Historian who works of the incident most recently on helping Education Program still present each historian and a guide a question and answer session toward the end. And if you think you might like other Program Sponsor please go to our website. Now enjoy the book breaks. Hello and welcome everyone to today, july 19, 2020s addition of the institutes new Digital Program book break. Our guest today is professor and will be talk about his book the condemnation. First for those of you who are new to the institute, we are the leading Nonprofit Organization dedicated to k12 history education, will also serve in the general public. Our mission is to help about the knowledge and understanding of American History to Educational Programs and resources such as a book breaks, the hamilton Education Program online, teacher seminars, and also an incredible access to thousands and thousands of pieces of primary source documents that are part of the guilder linderman Institute Collection part i am your moderator, when i am not here in book break and usually part of the hamilton Education Program team. And today im supported by our it support specialist and one of our great interns, Cameron Murray or it for you guys in her audience out there you will notice you are muted and your cameras are off. Theres nothing wrong this is just to make sure that everyone has a great time. Im sure todays discussion will generate many, many questions. So to make sure we will get as many questions answered, you just checked at the bottom of your screen. You will see that great little q a icon. Please go ahead and submit any questions you have there. They are monitoring the questions as they are being submitted and you can submit it anytime during the program. If you could, just let us know where you are writing from. We want to know where our audience is coming from. Alright, now for todays guest is professor Khalil Gibran muhammad. He is a professor of race and policy at the Harvard School in the institute for advanced studies. Hes also the former director of the Schomburg Center for research and black culture which is a division is a division of the new york public library. Its a world leading library and archive of global history. Before leaving the Schomburg Center professor Khalil Gibran muhammad wasnt professor at indiana university. Today will be speaking with him about his book, the condemnation of blackness. Race, crime, and the making of modern urban america. Professor its great to have you here on the program. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having a. You do great work trades host to kick off the conversation i just finished reading your book this morning. And it was an incredible read. It is a great work of history in its own right. But also touches upon so many important issues that we are dealing with as a nation today. Systemic racism, mass incarceration, policing, and the criminal Justice System. In one of the questions i have just to get started is interesting how you came to write the book. And especially in the. That you focus on in the progressive era, the end of the 19th an early 20th century. Many times just in general American History we kind of go from the civil war to the mid h century. And we leave out this huge. In American History. So please tell us a little bit how you came to focus on this period of American History. Guest sure thats a great question. Interest make a so many of the teachers who follow certainly appreciate all these chapters matter. Particularly the progressive era as we understand the modern american state so much of what the regulatory state is, and our contemporary moment was born out of the progressive era. Income taxes, the agencies that protect our food supply. And the basic infrastructure of the social welfare system has the truth in era. I was interested as a graduate student but particularly interested because when i started to understand what was the experience that africanamericans experience in the Justice System in the late 19th century outside of itself, i looked at the literature and it was mostly silent on black experiences. A lot was about european immigrants. A lot was very much about the settlement house experience. The jane addams is and so on and so forth. So there is this gaping hole. And i attempted to fill it. Thats kind of how i got into the progressive era. When you start the book and Something Else that is very relevant for us today is kind of the change in the weight race was being looked at from after the civil war from this biological perspective to a more sociological, cultural perspective. And the role of data and how that started to come into make this idea of criminalizing being black. Can you talk a little bit about that . And especially the book i believe in chapter two, 1896 hoffman race traits. And how that started to play a greater role at the end of the h century. Yeah. So many ways the condemnation of blackness is kind of a big complicated story. Because it sets out to tell an origin story. At the same time it is tracking carious from the period after slaverys when you see the emergence of black codes permissive the development of conflict leasing is most essentially when the criminal Justice System in the south attempts to re enslave and seize the 13h amendment slavery loopholes. Basic notion you could no longer simply take advantage of black people by enslavement. But she could take advantage of you criminalize them. That is the story of the late 1h century, jim crow right up to the civil rights movement. Right in the way, william, you described how people think about these histories. But it turns out that there is a separate trajectory that in many ways is lesserknown to be sure. But also perhaps more revealing for mass incarceration its outside the south in the story that doesnt so much involved rich mobs and braces sheriffs, its really about its about language and discourse as a national way of agreeing that its a dangerous criminal. In that story origin runs through a particular individual. You mention his name Frederick Hoffman who is a fascinating figure. A lot of people who know the history of public health, or more generally no statistics or occupational science or actuarial science no free to because about 50 years he was perhaps the nations leading to my demographer. He was a Single Authority he kind of cut his teeth when most american demographers were just Getting Started just seeing emerging trends in statistical data, particularly around health and mortality. So how does data tell us something that is much more relevant to our temporary time with lynch mobs leasing dont tell us. The first thing you have to know about data is that its part of a political project. Its an expression of power. And as an artifact of complicated reality. It sort of a sliver of something. And Many Americans today think about data as a fact spray theres a fact that there are so many people in prison. Yes that is a fact. It is a fact that somata people are arrested annually in any number of cities. This is all true. But those facts are themselves born of political decisions we have made about where we could deploy police. How many people do incarcerate. In other which you cant get to prison unless they decide the punishment is incarceration. So all of these facts we are quite comfortable in her normal born in the late 19th century for particular purpose. They were particular in the way that they were ordering racial hierarchies. So again we might recognize hers rampant white discriminate discriminate tory and multiple would not dispute that to this day. So when you were in alford can american and tried to to cast about to vote for republican the south you might be intimidated from showing up at the polls. You might actually defend your right to vote as a black man having won the right with the 1h amendment. I could talk back you might be arrested for anything. So that is just one small slice of the effort to criminalize black freedom which meant what . I met people would prosecuted for crimes and sometimes in a prison fine or in the traditional prison. That all produce data. In that data accumulated so much so that by the 1890 census was really the first census where an entire cohort of africanamericans were sort of measured against another imagine previous generation that people said well, black people have been enslaved, they are kind of dangerous damaged goods pretty cant really tell what theyre capable of because they had been enslaved in the proslavery people believed black people were not capable of selfgovernance. So no longer plays, theyre going to backslide in some kind of savagery. They say no, no, no its an abomination at degraded people as the people were enslaved they could rise to the occasion. Its kind of giving you a sense of debate that was happening. Said in the 1890 census was kind of like a perfect generational cohort. If you are 25 years old, youre born in 1865 for the end the civil war youd never experienced slavery. So for that young generation the idea was like hey, lets see how they are doing. How many babies are they having . What kind of diseases have they contracted . Are they getting arrested for crimes . Are they showing up in the prison statistics . Hoffman was one of them, german immigrants who came 1880s there were many others. And what did they find in the 1890 census . They found the africanamerican population in america at 12 but is overrepresented in the prisons at 30 . Now we can just stop there, william, we could end this whole conversation that was just the beginning of a national conversation. That was the opening fact for redefining the National Spirit around us that like wait a minute. If africanamericans are overrepresented in our nations prisons, one generation after slavery, they maybe this whole abolition then was a mistake . Maybe granting them full citizenship in the 14th amendment was a mistake. And it began whether or not black people could in fact truly be real citizens of the nation. And it began to close the ideological divide between the northerners and the southerners. It was exactly in this moment Confederate Monument started popping up in the late 1890s by the daughters of the confederacy. And guess what, are people did not stand in the way. See you begin to see that statistical anomaly, that Racial Disparity in prison statistics was not about the over incarceration or the criminalization or the racial terror or the conflict lease opportunities of the peoples whose children were taken from them to be sold at sheriffs auction the on the back plantation their parents have been freed from. All of those disclaimers, those footnotes come this asterix none of that was part of the conversation. And it was hoffman, who in this book that was published in 1896 is really the first person to popularize this idea. He was the person to use a kind of Malcolm Gladwell analogy. He was the outlier who helped to tip the conversation and the nation towards this kind of new understanding. Like yes, these people do have a special crime problems we are going to keep an eye on them. We are going to create discriminatory practices in policing. Are not going to give them the same access to things that is set in motion a whole lot of other things. And you mentioned early also that theres so much material about immigrant communities out there. And a lot of the studies back then show how there is an overrepresentation of new immigrants to the country because northern cities were filled with all these european immigrants. Activists identify within those communities that it was the condition they were living in as the cause of a lot of that. And as you call in the book americans in progress. It is how they were described. So there was a way to alleviate they could be brought into the fold. But then the same way of thinking was not applied to africanamericans. And especially during the great migration were africanamericans moving to northern cities. You have to do with them selves can you talk a little bit more about that and how there was this double standard . Its a really great part of the story. And it is one that would surprise most readers. All people sort of understand and can and appreciate theres eight northern racism story that is in the 19th century and Crime Statistics become a way for northerners to say oh well they are criminals. Maybe those are right didnt learn this in history class but they sort of understand this makes sense. This universal idea that all criminals get treated the same is completely historical record does not hold up. Essentially there is a version of the deserving and undeserving quote unquote criminal and the american past. And what happens is, people, demographers who were interested in making an argument against the presence of southern and Eastern European they supported it with a supported immigration restriction. That there were too many italians in america that they were polluting the nordic stock of the nation. They were too many poles and catholics. Too many russian jews. An oldfashioned backbone anglo saxon that were the pureblood of this nation. So there was a lot of racism directed towards southern Eastern Europeans. A lot of nativism in all of these ways. What occurs is, they becomes another parallel debate on how to understand Crime StatisticsCrime Statistics of the italians was used as a way of restricting italians. And everyone knows thats exactly what happens basically cut drastically at one conservative triumph of using Crime Statistics to say theres something wrong even with a class of europeans that are beneath the Northern European types. The late 19th century was the high watermark of pure racist science in america. I didnt leave too many people untouched by this. But progressives, liberals, overwhelmingly northerners, began to make an argument saying wait a minute. No absolutely not. The evidence of disproportionate criminal offending by the italian immigrants or the irish first generation american or the polish catholic is not an indication of something wrong with their blood or their bodies, it is in fact a representation or evidence of the class inequality for the economic inequality. The blinding effects of industrialization on immigrants who are here and being taken full advantage of and have to survive by participating in underground economies. Because the industrial economy is not assimilating or fully incorporating them. So you get this, this very strenuous argument in favor of a structural critique of american capitalism that immigrant Crime Statistics is evidence for class inequality. What condemnation shows is the same people, including Frederick Hoffman that argued port Lower East Side of new york city immigrants who were struggling and committing various kinds of underground economy crimes or killing it rather because they were short temper bird and pissed often alienated from society, Frederick Hoffman action made a progressive argument to say that the evidence of those homicides is evident of industrializations effect on people. Whereas hoffman and many others said the evidence of high rates of crime among africanamericans is evident. And i wanted to read a quote from the book of one particular person. It wasnt as if all of this happened without a counter argument. And so someone named him be ball didnt early prison study were he took on the argument that hoffman was making. And you can hear in his frustration in this that im going to share with you he is in fact taking on the same kind of statistical critique that many people today would argue about Crime Statistics. And so here is the quote. He says that figures in themselves mean nothing. They must be carefully analyzed and studied in connection with social conditions. Without taking into account sociological factors, statistics were insufficient basis upon which to draw conclusions and could easily become missed representations of reality. He wrote, there are three kinds of lives. White lies, black lies, and statistics. So i share that because it is not as if it went unchallenged. As aye prison inspector in philadelphia at the time did early on, w eb challenge Frederick Hoffman, ida b wells challenge Frederick Hoffman and the body of work that would justify lynching happening around the country. But the basic idea that statistics can be read or interpreted or used to justify just about anything which is the story of european immigrants. Progressive statistics say we are going to help people. The same progressives and other conservatives use black statistics today, we are going to isolate segregation. [inaudible] host this is actually perfectly into my next question those going to ask about africanamerican scholars as well. And in some ways a very difficult position they were put in in a way because they were both wanted everyone to recognize the situation these africanamerican communities but they were also almost trying to agree with some of the scholarship at the same time. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the work that they did to highlight these issues at that time . Guest we could spend the remaining time talking about because they deserve that much attention pray to i encourage everyone to learn more about them if you dont. They left quite a remarkable amount of documents behind that are great for teaching students about racial ideas in the late 19th 20th century. Really the First National black expert to come of age in the progressive era as an antiracist collar. Im kind of updating the way we might describe them for a contemporary moment. There is really no here in terms of his scholarly credentials in the body at work he produced, the first of which in terms of significant this conversation was the philadelphia negro published in 1998. The philadelphia negro really lays out an argument that basically says this. Black people are not a model. They are based on class and culture. The vast majority of people are hardworking, lawabiding respectable people are trying to achieve their hopes and dreams just like any other group of people in this country. But they stay, not one but two problems. They face the ravages of an unequal Economic System because it was the heir of Robert Behrens gilded age and the massive response to that which was eventually gave us the american welfare state. So he was a critic capitalism and made this argument that black people suffered under capitalism just like anyone els else. But where they had an added burden was that they also suffered from systemic racism from systemic anti blackness. In all of the ways that they recognized certain european populations also did or even asian or chinese immigrant populations did he also recognized the anti blackness was particularly form of american racism in the nation. And so he explained how the political economy of racism functioned in urban america at a time when most people really werent paying a whole lot of attention to what was happening to black people after they left the south. Philadelphias population like chicago, new york, in the 1890s turn of the 20th century was roughly 5 . And so most people had kind of armchair thoughts and opinions about black people. But no one really systematically studied them. And an incredible to boys explicitly critiqued bird basically said hoffman was during driveby sociology using sensitive data. He had no real understanding of the black experience and he could not be trusted more or less called mae weitzs supremacist scholar produces own research and evidence to try to counter hoffman. He was mostly ignored, hoffman was prayed, he was ignored. I am talking about not opinionated writers of the. I am talking about all of the academic journal literature dismissed his work for the most part and praise half in. Ivy wells precedes the boy in weighing in on the racism and White Supremacy because she loses Three Friends in active racial terror in her hometown of memphis tennessee pray by that time she was a journalist. She had a Printing Press. She called out the races who done this to her friends, burned her Printing Press downplayed she eventually lands in chicago and spends the rest of her life there working alongside white women as well as a black settlement house worker trying to basically create an infrastructure to support low income black migrant communitie communities. She also has the power of her pen as a mighty sword to talk about racism and call out the statistical laws that lynching was evidence of black criminality. She is the first person to write systematically that lynching was never really about the socalled threat of black men as racist. But in fact was a cover for the very kinds of racial terroristic acts that she lost her Three Friends in. In other words lynch mobs were there to discipline black people into their second class citizenship. It had nothing to do in her opinion. So her work stood as a powerful rebuttal of the white supremacist statistical lies told by people like hoffman and so many others but by and large they were ignored in social science. They were ignored in political circles, they were marginalized even within Settlement House Movements and white liberals. And in the book going on from the settlement houses and policing, you talk about philadelphia. You use philadelphia as the example of the work of settlement houses for immigrant communities versus the africanamerican community. The work of black churches in philadelphia at the time and also how the political system, the Mayors Office and how policing became more racist in philadelphia and ultimately leading in 1917 in 1918 to riots, race riots within philadelphia. And nationally across 22 cities. Can you talk a little bit about philadelphia and also how it fits the. Going into the 20s and 30s, how policing became also these two to six were starting to be questioned as well. Yes this is a part of the book, theres two books here. The first book is about how these ideas around statistics bloom and spread nationally and really change the conversation about what the meaning of black freedom is everywhere. The other part of the book, the one you are describing now uses philadelphia as a kind of single place to see up close how these ideas are circulating what they look like on the ground. Which then helps to explain something that happens produced significantly by the end of the story that i am telling. So in a nutshell, the Settlement House Movement essentially reinforce segregation. And im not telling that story really for the first time. But i am censoring it in a way that a lot of people have written about this thought is a really good middleclass progressive women who are doing right by poor people largely european immigrants. And they have people say would have blind spots. They didnt quite transcend the racism of the time periods of the did not always do for black people what they were willing to do for immigrants. I would say that story remains true, even still. Theres something more pernicious in the legacy. Because what they essentially do is they justify the segregated activities they are engaged in an ultimately the discrimination that they systematically support. Because they basically say immigrants are capable of changing their behavior with a little help. In ways that black people cant benefit from help so they help themselves. So what they do essentially is argue for crime prevention. In all of this external support to help immigrant communities become more middleclass, economically vibrant in ways that basically say we cant help black people. They have to get their crime problem together. Its kind of a lot like you will hear people say today, why a retirement black lives matter when black people kill each other . They need to fix that first. Until they sell that problem people cannot help them. But thats exactly the settlement house leaders did prayed they threw everything they could to say foreign born children from all parts of europe and they did very little to support black children in their own neighborhoods. They would support in the south. And so what that meant essentially is a settlement houses were not there for black people. And who was there for black people . Well it turns out not many people. It was more a more migrants came into these places like philadelphia by the great migration. A lot of the turmoil that took place on eber hudson black populations began to grow and swell. They faced racist black back questions white neighbors. Police were not there to protect and serve black people. And so a series of racist attacks on blacks, renters and homeowners and neighborhood residents eventually led to the race riots. Philadelphia had its own in 1918, chicago has its own. What comes out of this is not only the willingness of northerners, whites and liberal and european immigrants themselves who are barely hanging on as americans or americans in progress as one economist called them, they are all united officially in the systemic anti blackness. And Police Officers do a lot of the grunt work of enforcing these white norms of exclusion against black people who are being restricted eventually through red lighting in the 1930s and so on. And the evidence of Police Complicity segregated communitys in the north. Becomes overwhelming in the wake of these race riots, these attacks on the black community prayed the first Blueribbon Commission occurred out of the 1919 with no more since the hundredth anniversary since last year. We wont go into the details unless you want me to it because written close to q a. Its a say in a nutshell that systemic evidence of Police Complicity in north northern racial violence in the construction of black ghettos in the north, is part of the legacy of the progressive era in the early great migration. In the pattern and practice of Police Behavior in those cities, from decades to decade to decade, 20s, 30s, to 40, the 50 to 60s. Really leads us by the time we get to the 1960s with the uprising in all these things happening outside with an incredible record of systemic racism that runs through Northern Police forces. Its a big close to q a this is my last question for you. I have some a notes i could go through the rest of the afternoon. But i know we went to get to the audience questions. The majority of our audience our students and teachers. This is such an important history. History that really is is not well taught. Can you speak a little bit for the teachers out there. How they can touch upon the history. How they can connect it now to current events. Where they can get resources. Were you yourself did research you got some of your resources as well. There are two things i think could be really helpful to teachers. And certainly my book in a footnote. I encourage you to read the book for sections of the book you find really compelling, look at the sources. Use the footnotes to pull a few primary sources for the negro in chicago that was published in 19202 is what i call Blueribbon Commission on race policing. Also a full scan. It is a full scan of northern racism that looks at housing, jobs, looks at health print looks at everything. And so ways that often educators, even to this very day only think of the north on the 64th because they think about black history as a southern story. Certainly demographically that is true. But if you are trying to disrupt the way in which students try to think about that oh, the south was racist up until pick a date. Arts argue a little bit there isnt really one. But nevertheless if you are trying to sort of get them out of the habit of thinking about historical racism is a southern problem. That primary sources incredibly helpful. You can pick any part of it that we very compelling. They could do anything with that ib wells pamphlets in 1992 preaching to the same thing with the boys at the philadelphia negro. And you could also turn to the black press. I use the fillet jump Philadelphia Tribune which is a historical newspaper to look at some of my citations to pull those articles for their incredibly rich. People editorialize the conditions. This is never story where black people are not speaking for themselves and articulate in the double standards that they are bearing witness to or arguing for change. They dont need white saviors to commit and explain their conditions. They needed white people change their behavior. And so, from a teaching standpoint i think turning to those primary documents is incredibly compelling and powerful setting up lessons. Professor thank you so much but im going to handed over to karen now she will be asking questions from the audience. Karen. Stupak hello professor webb some really Great Questions today i am going to start off with a question from from kelly she is a pd engine phd student at Washington University in st. Louis. Her question is, could you speak more to hoffman and Prudential Insurance companys role in normalizing the over policing of black communities with companies today facing the new role question she also said fight the africanamerican sociologist tammy muller with the inflexibility of law must be involved to save from anarchy. Can you describe how democrats and even progressive today undermine the calls to defund the Police Department and falsely call this and loose words and anarchy. [laughter] leave it to a phd student. Thank you, thank you. So the first one, i will say that hoffman represented both a kind of technical mastery over administrative data that is very much part of our contemporary moments. A lot of this is maybe a way of bridging those two things. People who describe neoliberalism as the way of organizing the distribution of public goods. But the private sector, attitude practices ways of thinking about efficiency. And so the market knows best attitude within our Public Sector is essentially what neoliberalism has given us. Hoffman was kind of a perfect neoliberal in that sense. He basically said, look, we have limited resources paired biot to make the most efficient use of those resources. And if black people are predisposed to premature death, lets just withhold the argument to why they were exposed to premature death. His point is they are bad insurance risk. We should not write insurance policy where black people get the same rate pay the same premium is white people. Because the evidence, the actual evidence as they are more likely to die. And that is bad business. So he was pushing back against efforts in the late 19th century to essentially create nondiscriminatory clauses and practices than the insurance system prayed he made the argument that the evidence spoke for itself or this is kind of the debate which was what we got people like Michael Bloomberg to support stop and frisk or joe biden being the lead author on a crime bill like kate they say black people create a lot of crimes we got to do these things which some people might call racist. We call smart on crime. That tradeoff and how the data itself has become the part of justifying scriven roy practices is what hoffmans legacy is all about. In getting us all the way to the Democratic Party today has been very much in support of various ways of inequality in laws based on the technical evidence that empirically black people dont work as hard, arent as smart, or more likely to engage in criminal behavior. Obama had a series of arguments on this. Its backup we live in trump land and everything obama did was wonderful in comparison i would tend to agree by that comparison prayed this is the way it shows up today. Be Something Like this and africanamerican boy born to a single mother is more likely to underperform in school. Acadia underperforms in school is more likely to become a juvenile delinquent. Juvenile delinquents less likely to get a job. A person is been a juvenile delinquent and doesnt have a good job prospect is more likely to end up in prison. And so those are actuarial claims. Those are claims tied to micro aggregated data that is not by definition false doesnt talk about the difference of life it creates that change of events it doesnt tells about the individual who lived under those conditions. Many defy those predictive claims. The Democratic Party has been wedded to that kind of thinking course when you say defund the police the second part of this big set of questions when you come to defund the police is very destabilizing paired with that look like . Wheres the evidence for what happens of this a longer police . Very Technical Solutions want that supported before they put their neck out to make the kinds of abstractions that are required thank god the anti slavery abolitions were not technocrats pray because had they been technocrats, had they needed data to prove that slavery was brought wrong, and racist, then god knows what kind of country we wouldve had even worse than when weve lived with for a long time. You are muted. Okay you are muted. So the next question is from don lytle from syracuse new york. He teaches in syracuse. In his question is how did the lead in African Americans respond to what was happening at the time with douglas, washington, are there sources that you would recommend . Guest thats an easy one ive already answered that one. [laughter] so yes. I mentioned the boys and wellsboro there are many, many others who are included in this who are lesser known in part because as with any study there are limits to what i am scanning. So more or less what i was looking for or people who spoke about the crime problem. So the last question i mentioned, kelly muller. Kelly mullers fastening hes contemporary hes there at the very beginning. He writes extensively on this issue. Is also a mathematician by training. So he has a particular interest because of that misuse of them. He also found Howard University legality department. So i certainly recommend reading the book and learning more about kelly muller. He is a fascinating figure. As an africanamerican child as johnson he is trained the university of chicago along with another contemporary named monroe. All of these people are featured, black woman named Anna Thompson is one of the first researchers for the chicago urban league. And sometimes a Philadelphia Urban League prayed she does today but we would recognizes some of the best Racial Disparity analysis on over policing a bracket black people in the 1920s. There is an incredible report by a black woman who was an undercover prostitute in the prohibition era of who for a years filing report after report showing the corruption within the philadelphia Police Department. It is fascinating. There are plenty of black folks who are cited in the study for whom you can find more about them in the footnotes. Host the next question is a Richard Vargas from california. He asks how does one argue today with the racist argument that Crime Statistics illustrate black criminality . Even some black scholars, justified ideas of black criminality. Due to black cultural failure. Thus justified by police conduct. With the larger percentage of black americans versus white americans. Guest that is probably the Million Dollar question terms of this conversation. The great thing is i wrote a book that took on this question. Explicitly player excuse never already talked about a little bit about this issue. How european immigrants were criminalized. Lets just say not for hypothetical because its historical. But lets just say for the ease of conversation at a moments, but the time we have remained to emphasize this point. Every argument made about why black people have either a biological or cultural predisposition to criminal offending was made against every european immigrant i described to you. The response was not to double down on more policing solutions to real criminal offending. Because when people get caught up in a kind of loop with cases for me to it say racism is real, for the boys to describe that black people were suffering from industrial inequality or capitalist inequality as well as racism is not to say everyone is innocent. They never made an innocent argument. Is it if you want to solve the problem of guilt and the problem of criminal offending you dont solve it by way of policing and more incarceration. That was the argument that progressive made in support of european immigrants. They argued for more economic opportunity. For more investment in those communities. They argued for Civil Service and Police Reform because they recognize Police Officers were enforcers of class inequality. Or enforcers of politicians to simply use the police like a gang leader might use police to deploy them against their political enemies and foes. That there was tremendous police to corruption. Their Swanton Police brutality directed towards immigrants. So the solution to violence in chicago in an era of al capone, we all know these stories. Somehow we romanticize them. They become rosecolored tinted glasses. We look back and say all this people were wonderful and hardworking. No they were just spies they were despised by many people in america. The solution is not to lock up as many of them. The solution was to say how do we rebuild these communities . How do we give them exit ramps out of poverty and onramp into the middle class . So the new deal picked up on this. Fdr became the champion of the working class. I use the term in the book statistical white flights cleared when the primary mechanisms for arguing against the criminalization and the mistreatment and further up abuse and degradation of irish or italian americans was not more Police Officers were more investments in crime control. It was in fact to take away the statistical surveillance of those groups. I use the term statistical white flight because between the 1920s when you can look at local arrest and anna reports you could literally see how many italians committed burglary or armed robbery. By the 1930s you couldnt see that anymore. You cannot answer that question. And that was not an accident, it was on purpose. It was purposeful. It was purposeful because everyone knew his lungs you singled out italians for crimes as long as they were discriminated against. So it became white. Typical white fight. He became reclassified with white people. Black people and never disappeared from the crime register print they had always been there. So they were stuck with the same dynamics justifying racism inequality investing in more policing in prison on the basis of Crime Statistics rather than, let me be explicitly clear, rather than actually doing what it took eight decades of investment to do going from the 1900s to the 1970s to say we are going to redistribute tax dollars to publicly invest in the very White Communities that we have been discriminating against and isolating and ignoring. We are going to give them on roads to the American Dream black people are still dealing with jim crow and the south and they are giving and gentling with jim crow and the north at the exact same time. Schenectady next question i have is firm one. He said Michele Alexander and the new jim crow shows how incarceration is viewed as a major way of disenfranchising america, African Americans. As you say in your book taking away black freedom, do you believe that major present reform, especially long prison terms for minor offenses is the proper step towards conciliatio conciliation . Guest absolutely. There are many, many policy levers that could be pulled with regard to decriminalization and incarceration. That is if we could imagine that the weights of incarceration in this country could go back to about 150. 100,000 which is where it was in 1970 when at the time about 350,000 americans were behind bars in some way. And that the demographics matched more or less the nation about 70 of those behind bars were white. In about 30 were people of color. Everything has been reversed since the 1970s. Now about 70 black and brown, 30 white. And now we have twopoint to million in prison and we have incarceration rates. Its really remarkable. So all the policy levers that we pull to create mass incarceration can be on pulled to dismantle incarceration. Its not that much more complicated. And at the same time, we know that inequality, people have never broken the law and have never been criminalized also know has grown more intense in the country. We also have to think about decriminalization d cursor station and reinvestment into the communities that have been exploited more or less in the name of global capitalism over the last 40 years print thats a big step two. My next question is from katie and boston in her question is have you been thinking about how you can point out another example of White Privilege to her u. S. History students could ultimate become main stream cultural practices et cetera because eventually considered white but African Americans continue to be discriminated against because they cannot change their race would you rephrase it or add to it theres been a lot of thinking about White Privilege of a former graduate student is working on a book pretty is a brilliant book describes White Privilege in terms of in color privilege but in terms of unearned advantages. That essentially every step along the lifecycle, we think about White Privilege as seeing they can control and i dont to be a racist site donate part of the system but thats true for a lot of people. But we also dont recognize that it isnt just whats in your heart and your capacity to empathize or to change behavior. It is also that the system is designed at every life cycle give you a little bit of an advantage. His argument in this wonderful book that he is writing about unearned privileges as they compound. And its kind of like a 401 k . If you start your 401 k at 22 years old with their first job, put a little money in. We are all complicit in this. That over the course of 40 year years, your income is just compounding, exponentially growing trade that is essentially the argument. When your mother is on the labor and delivery bed giving birth to you, there is a little bit of an advantage there prayed the doctors are going to take care of her. She has more chance of surviving the process itself in her counterpart. That is advantage number one. The next stage comes with the typical white child will be seen by the typical preschool teacher certainly more hopeful than the typical black child. Im not going to go to the whole lifecycle. But to make the point that each of those investments at key junctures and ones life at up to a lifetime of opportunity and advantages that are very hard to get back, to catch up. And so we got to expand our system in such a way and hold it accountable and be really clear about how the system works so that people who are born to the beautiful brown is that god gave them, is penalized but each of these junctures in life. Andrea, could you speak specifically to how black women fit into and are affected by these ideas of black criminality in the policing of black people during the progressive era . Guest absolutely. As its true today, it is true then. That generally speaking about 90 of people who were criminalized in incarcerated by the criminal Justice System or men. So when i cited hoffman statistics, hoffman is referring to a population disparity which is nine out of ten men at which a black mentor overrepresented in their side of the color line. That being said. Black women however were criminalized not so much with the system of criminal justice, but with the discourse of sexual deviant. And so we know today that the conversation about single parenting or the tangle of pathology it was put into circulation 50 years ago blamed black women for not being able to property rear black children and set them off a path to criminality endangering badness. Hop in himself articulate essentially the element to dismiss seat rate. An venereal race among black women were the gender analog with the black crime problem for those two things were always intertwined. And indeed as white liberals try to step in a little bit and to help the situation at the turn of the early 20th century one woman for example Francis Keller was essentially a pioneering white woman criminologist, studied black women and compared them to their incarcerated groups with her College Going group rate this is fascinating. Literally did some of the first experiment pizza she compared black women who went as College Student compared to black women who were incarcerated. And she basically wanted to test whether they have the same mental capacity. How does she do this . She basically did memory test. You show someone something and then you take it away or show them Something Else you say are these two things the same . She did it for the women incarcerated. She did it for the College Student. She found out there is no difference, right these women did not have mental problems. They were just one group incarcerated. She was doing good work to help dispel the biological argument about race. At the same time, she felt like black women migrants were coming to the north had a sexual promiscuity problem. To use contemporary language they couldnt keep their legs closed. She basically blamed black women for ending up in prostitution as a racial defect on their own. Mary white also started the naacp did this as well. Swimming look at liberal reformers, white women in particular theres a lot of anti black women racism being articulated around sexuality. It really is pretty have a whole chapter on this in the book it is the third chapter of the boo book. So this next question is our final question. We dont have time for all of the others. Its from casimir even brook. And the question is, what would be the single most important insight you would want a regular High School Student to leave history or economic government class . What would be the one short primary document or short secondary reading that the student who doesnt enjoy reading might be tempted to read and discuss with other class. Civic include book reviews and had an article thousand words for depends how short how secondary you are talking about. off the top of my head, i would recommend those things but the thing you would want to teach a student is Crime Statistics on their own dont tell us anything they dont tell us anything. We have to decide political processes, through normative claims about the kind of society we want to live in, what to do about people who are hurting themselves or others. Thats it. So any notion that high rates of crime by definition means got to put more Police Officers there is a far notion. We live in a society post 9 11, the war on terror where the notion of National Security and public domestic surveillance, portland in the midst of continued protest, federal agents jumping out of unmarked cards cars, grabbing white people off the streets. Talk about jurisdictional violations of constitutional norms between what our military should be doing and what state and local government should be doing. Thats playing out right now. We have the obligation of educators teach what our constitutional protections actually are, we have to teach where we have consistently fallen short, past and present and we have to empower idea that nothing automatically in our society. Theres nothing about data by itself means we have to do x, y or z. We get to decide what we want to do when we produce data and what we decide the data tells us. Thank you so much for this great conversation. Thank you for corralling all those fantastic questions. Want to share my screen one more time. If you want to purchase this book, the combination of blackness or any of the book featured here, please go to the page of shock about work is not only to help this also helps support local independent as well please, at the end of the program, you will be taken to a survey, go ahead and fill it out, we always like to know how we are doing and how we can improve and we appreciate your feedback and i hope you will be able to join us next sunday, july 262 00 p. M. Eastern time is booked, shakespeare divided america what it tells us about our can only find out more online and if you want to find out about any of the other great programs and resources about the institute, go to the website. Not to worry, posted they will be in a followup email giant thank you so much for all your help and audience out there, but the as well. I hope youll be able to bring a second we are all going to shut our screens off your butt will leave this screen on if you want to write these down will also send followup emails as well. Have a great afternoon. Coming up sunday, the lead up to the Republican National during President Trump in the upcoming election. His book, forgotten country and David Horowitz with his book, split. 9 00 p. M. Eastern on afterwards, in her book, covid19 journalists on how covid19 a Global Pandemic and ways to prevent future. Shes interviewed by Georgetown University center for Global Health professor, eric stan lee. Watch book tv this weekend on cspan2. Everyone virtual conversation. I want to start by acknowledging the partnership between the festival. Unplugging in a Virtual World today