sense in one second I promised you I'm not just taking you through it so counter flushes she um and also I got to take any chance I can advocate for poetry by the way which I think this not having in the world I was joking about if I could run it j-school I wouldn't make everybody write poetry for the first year just to you know master the art of writing decent sentences writing powerful sentences writing you know really pungent sentences kind of wish that she spent as a young person you know time in Central America and in Eastern Europe I had a period in time where you know the world was being turned upside down and this is just a husband when I was teaching at MIT and writing I would assign this to my essay class just so they could understand sentences this is called the kernel it's about her encounter with an unnamed military official in an unnamed Central American country what you have heard is true I was in his house his wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar his daughter filed her nails his son went out for the night there were daily papers pet dogs a pistol on the cushion beside him the moon swung bare on its black court over the house on the television was a car show it was in English broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or to cut his hands to lace or the window they were gratings like those in liquor stores we had dinner rack of lamb good wine a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid the maid bought green mangoes salt a type of bread I was asked how I enjoyed the country there was a brief commercial in Spanish his wife took everything away there was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern the parents said hello on the terrace the colonel told it to shut up and pushed himself from the table my friend said to me with his eyes say nothing the colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home he spilled many human ears on the table they were like dried peach halves there is no other way to say this he took one of them in his hands shook it in our faces dropped it into a water glass it came alive there I am tired of fooling around he said as for the rights of anyone tell your people they can go themselves he swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air something for your poetry no he said some of the ears were on the ground and caught this scrap of his voice some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground so I read this and I'm I I always thought about like the brutality of that poem and Aniyah always stuck with me among all of the imagery and all of the detail was there is no other way to say this there was no kind way there was no hopeful way there is no way to make people feel good about themselves at the end of the story to say this and when I got a diploma what I got in a colorful Shaye's poetry in general and what I got out of my entire studying poetry it is that you know it is the job of the writer to say things in truthful and indirect ways and in ways that maybe leave us in puzzling places in ways that maybe you know leave us despairing sometimes in ways that make us sad sometimes one of the most you know I probably you know pointed questions I get about the book and one one of the things that people raise about the book all the time is that you know he's not hopeful enough that it does not inspire black people that does not leave black people with the way out with a way forward and maybe it doesn't you know I think I would have an argue about that but let's just leave it there maybe it doesn't but you know I wanted to talk to you guys about it because I wanted to talk about the defense of writing and the defense of literature and the defense of art and the right to create an act the right to create a piece of art certainly out of the desire to reflect reality strictly out of the desire to show something to portray one's experience in the most beautiful way you know you possibly can and I just think you know the desire to write something that makes people feel good at the end of the day desire to write something that that that that is a bedtime story the desire to give you something that allows you to tuck your children in at night even the desire to write something that you know inspires people to be better people that as a strict motivation it's so far away from why I wrote this book you know I wrote this book to creator you know a beautiful work of art that says something that represented you know a particular time I was in that represented something about my relationship to my son and ultimately that represented something about my relationship to my country I don't know why I felt moved to tell you that tonight but I did so we can proceed with the program [Applause] sort of feel like you covered everything [Laughter] so we're gonna ask a few questions and then as Jessica said ask some of your questions once the cards come up some way to explore a couple of the themes from the book and maybe ask you to talk about yourself a little bit more and the theme I thought we ought to start with is the one that you just a vote yeah and part with that which is the theme of violence and if you wouldn't mind reading a bit of your own work to start us off I'll kind of pick up with that passage sure this is the beginning of I guess my political consciousness and I am about it in this past about 12 or 13 years old and I am becoming aware of that some of the troubles that I experienced in my neighborhood are somehow tied to you know greater conflicts and greater problems in the country I live in and I've been told that all my life I have been told that all my life but I'm beginning to feel and I'm beginning to see it for myself and not just see it as something my parents tell me now the questions began burning in me the materials for research were all around me in the form of books assembled by your grandfather I'm addressing my son here he was then working at Howard University as a research librarian and the Moreland Spingarn Research Center one of the largest collections of Africana in the world your grandfather loved books and loves them to this day and they were all over the house books about black people by black people for black people spilling off shelves and out of the living room boxed up in the basement dad had been a local captain and the Black Panther Party I read through all of dads books about the Panthers and his stash of old party newspapers I was attracted to their guns because the guns seemed honest the guns seemed to address this country which invented the streets that secured them with despotic police in its primary language violence and I compared the Panthers to the heroes given to me by the school's men and women who struck me as ridiculous and contrary to everything I knew every February my classmates and I were herded into assemblies for a ritual review of the civil rights movement our teachers urged us toward the example of freedom marches Freedom Riders and freedom summers and it seemed that the month could not pass without a series of films dedicated to the glories of being beaten on camera the black people in these films seem to love the worst things in life love the dogs that rent their children apart the tear gas that clawed it their lungs the fire hoses they tore off their clothes and tumbled them into the streets they seemed to love the men who raped them the women who cursed them love the children who spat on them the terrorists who bombed them why are they showing this to us why well why were only our heroes nonviolent I speak not of the morality of non-violence but in this sense that blacks are in a special need of this morality back then all I could do was imagine these freedom lovers about what I knew which is to say I measured them against children pulling out in 7-eleven parking lots against parents wielding extension cords and yeah what's up now I judged them against the country I knew which had acquired the land through murder and tamed it under slavery against the country whose armies found fanned out across the world to extend their Dominion the world the real one was civilization secured and ruled by savage means how could the school's valorize men and women whose value society actively scorned how could they send us out into the streets of Baltimore knowing all they knew and then speak of non-violence um actually give up maybe you should give a little context for this you write a lot about the sources of that violence in the book and I think this is a realization you came to later that that is driven by fear right right well you know I think in our current political dialogue there is a separation between what people call police violence which were very concerned about right now and what people call as far as I'm concerned by the wrong name but black on black violence and the notion that these two things are somehow separate from each other and when I wrote between the world and me and frankly when I wrote my previous book I you know I had no fear of talking about the violence that that was around me and in my neighborhood with people you know considered to be black on black violence that God is a part of it that's that's a portion of the oppression I think when people look at african-americans in the neighborhood there is a way in which they look at our mannerisms the way we walk the way we talk the way we pose some practices the violence itself and what they see is rage and what they see is this need to express power they see machismo and that's probably what I saw as a young person too but by the time I was older and by the time I could look at young boys at about the age I was you know I could see something else and what I saw was fear and the violence I talked about the violence that that is an enabler is the product of that fear and when I rode between the world I mean I was like really really important to say I'm it's really important to alter this narrative of rage which is in itself the specter of white fear by the way that that sort of ambition of love with black people being angry it is the shadow of white fear but I was concerned with black fit because I think when you do that you you can soften the people you know we begin to have humanity then you know we are just so often portrayed is like you know and vulnerable you know not being scared not not really you know anybody else would have you know who lived in those sorts of neighborhoods but we weren't afraid we are afraid and I just thought that was really really important the same it's a pretty powerful thing you say that as a child when you were shepherded into these movies that the heroes of the civil rights movement struck you as as ridiculous yeah I don't know if you include King in that list or not at the time I did at the time how do you think about them now um I think of them as supremely heroic no I think of them as incredibly heroic I think of them as having access to a kind of morality that that I don't and I think a lot of that is because I don't have a routing in the church and so even even the logic of it I can't I think like for instance I think a lot of it is rooted in the belief and their afterlife which I don't I don't share I think a lot of it is rooted in the notion of a supreme god of justice you know in law and morality which I don't particularly share but I think in spite of that you know you know I you can't watch the end of the Selma campaign and and see dr. King you know give that how long not lost we did not be terribly terribly moved you can't watch the last speech he gave you know before he would die the next day when he is sick and so tired or literally falling away from the microphone you know it is the mountaintop speech and not be terribly terribly moved these are people who every you know willingly day in and day out gave of their bodies you know I mean put their lives you know which is to my mind all you have put their lives on the line you know for a world that they would not necessarily see at the same time I think um whereas the broader country feels celebratory about that I you know you want talking about rage I feel incredible anger at that because in my mind it never should have had to happen when I see you know President Obama this is not like President Obama so it's not you know anything personal about him but when I see the president you know going to Selma you know in commemorating Bloody Sunday I just it bothers me because I feel like I had you know I had the president had the government been doing its job at that time Bloody Sunday would never have been necessary it never should have happened in the first place Martin Luther King was killed and the Voting Rights Act the Civil Rights Act the housing at those things don't make it okay to he was killed for me I don't feel that that his death is redeemed by those things and so it is not even so much to sacrifice it is not even so much the ethic of non-violence which I get it's not so much the tactic in our attire which I get now but it is the celebration of it by people who don't necessarily even embrace those values themselves and you know I find that bothersome I do you think about the relationship between violence and political progress generally American history I mean Baldwin yeah we're talking about James Baldwin last night and one of the things he wrote I think in the far next time is that blacks were that that heroism and violence were generally linked in American history except yeah that's it that's it well I think um it's colorful say there's no other way to say this I don't think there's really you can point to political progress in terms of black people without looking at violence now they're people who say that in the kind who have said that in the past and a kind of you know Eldridge Cleaver s braggadocio so the way I don't mean that in fact I think it's a great tragedy I mean it's not even just true black you maybe that's true you know any state anywhere but I mean it is not you know through his I you know say in a book through ice cream socials and picnics that emancipation for African Americans in this country came 600,000 people died it was through great violence and part of the way that war was won once it got really really crucial was by listing former slaves to do great violence against you know slave masters that that and backwards and the other way to that's how he managed to patient came there's one way of looking at the civil rights movement that says you know that focuses in on a protest and I think the protests are really really important but you can't really separate the history of civil rights movement from World War two and from you know Americans seeing racism taking to its most lethal ends you can't separate it from the Cold War you know you can't separate the Freedom Rides from bobby kennedy you know watching the Freedom Rides I'm saying you know we're out here talking about democracy this embarrasses us you know this has to get dealt with you know and the focused on the civil rights movement you know knew that and so I don't take any joy like out of this but it's hard for me to see moment of political progress for african-americans in this country and to separate them from violence and again I don't mean an inny sort of heroic or bragging you know practical CEO and anything like that at all but violence is part of politics I think so in in that context how do you understand the violence that we saw in Baltimore and Ferguson over the course the last year oh I don't know yet I don't know yet I don't want to say this because I don't know it to be true but I think it is possible I think it's possible that the violence is part of why those officers got you know ended up being prosecuted I think that that's possible you know we know very much that you know there's a common myth that for instance the riots that happened in the 1960s resulted in nothing and we know very much that Lyndon Johnson when he passed the house now he talks about the riots you know there is political action that that that results from from that sort of thing that doesn't make rioting a good thing you know any more than it makes you know climate change a good thing anyone it makes hunger a good thing you know rioting is something that happens when you put people under you know enormous political pressure or when your team doesn't win the national championship you know I mean when they fill themselves when they fill up their backs up against the wall and if you shoot at states often respond to that again it does not make riding a good thing it's a statement of fact and not not a statement of values and so if I were out there you know I certainly would not urge anybody that you know to take to the streets or to burn any sort of you know see what to do any sort of violence just you know on a moral level I don't think it's correct I don't think the destruction of other people's stuff is Africa right I don't they can never be justified I don't think you know the potential for the loss of life can ever be correct you know and no matter what the system does you as an individual have a moral responsibility to deal with that at the same time at the same time when I hear people who have power you know who have some amount of stake in the kind of that has regularly characterized Baltimore from the time I was a child and before that stand up in front of podiums and dismiss people with thugs or whatever it's just again it bothers me it greatly greatly bothers me you know so there's that we're still in it though you know I'll have more you know develop notions once we're out of it but we're still in it all right well this is probably a question to get it your method as a writer yes a little bit shifting gears I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about if you would about the how you came to write this book you said to an interviewer over the summer that you couldn't one of the wonderful things in this book if you haven't read it yet is it's partly the the story of your becoming conscious as you put it in stages I'm growing up and then at Howard and then after that but despite all of your reading and everything all your thinking and reporting you said that as of 2007-2008 you would not have written this book and that you were radicalized five years after that so what is it that happened that brought it about well you know I had I was very fortunate to be hired by James Bennett to work at the other things that's not what I was product but this is real I mean this is actually this is actually true it was another officiate for that answer when I was hired it was an age you know I began writing for a magazine I think had that was interested in ideas and was interested in big notions and you know putting its footprint on things and said a night that allowed me to expand how I thought about things the second thing is my primary job was to you know fill a blog space with thoughts and notions and I took that as an excuse to go back and study some things and to read some things and then to write about what I was reading and people would come and they would read the stuff that I was writing and then they would comment on it they would say you should read this you should check out that I had always been interested in history but probably the past seven years a period of seven years had been you know particularly intense for me for the amount of reading I did and um african-americans who are in public and are somehow affiliated with politics carry this burden of having to be uplifting you know having to say something positive to the youth in the most thin possible way of that definition by the way historians have no such burden you know that's not how historians it judge they write their work and as sad as it is most people don't read it anyway so they just write you know I don't care it's not have any impact anyway you know but she got fries though you know and I obviously I was you know I always say this but it's like people say that you know my work is hopeless my work is pessimistic you should go spend some time in the history department yeah I was back there when I was signing those books I was listening to I had on an audiobook with me and I'm going through but I still I'm a finished soon I'm only a few chapters out but Barbara Tishman is a distant mirror and it's a history of the of the 14th century in Europe you know we're talking about the Black Death and some 100 Years War some boats schism in the church weotot me you you think you know what's happening on the streets of Baltimore Sun you we talk about people taking petty offense and then challenging folks to joust duels with battle axes I mean is what these guys are they literally would have gang fights like you get 50 of your boys your biggest Nobles and I get 50 of my boys and we're gonna meet out here we're gonna do this that mean they they talk they call the champions right that's or things they have 50 of your best champ you know they put it in this aisle but it's really the same thing it's no different that you stepped on my sneakers or you said this to my grandma it's the same sort of language this is not uplifting material what is deeply enlightening material its value don't you feel like you know more about the world and I not in and of itself is a beautiful thing because for me you know and then again maybe this is the absence of religion I um accept it and I have accepted that you know my life is precious you know all life is precious can be snuffed out at any moment and then that will be it and the time that I have here you know I just want to understand as much as I can you know and so to understand it is for me and in and of itself a gift but I had this great period at the Atlantic way you know I just spent a lot of time trying to understand things and that put me in a difficult position when it came time there right because it's like again you don't have any certain prominence you're expected to save certain things but the people in the back of my head talk very very differently about the world you know and they talk very very differently about you know the fate of what you know I just you know I make statement sometimes like I'll say you know listen I have some doubts so I would not be surprised if you know white supremacy was with this country you know for the entirety of its lifespan if people said oh my god Horus how can you say that and I say listen go poll 100 historians who study race and white supremacy is gonna tax them ask them if they would be surprised by that I'm living in France right now and France has been dogged by anti-semitism for what thousand years or something like that you know what sort of expectation is this for me cuz I'm taking too long oh no those that it could come to the questions okay so I think that it just changes your angle you know I got something out of the amount of radicalizes right it's just I think it's switched my orientation quite a bit do you think we can I mean yeah if thanks for talking about the way you work cuz it is it is I think really better than any writer I know you do this unbelievable job of connecting what's happening today to what's happened over a long period of time and you're traveling back and forth constantly between narratives what we see around us what you see around us and and it's links to the recent past and the deep past but from your study of history or you you say there's lots of reasons a lot of it is hopeless but do you see areas where we have managed to escape or overcome work yes I mean you know I think um obviously 50 years ago we could not have had an african-american president I think what that means is we have we are prepared to have a society we end with individual african-americans through some mix of hard work talent and a lot of luck achieve great things I think we're okay with that right now that is our progress we obviously don't have enslavement anymore that's gone but that mean this goes back to your earlier question when you think about how did we get there you know I see people being killed you know and so it is like even like whatever you know sort of progress is the shadow attack is it's great violence and what does that mean about our fate I mean what does that mean about societies in general forget just America what does that mean about human societies period I don't know all right thank you for these so go to the audience questions the first one's a good one I think do you think between the world and me has had a bigger impact on the world or on your son do you wish it were the other way around impact on my son the book is not it's not like I mean the book is written as a ladder to him but nothing it is actually new to him yeah me everything in here is pretty much stuff that I've said to him already so it had no impact on him then he tried the book several times but it's just okay daddy rights okay what about that comic book though your back is had on the world I do something that fit for that you did a little bit of this at the top but do you have any advice for students and young people who want to do what you do yes yes yes read read read write read rinse repeat that's the job that really is the job and live you know just go out go out into the world and live but I think um I think you should probably shouldn't think too much about getting published I mean if you get published that's great it's a lot easier now think a lot about getting better avoid any trappings of glamour avoid any ambition towards glamour get adjusted to the loneliness and the misery and the horribleness are sitting by yourself and facing a blank page and if you can adjust yourself to that there are all sorts of beautiful things that will come after a long time after but they will come they say they will come but I think you really have to adjust yourself to this sort of almost Spartan existence of being a writer you know yeah I think I'm probably not the best friend I could be you know largely you know because of where my commitments are and you'll find yourself having to sacrifice you know that I think don't drink too much don't I mean this is real this is real me it's not moral advice this is because writing is a job it's a thing that has to get done and if you are out you know till 2:00 in the morning and you're not getting up till 2:00 and aft and afternoon you've lost time for practicing your craft don't get on drugs avoid drugs probably again it's not it's not a moral argument I mean but the sight of your mind the space of your mind is actually very very important when you're writing now if you want to you know do a bunch of drugs and drink you know go do something else and that's fine but if you're gonna be a writer you know like your mind and your clarity and your vision is so so important for me I actually found again this is this sounds overly moral but I actually found monogamy and having a child at a very young age to be crucial it routed me and disciplined me and put me in a place I could not go out and do some of the things that people my age we're not you know my son was born I was 24 um I could not go out and do you know some of the things that a lot of you know my friends and their 20s we're doing but that actually meant that I had more time to write there's nothing else to do you know kids taking a nap what are you gonna do you gotta write you know I think like committing yourself to it you know in committing yourself to the clarity of it I think is hugely important I'm trying to extract it and there are a number of questions on similar themes so in a number of them past versions of this particular question which is in searching quotes in the internet I found a quote by you that says but race is the child of racism the father it's actually from the book mm-hmm can you please elaborate more on that because I try to give it my own meaning but I couldn't show it gosh these are pretty yeah you were remark how simple this actually is when you see is a great historian by the name of Barbra fields who wrote this book called Racecraft and she you know I think lays it out pretty well and and you know again this was one of the books that helped clarify things for me okay so um Americans generally believe that the problem in terms of racism in this country is that you have a few or several different disparate groups who do not get along and one of those groups has more power than than the other and that if we could just get the groups to get along everything will be okay this is the theory of race and its benevolent theory right here's how we talk about you know it's in our vocabulary racial relations for instance as though there's a you know race here race in if we can improve relations between them everything will be okay racial discrimination you know there's a race of people over here if we could just stop doing certain things to that specific race of people everything would be okay and so the racism comes after okay the racism exists and you're doing something to you know a race of people and that act is racism but the race itself already exists it's a real thing it's a demonstrable thing it's an obvious thing that is built on a notion the black people themselves are a race of people that come out of Africa and white people themselves are a race of people that come out of Europe in Asians Americans are a race of people that come out of Asia and Native Americans are a race of people that you know have lived here you know for a long time let's say and increasingly that Hispanics and Latinos are a race of people that somehow originated I don't know in the past 50 years or so I don't it just happened they just became a race we got a race now there's another race and if all these races could get along then we could somehow fulfill the promise of a matter that that actually is the problem that's the notion that dead death that in fact it race is the parent and racism results because these groups can't you know get along with each other one group keeps doing something to another group or whatever but that's not how history actually works there is no coherent a definition of race be that white be that black be that Latino asian-american however that you can maintain across time and geography and this is easily demonstrable okay I am considered a black person right here right if I were in Louisiana and say 1750 I might not be considered that if I were living in New Orleans if I were in Brazil I might check some whole other block if I were living in apartheid South Africa I might check college for instance we know that when Irish people came to this country when people came from Italy to this country Jewish people came to this country we know that they were viewed in varying degrees as being white they certainly weren't immediately accepted as white we know this we know there was a political process but which suddenly these groups of people became white but it wasn't their mere arrival and everything was okay in fact we even know that different quote-unquote races of people by which I mean you know some people having a darker darker skin and hailing from sub-saharan Africa have actually been in interaction with people who have fair skin and living your foot for some time throughout our history and we know that the relationship has not always been the relationship that that it was right now we know that for instance you know during the state of the 14th century to 15th century the primary threat at least in the mind of quote-unquote Europeans and even now that word is wrong was in fact the Turks or Muslims and he constructed themselves as being part of Christendom and we know that in Africa you know suddenly you know if you were a member of ethnic group you did not consider yourself black there was no to think of yourself as a black boys part of a racist this is a modern invention and when it begins to happen it's when you see a need in the Western Hemisphere for labor and for folks to be carried across you know oceans so that they can label on the behalf of other folks and there is a need to justify that labor and you can literally see this you know you read Edna Morgan's American slavery of American freedom you can see the laws literally changing you can see the first group of African slaves enslaved Africans coming to this country in 1619 in the early 17th century and actually intermixing with indentured servants in a marrying in fact having kids together doing what human beings you know do and you know they're really being no laws against sister you know people not looking at them thinking that's an abomination all of that came later and it came later because certain laws were passed so that you could maximize the amount of enslaved labor that you could possibly have there is no reason why one drop is nothing biological about a one drop rule at all nothing that rule comes out of the notion of having as many enslaved people as possible so what I'm trying to get you guys is that it was an actual process it was a done thing this is not the Word of God this is not even science this is a decision that was made this was literally laws that were passed policy made to decide who's black and who was a black man Plessy vs. Ferguson plus it was like James Bennett's complexion but he had some distant African you know I said somewhere in there you know and literally in the case of guy rights you know what listen I'm not here to figure out whether this dude is black or not you know it's not really what was up cuz he couldn't I mean there's no coherent definition of it if someone United Stated in that way you get that we made this world and it's wrong with that is that mean that means you have some responsibility and even in a bill and a ability and ability to unmake the world to make it different it really is on us you know this is not some curse that somebody else gave us we did this so I think it's like really important to realize that so that you know is a long way of saying where's the graces of the child of racism not the father here's a short and very interesting question I think how if at all would this book have been different if you had a daughter that's impossible to say or an actual yeah I mean I had 15 years with Samari and I smile reflects into 15 years with Samar I don't have a daughter I can't no I can't no now that you're living in Paris are you considering writing about race relations there now that we're very far from its role as a haven for black Americans maybe nor reflect on that it's not so great for minorities these days very few places in the world that are great for minorities who knows that's part of the definition of a minority you know unless it's an oppressive minority until you can you have that sometimes too but in general in a quote/unquote democracy ten things tend not to be all that great for minorities so just a word on this I like France I like Paris I like baguettes I like wine I like cheese I love Paris like I love New York you know and I do love New York do I love New York because I think there's no racism in New York no you know I love doing this I love the West Village because I love Brooklyn in the eyes that's why I cuz I love Harlem that's why I love New York and it's no different when parents Paris is just a place it's not um an escape or at least it's not an escape in that sense it is different in the sense that when I speak my bad French people recognize me as American and the first thing they see is dumb American you know Anissa takes precedence you know in their mind at least over you know my skin color my skin color by the way my skin colors in African America and not other you know Africans who you know or descendants of Africans who lived and speak French and you know perfectly fluently my skin colors as an African American so it is in fact a different feeling but I think on one hand the need to say like well France is less racist than America and on the other hand the need to say what in fact France is actually much more racist but it does XYZ said I think you're in the wrong game I think that's that's s a fool's errand from jump I think the thing to do is try to observe what the society is actually doing you know use it as as a standard of itself I don't like observe America and think about racism in America you know in in comparison really to other places and that's a--that's not really my goal I'm trying to see the country in and of itself and you know I would expect to do the same thing with France although you know it's impossible to avoid making some comparisons but I hope those comparisons will not be you know as mean as you know a French people do racism like this and Americans do race like this I hope to get something a little deeper than that you know there's not a single question in here about comic books I was leaving that to you guys I assumed somebody was nasty Black Panther but it's not here staying overseas for a second than this questioner says that Shearer he's an immigrant from Africa how can we continue to make genuine solidarity between african-american community and African communities I don't know I'm gonna disappoint on that that question I'm not sure I have you know spent my time studying like really really specific things the African American experience in this country is broth is textured is multiple layered and it is very very hard to have any sort of general expertise in it you know you can have some sort of knowledge and specific areas you start talking about the Diaspora you know and it becomes even that much harder you know so the question like I immediately go to so what do we mean by Africans do we meet you know solidarity with Ethiopians we mean solidarity with South Africans with Senegalese with Ghanaians different you know Ghana has this program now where African Americans can go there and get citizenship does that you know mean something different is there some sort of different relationship there can we generalize it in that broad sort of way that's not to insult the question at all you know it's a decent question but I think it's one that you know requires study will requires study from me you know require more than I know right now to actually you know intelligently answer all right this questioner says not sure if you know the history of this neighborhood Fort Greene asked Spike Lee but many poor people of color were displaced to make this area beautiful and safe enough for quote us unquote how can we respond how do you to gentrification by advocating for reparations it's just a funny word to say black people have less wealth than white people I mean it's just I mean it that really is the bottom line it would not neighborly to change all the time in you know that you know makeup and ethnic makeup the problem is black people don't really have the same level of self-determination to decide whether they want to stay and whether they want to leave and the reason why they don't is because you know and this is just you know the clearest example I can offer we have a huge huge wild gap in this country for every nickel of wealth that an African American family has a white family has a dollar 20 times the wealth what expectation should there be that folks can live where they want or can have the same so the choice about where they want to live as other folks when it's that big of a wealth gap you know I know that all sorts of programs affordable housing and all the things you know maybe making it easy for folks to buy homes etc but until you get to that root problem that huge wealth gap which is the result of policy which is not the result of magic which is not the result of science was its result about a particular kind of social science and social engineering but it is the result of decisions that we made when we built the middle class in this country that made this case before we made decisions about who was gonna benefit from the kind of social engineering we were going to practice to offer people the ability to build wealth through home loans this is a principal way you know we built down the middle a lot of middle class and we decided black people weren't a part of that and not only that individual black people were not going to be a part of that but whole blocks where black people moved would not be a part of that how would Harlem look if we hadn't have done that how about Fort Greene look if we hadn't have done that how a bed-stuy look if we hadn't have done that what would this city look like if African Americans had the same access to the social safety net when we made all those great reforms in the 40s and in the late 30s what would be the difference then who the world have looked like if we had not you know made a decision to only offer unionized labor to certain people what would the world look like what is the percentage of African Americans on the fire department right now I know they didn't make some efforts but at one point it was like some depressingly low number what would the world have looked like without that discrimination my argument ends as you know it's been out of late the data adds up and so when you start on the level of like looking at Fort Greene and saying you know what what the hell is going on here how come black folks can't hold hold doin anything here but see it was game set and match like 20 30 40 50 years ago you're too late you know you are in the fourth quarter with two minutes left and you're trying to you know win the game and you're on your own two yard line and you're saying why am I on my own two yard line with only two minutes left Missy that was a whole you know third quarter second quarter first quarter there was a game that happened before that if you start with the analysis right there you've missed it you've missed it and so you know I think like when we get to the point of talking about gentrification you know like you got to dig deep you have to go further back it didn't start here you know your expectation that certain folks will show it to this neighborhood decide they want to live here and that black folks will be able to have that same sort of deciding power given the past history of housing policy in this country makes no sense you know gentrification is is you know not so much lamentable as it is predictable ease is what will happen period some folks will have more choice about where they want to live other than others because that was our policy for so long in the 20th century to limit the ability of black people to have the sort of decisions that other folks in this country do so what it what I mean for green is predictable in that sense here's a here's maybe a tougher or pain question a good one maybe for you to address before New York audience about the book you mentioned firefighters a minute ago you wrote in your book that the firefighters who died at the Twin Towers were not human to you do you still feel that way no no I mean the book is you know almost like about how I felt at the time and um that that part of book comes after my friend Prince Jones has been killed so the prince was killed September of 2000 my son was born in August and that's you know just a huge thing that a book turns on my friends killed by a police officer police officer wasn't prosecuted wet and fired nothing happened it's just like whatever he was mistaken for some other suspected criminal who charges were never even brought against he was followed from the suburbs of Maryland into Washington DC out into Virginia and he was shot near yards from his fiancee's house his mother Mabel Jones you know as I detailed in a book had worked herself up from gray poverty was the child of sharecroppers gone off to college served in the Navy went to med school become a radiologist had done everything that you know you you're supposed to do in America to you know improve yourself and a child was just shot down they did nothing that you know nothing came of it if someone 9/11 happened that's all that great pageantry you know for the police for the firefighters and you know even the victims to be frank with you I just felt cold I had nothing for anyone and not even any any any victims at all I couldn't see them as human as I say in the book because what made their deaths any more worthy of commemoration than the death of Prince Jones I couldn't understand it surely they were victims of terrorism but my friend was a victim of a kind of terrorism that is as old as this country and there was nothing for him that was how I felt then one of the things that happens though is um you know you what you get older that's the first thing that happens and what are getting old is that you can explain your pain then you can explain why you feel a certain way but that don't make it right you know say it's like I can explain to you why riot happened right why riots happen but that doesn't make like burning a CVS down correct you know the New York Times published a series probably about three years after 9/11 and the series was specifically on the fire department and it sought to talk about like the decisions that happened that day and why folks you know went into the buildings because the fire department had you know just a level of casualties I was beyond even a police department and they did it in such a way every you know it wasn't like this big thing like firefighters it was this guys like Joe this guy right here with a wife with a kid you know I mean with you know people that loved him you know with people that hated him you know I came to regard the destruction of individual life as a tragedy and it does not matter how other people commemorate that you know my beef with other folks and how do you observe that has nothing to do with whether I can have some level of empathy with the destruction of individual life those are two separate things now I can talk about you know hypocrisy up up one side down the other I can talk about my pain one side down but it does not improve me did they not be able to see you know folks whose lives were taken from them as human yeah that was a process that that took my I certainly did not feel that way at the top there's the third so many good questions in here unfortunately I think I can ask one more and then we need to bring it to a close and this is maybe a good point and the number of people are asking about your sources of inspiration and and how you write and this question maybe brings this conversation full circle a little bit to where you started it some which comes which comes first when you sit down to write political intention or artistic intention art or they want in this nation artistic intention hmm artistic intention always it's not right about things that are not necessarily political you always want to write beautifully that's for me it makes me feel good about the world all right I think we'll leave it there Tennessee [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Film Archives

Views: 926

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: K8RRQQL4nyA

Length: 59min 25sec (3565 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 08 2019