I worked hard to keep the conversation because obviously there is a lot of seriousness and also the human side, not just me, but what i saw you learned as i traveled around the world. Next, from this years baltimore book festival, a Panel Discussion on the future of the maryland city. The baltimore book festival is presented by Stephen Janis and the art of [inaudible] Film Commission especially that agency and please note after you enjoyed the presentation, volunteers are on hand and they are happy to accept donations and thank you for helping to keep the baltimore book festival free. We have an incredible panel assembled and i will start with introductions. D. Watkins, living and dial dying while latin america. A columnist and his work has been published in the new york times, huffington post, the guardian and other magazines. He holds a masters in education from john hopkins university. He is a College Professor and has also been a recipient of numerous awards including a beanie fellowship, Baltimore Magazine best writer awarded for 2015, and Baltimore Business Journal 40 and under list. Tim watts, he is author of six books including his highly acclaimed memoir, white like me and reflections on race from as well as dear White America and colorblind. His next book, under the affluence, shaming the poor, reprising their rich and jeopardizing the future of america will be released in early 2015 and he has contributed essays to over 25 additional books. His essays have appeared huffington post, counterpunch, the root, black commentator and see magazine among others. Stephen janis, why do we kill. Stephen janis is an awardwinning investor journalists. His worked as a senior and must get a reporter for the now defunct baltimore examiner. He has won a work for his work on solved murders in baltimore and he has won three muppercaseletter hes the best investigative series and currently investigative journalist for the real news network, a nonprofit news Service Based in baltimore. Sherry parks, fierce angels, the strong black woman in American Life of culture. Sheri Parks Research hoaxes on concern for Popular Culture and its effect upon individuals, family and minority culture and is an active intellectual peer in in national and local media. Doctor parks is active in the university of maryland engagements. Class also includes projects that benefit nonprofit associations. In 2008, she is recognized by the campus as outstanding woman of color as faculty of the year and University Honors program. Lester spence is associate professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins university and specialize in the study of black racial and urban politics. On awardwinning scholar. Teacher who received an excellent Teaching Award in 2009 and he can be regularly heard on National Public radio. His net next book will be out of me and of october please welcome all their esteemed panelists. [applause]. [applause]. What im going to do is start with letting the panelists begin with the Lester Spence kind of describe what their individual books are about. Lester. Thank you very much. Thank you to the baltimore book festival. I knew i was in the right place when i saw that they had a book festival because it meant baltimore was actually literate and i wanted to be a place where reading matter. Im really interested kind of the brief reduction in the quality within black spaces. If you look at inequality across time may beat 9029 or so to the present, it takes the shape of a up read hell is a 1929, low levels in 1950 or so and really high levels now. In fact, we have high levels of inequality now. Why does it take the shape of a u . Largely because of politics, so from the 30s to the 60s or so you had the new deal, Great Society that gave workers the right to organize. It gave us a social safety net and it made a number of types of segregation or Racial Discrimination illegal. Those policies were kind of gradually peeled back starting in 1970 or so and that has in effect if you look into racially between racial groups, but also has an effect within black communities. If you look at black communities and take kind of a black politic approach as opposed to a racial politics approach, that is if you look within black communities solely as opposed to comparing them to white communities, what you see is you have some black people with a lot of loot, some with a little bit and some lack people with no and what you see consistently the two clearly in the modern moment are blackie leads kind of justifying why that loop is distributed the way it is. Thats why poor black people are where they are, why black people in the working class are where they are and what im interested in doing with my next book coming out at the end of october is kind of seeing how that dynamic plays out in black churches. Talk about the rise of prosperity gospel and how that plays out in cities that are run by black mayors where you have cities increasingly forced to be looking at Downtown Development as opposed to other forms of development and how people resist that in black spaces. Basically that is what my book is about. Doctor sheri parks. Thank you. Might area is how ordinary people in their everyday lives capture duty in truth and meaning. Right now im starting to write on art, culture and strategy because the work i am doing in and around the city that we will talk about later, fierce angels argues that black women have already perfected on organic leadership model that they practice every day that is often unrecognized. Is that close enough . Okay. What i do is start at the beginning as a first recorded Creation Stories and argue that the sacred feminine in the stock strong black woman is the same model. Shes the mother of herself, the darkness before the assumedly male died. The darkness does anything, so i often get in trouble with people for sameness as you can imagine and then i trace her through both african and european history because i argue by the time slave owners enslave women arrived, they already had the narrative and over and over again you see black women placed in trust, in places where they are assumed to be brilliant, strong and interested in other peoples problems and so she plays that role in black culture the best way to explain this in baltimore, is look around at the high number of security guards in the city who are black women. I asked someone who hired a lot of them white and he said well, they can do everything because she does everything. How many times that you heard those lyrics about im a natural woman, im everywhere and can do everything and he said they are Strong Enough that no one will go up against them, fierce angels, the title of my book. They are highly nutri nurturing. Is that of hiring to people, you are hiring one. The most controversial thing i say though is that that very revered, strong, wise figure is on lock down sometimes and often they position themselves behind men and often when im in an allblack situation saying this someone raises their hand and says, arent we supposed to. D. Watkins. This will be two Different Things for two different types of people. If you are a report black person, its a collection of love stories, a love story to anyone going through some type of health care disparity, education disparity. To the people who have been stepped on by our militarized Police Forces to your if you are a rich white person, then this is a guide to help you understand why we are the way we are and to help you recognize the humanity exists within all of us. You can be a black person in a, you know, Housing Project or be like a top ranking clue club member; right . Either way both of those guys probably like ice cream. The soldier understand why america are Mainstream Media is looking at black people the way they do, but if you are a black person, what it does is shows you that you are important and loved and that your story is relevant and if you have a place in this society that does so much to try to force you out, so thats what i had in mind when i wrote this book and hopefully, we can talk about some of those things tonight. Tim watts. So, most of my work as some of you know deals with eradicating White Supremacy, addressing White Privilege and does that sort of singly focuses on that under the affluence is connected to that. But, it also is an attempt to examine the connection between economic disparity is a general class based phenomenon and White Supremacy as a specific aspect of that. Essentially because when you look around there are a lot of people talking about inequality, occupied talk about inequality every now and then and neither occupy white dominated leftist movement with very little acknowledgment of White Supremacy, very little acknowledgment of the role of privilege even within their own space. Not just with the larger analysis. A lot of people are talking about that, but not making that connection to White Supremacy and i argue in the book and document as many others have done the way in which the class system in the United States cannot be understood absolute of understanding why supremacy. It does not exist without it. It would not exist as strong but for it, but for the manipulation of white workers and white workers racism and adherence to White Supremacy but for the manipulation of what w edu two boys called the Psychological Association whiteness, which is a way of saying why people that its okay at least in a black. Without that, the class system in this country would not be nearly as strong, so the purpose of the book is to explore these connections and explore how inequality gets rationalized and , you know, as you heard its happening within black space, internal to black space, its also happening within white space and all this in this country because we have all been conditioned to believe that where you end up is about you. We always have this ideological mechanisms for justifying inequality. In the old european system if you were a peasant, you damn well knew you were a peasant and would not be royalty. You are out, done. The communist country we have an ideology that says no, you are poor today, but you will run this tomorrow. He could be president , ceo, millionaire, billionaire. Poor folk in england would not have believed that. But, in this country everyone thinks they will be the next bill gates, the next donald trump, god for bid, everyone thinks because we havent ideology that says that. So, if you made it, good on you and you you didnt make it, shame on you. We dont have to think about each other and our relationship, we just had to double down and work 60 hours a week, 80 hours a week, not take vacation and we have a system that justifies all of this disparity using racism as a way to bash poor folk by associating poverty and need with black and brown this, which ironically means once i get associated with blackness and brown this white folks are struggling and your social benefits just got cut to. Your labor unions are being weakened, all of the stuff that actually provides subsidence for working people is being kicked out from the system because of the way in which all of that was racialized in the stuff we do for those people on that side of the town, but we will never need and what do you know the economy goes to the toilet and people are looking around like wheres my healthcare, is my housing. Of the racial is a should of need led to a situation where poor workingclass white folk are feeling the pinch and unless we understand that, talk about that and address that we will all be at the mercy of that one 10th of 1 , 1100 that owns the disproportionate amount of wealth in this country, the city, the state. Hello, how are you doing . I was a reporter, so my books deal specifically with crime, pain and the violence seen through the eyes of specifically homicide detective, africanamerican homicide detective. I was trying to think how my book would be relevant at all and i was thinking about some of the things that people that i witnessed as a reporter covering crime and policing in the city, which i guess in a lot of ways i examined as some of the spit specifics of people of already talked about in that i did the fast board is a profound idea because in the world that i lived in an observed and wrote about, there is no path for it, the psychology of his idea of limitations. Limitations of space and limitations of people and i wrote a lot about the zero tolerance policy in the city where 100,000 people were arrested year over year and it is a difficult topic to get to the individual, sometimes because its such a profound effect on the psychology of the city, the psychology of the people who work in a corrupt Police Department or the psychology of the people executing these policies and how it affects their lives. I did some before the uprising of things that happened we did a lot of writing about it and it certainly is something i think that hangs over the head of the city, still. The toll of what we had done in the past. We are city, to me, as a person who writes about the people here that a lot of times the way forward is certainly not the main focus. A lot of times we deal with things that happened in the past and the pain of those policies and how they were afflicted things in the neighborhood and change the psychology of the city. So, the name or the title for this discussion is called baltimore the path forward and what it takes to unify city. I would offer this to kind of start the conversation. May 15, 1911, Baltimore Mayor signed into effect the first law in the nation that directly created segregated housing of a black and white homeowners, so basically baltimore invented housing segregation amongst the other great things we have done we invented segregation. Many of those lines that weusine other great things we have done we invented segregation. Many of those lines that were made distinct in somewhat immovable has remained in place, i think. My question to the panel is, how we ever in the history of this city really ever been truly unified as we look forward trying to seek that type of unity . Have we ever really been unified . I would say the most i have seen as a reporter was during uprisings. There was something i think a lot of us who covered baltimore did nothing was possible. But, certainly during that period of time that was the most unified i have ever seen the city in terms of having trying to solve a problem or overcome something. I would say that is the closest, but generally in covering the city that is fractured, small neighborhood dallas little villages that are sometimes interconnected. Its difficult to cross those lines. We are unified when the ravens win the super bowl and when the orioles win the world series. So, outside of euphoria on that end of the spectrum and catastrophe, the uprising in april, i guess the point is has the city have we ever been in that kind of place where there was really unity to speak up . Im having difficulty kind of remembering a time when that was true. Definitely the super bowl, but what i think of uprising because it got so much Media Coverage i think that so many people who didnt believe these types of things happen or want aware are almost forced to read about it and see it, so they felt energized and wanted to do something. I have never seen that many white people on north avenue in my life. It was like someone put a smoothie stand up. All of these different wild things were going on and one thing i took away from that was, what do we do with this unity now, now that these people are aware these situations because with camera phones a lot of people did not believe this was real or existed. Now that we know, the bigger question was how to move forward because baltimore is super segregated and i felt like i had been living into baltimores on my life. I know why people and i know black people who will never meet each other under any circumstances because of the structure of the city, so the bigger question for me is to go along with what you asked is how do we now that we have this moment had we capitalize on it and set up something for the next generation of young people here. I went to piggyback on that because i think most to have privilege in this city jump in i think thats the social reality most of our white friends did not know about. After ferguson, but before pretty gray, a church north of baltimore asked me what people of faith could do and one of the things i said in passing was that it was baltimore. This could be baltimore and they were shocked. I was shocked they were shocked. They were absolutely shocked and went around asking other black people, and they were like sherry parks says this. Then, this is the difference. Post freddy gray know it is asking that question. I think besides sports its important we talk about entertainment that baltimore is unified more than any other spaces within art and culture and i think thats important and i could its really important that art and culture spectrum has been working very hard post uprising to take advantage of that. Im going to take a different approach. Im not interested in unity. I dont really care all that much about unity. I care about black and workingclass population to have power and if you look at that wealth dissertation, when is it should mushed there were moments when it was more schmo must and there was a moment where we had more workingclass power than what we have now, so heres a way to think about a. 1990, and i mentioned this fact a lot and ever, mentioned that it kills people. 1890, the city of baltimore spaz 145 24 dean. We rest more citizens then there are people in baltimore. We can say you can say objectively thats a bad thing and then we can point to moments that didnt happen. So, whats differentiating those moments from this moment . Or these prefreddy gray moments. I argue what differentiates those moments when we have more equality from this moment is the presence of unity. We have a presence of intel freddy gray it was pretty unified amongst black elite, white elite, they say poor people are poor people because of their own actions. Thats unity. The solution to the citys problems with Downtown Development. It didnt matter if you talk about this mayor, the last mayor or the mayor before that, that is a black one, a black one and a white one. That is unity. The question isnt that is unity now. Who wants it . Who wants that . The way forward is unpacking what that looks like, but that off unity looks like and how we deconstruct that from political organizing and storytelling. Statement all i will add his thats right there, exactly that and im done. Not. I think lets remember that just two years ago the city approved 100 million tax break. You can walk out on the sidewalk and see harvard points, which is not just 100 million tax break but dedicated twitter 50 million of our future tax revenue to ask a Corporate Giant and this was done without much liberation and councilman stokes. Everyone seemed to think was a good idea and it was one of the successions in tax rates we are doing now and meanwhile policing is not just before hundred 50 million that we have spent. We have ashly sent two or 300,000,000. 0 postretirement. If you look at property tax rate intake, a prematch just covers public safety, nothing much more and when you talk about giving away tax breaks, which the city has multiple all of the city and recently passed a tax break for people who build apartment buildings over 20 or 30 units and do not pay taxes for 30 years. The longterm commitment to this unity will cost every person in the city pretty much most of our resources for the rest of her life. To turn that around would be difficult, but that type of plan, that convergence of policing and spending on policing and downtown tax rate defined the plan that we live with now. We have one point where there may change with a historic election in april for the mayor and there are some candidates talking about changing this policy and i think that will be crucial because whether or not you agree with it, that will be on the ballot, i think. We have constantly heard from our leaders in the city specifically i have had conversations with the mayor where she says over and over we know how to deal with homicide. We know how to deal with talk about the militarization, if you will or the police state in baltimore and out how contributes to keeping groups separate and apart. Sorry i talked twice, i apologize. Quickly, the arrest, we as a city arrested 100,000 people a year. I dont think anyone can really understand the trauma of that type of policy. Or what that meant to the people of the city and as he points out, we were arresting almost an entire city of a two or three year cycle. As the psychology of fear and intimidation and i think Civic Engagement that you lose from that, i dont you can quantify that. I witnessed it is a reporter and a could not believe what i as you point out, there was a great silence between the Political Leadership on both sides. All the mayors were there in some form and they said nothing and it changed the landscape of the city. It might have been bad before, but we literally lived in a city where an manke drive into the neighborhood, open up and just talk people into the back of the van. There was something called a walkthrough where you went to central booking a walkthrough because they were arresting so many people. It was real and i think it still has an effect today. I think we have to talk about the importance of surveillance. Most of you probably dont and i dont live in a neighborhood [inaudible] you can see the live footage from a surveillance camera. Is very clear and you can see peoples houses. I think we think this is the kind of thing that may keep people away. Living constantly under surveillance is part of living in a police state. Someone made the statement it was started to look like apartheid south africa and by the time i was done and if you are a young black men in baltimore you do not leave the house without your id. That is a past law, so day today ordinary life is what i most concerned about. It may have sounded like an outrageous statement and i said police state, but if you look at the day today texture of peoples lives, its very much a police state and you know what that does to people. We can talk about traumatic trauma. It happens from chronic day today surveillance and subordination and it doesnt lead to people who are bold or bright or who are willing to take chances because those people in the situations dont survive. The idea that if you are a young black man in baltimore and to some degree young black women, but it really does hit men harder, the idea is that you are being told that the only way to survive is to submit. That is what it means to live in a police state. The Current System needs to be guided. If you are a black person and you live in certain parts of west baltimore or east baltimore, youre almost 100 guaranteed to never have any positive interaction with Police Officers. They are not there to protect and serve, they are not there to help you change a flats help grandma out of the trees, honestly excuse my language, they are only there to [bleep] you up. Its almost like the traditions of some of the Police Officers are being passed down every year even if we talk about the officers who were charged in there pretty great instance, yes, lock them up, fire them, get rid of them, but there are 300, 400 more just like them being trained right now. Until we change the culture it will be the same thing over again. We cant be shocked that this is happening. The function of Law Enforcement has always and forever been only one thing, to control the havenots to the benefits of the half. There is no other purpose for police. The idea that police are there to protect against of the greatest harms of society obviously is crap because if that were it they would profile wall street bankers and lock them up. They would be locking up employers every year employers rob their employees of three times more money, wage that, not paying overtime, not paying minimum wage, not paying for prep time. Employer still three times more money from their workers every year than are stolen from all the street criminals knocking you over the head and taking your purse, rubbing the liquor store, robbing the banks, all of the street theft combine, but you steal 100, someone cell phone, you go to jail for 10 years. Used to yield 12 and half trillion dollars, which is what happened on wall street and no one goes to prison, so cops are not here to protect us from the greatest harms to society because then they would lock up the folks at john hopkins who made the decision to do the lead study, who cleared the decision to do that lead study when they took for black children in this community and families and used them as guinea pigs in different lead they did apartments. Like the ones where they had done no lead abatement and their levels went through the roof so they could study them because it was easier than building new homes that were not toxic. Its not even about individual cops. Is the culture of police. If the mentality, the system of policing. Its not individual officers who are the problem. You can get rid of a handful of bad officers and the culture will guarantee you create more and when you try to speak out against that cop culture you get run out of policing, which has happened in the city and we have seen at least one person who is now in the news and talk about the fact that he was basically run out because he i know it did his buddies and blue were beating the crap out of criminal suspects without due process, so if you try to be a good cop and not one of the bad apples we are told about, then you wont be a cop anymore. They might kill you, but they will not allow you to have a career. This is like having a sausage factory and being shocked when you stand at the end of the Conveyor Belt and you are like look at the sausage. If you expect it to give you Chicken Nuggets, what the hell are you waiting for, its a sausage factory. Then, when he gives you sausage dont be surprised. If you dont want sausage, build another damn of factory. If you dont want sausage, build another damn of factory. Flip a swurprised. If you dont want sausage, build another damn of factory. Flip a switch, but you wont get Chicken Nuggets out of a sausage factory and ewald to get justice out of a Police Culture about controlling the havenots for the benefit of the people who have. Whats more frustrating is that someone make Police Officers work in baltimore live in baltimore. Why do they live in pennsylvania . Like all of these Different Things. When i was a kid they had something called the power league and there was an officer named craig who would take us around and play basketball and that was the relationship. And he lived in the neighborhood. It worked. So many people were able to do the right thing in their life because we had that exposure and connection and its like im not going to lock this kid up. I will rough him up and then take him home and give him knowledge on what he did the wrong thing. They took that away. Whats most important is Community Policing is more effective at reducing crime, so the larger question is if the police are not there to reduce crime, what are they therefore . They are really doing the same work at the apartheid level. In baltimore city, statistical reference had in 1950, about 1600 Police Officers and today theres about 3000. In a city with about half of the population and he talked about Community Policing, the last we are the most heavily noncontrolled agencies in the country. 52 of our officers on patrol. He put a lot of our officers and specialized units. Like a unit that when around the city and sort of containing zerotolerance. They were responsible for a lot of the lawsuits. I had a personal experience. I had a friend from the Police Department who moved out of the city and he told me before he went that he did not want to have anything to do with the style of policing anymore, so he tried Community Policing where he forced the officers to get out of the car and walk in he walked himself. Crime was reduced, but more importantly the community for once felt that they had someone who understood them. That is something that the Police Department has conveyed against even though arguably we have more police. Baltimore city has the secondhighest per capita Police Department in the entire country and the only city that has more as washington dc. Its a huge institution with a tremendous amount of money and political power. Its going to be very hard, i think, to change the culture. If the Community Policing works, why stop . Because the jails employ more people than uber. We imprison more people than any other nation in the universe, so there you go. You take it away because it doesnt fit the agenda that the custom the country wants to push forward. Bring this back to teddy gray. A lot of people dont know that his family actually sued and won for lead paint violation and he suffered from lead poisoning himself. The neighborhood he lives in has three times the lead paint violation rate at the city of large. Maryland as a state spends about a billion dollars on incarceration. Im pretty sure they send more of their residence to prison than any other neighborhood, approximate 440 folks and they spend about 10 million incarcerating folks. One of the top five neighborhoods in the city. What has happened is we have seen that become social welfare policy, so we take the welfare state and we basically replace it with a welfare state that has a primary purpose of incarcerating and shaming its residents. Law enforcement reform obviously is one of the biggest issues as far as this next election in april. That is just the conversation. D. Watkins, i went to ask you specifically. In your book you talk about your revolution to a College Professor to an awardwinning journalist and author. You said essentially said reading seiji. How do how do we make greeting education more viable alternative for young black men caught up in the system . First, we have to acknowledge the problem. We dont acknowledge the problem. Some people think everything is okay and you know ive worked in a School System and i am a College Professor now, but i still speak in schools. Most students or most parents think that Public Schools are responsible for educating your children. So, one, we have to break that. Schools are supposed to be responsible for 20 and your home life is 80 , but if you barely get 20 of school and then youre out in the community and when i talk about my own personal story, i wasnt really given books that really could keep my interest as a kid, so i live in east baltimore and these different wild places and earned her acting with these different while the people and i get to school and all you have is like mark twain, what am i going to do . In dunbar we were given gifted hands. If this is what you give me to read, it will not seek my interest, so not only using my story is a tool to ignite and show other people that reading can be cool and interesting and relatable, but also to get other people to tell their story. Your story is important. You never know who it can help or who can inspire. We need that. Sheri parks, if you want to Say Something you can chime in. So, your books, that is one of the main premises that little black girls are drafted into this army of fierce angels. He spoke and alluded to the fact that black women are security guards because black women can do anything is one of the premises of the book. A few years back and baltimore received a lot of attention because of this, sheila dixon was the mayor and Stephanie Rawlings blake was the city council president. And pat chesley was states attorney. And lots was made of that, nationally. At the same time i remember and im sure all of us are member that on the front page of the Sun Newspaper there was an article that said the mayor prior to sheila dixon and Martin Omalley literally went into a meeting with pat chesley and commanded her to get off her fat, lazy, so i guess im asking the question, the continuum on one hand black women can do everything and there is this outside kind of expectation of selflessness and nurturing, but on the other hand that level affordability from a woman who is sitting as a states attorney in baltimore. Speak on that a bit. That is actually the point of the book is to say that black women have i actually argue that this is a role that many women have played in any culture, but black women in this culture have been they have perfected it because of their social position of many social events and i argue that she that image has been coopted and i interview a number of black women both famous and nonfamous and the reason i say drafted and i explained drafted into an army is that i ask black women and i call people up and interview them and say i think you are a few years angel and as i told them and they would say yes. I was a had did you learn to do this and they would say i dont ever remember not knowing how to do this. Often black families are tough around girls. We dont like to say this, but we are tougher on girls than boys. They are raised not to worry about themselves, but everyone else in the room to the point of even middleclass black women are more likely to die of stressrelated disease. There is a study that has found that black women, even when they have stressrelated disease like when their Blood Pressure is up, they dont proceed their Blood Pressure going to because they have to work the exhaustion. I never argue that black women are working at the top of their game. Thats what, i mean, when i say they are on locked up because they have been trained, there is a chapter called becoming that was about me being placed behind by Guidance Counselors in the Community Behind talented black men and they would say you deserve this, but we will put him forward. That became kind of the frame. Credit was highly talented on her own and in a way im telling culture stories that some people think should not be said. What black women need to learn is that they are worth the same amount of effort that they put into everyone else. [applause]. The authors of the book about the Nonviolent Movement said if you can convince black women to come together and work, it will not only be important for black america, it will revolutionize the country because black women are already working. Look at any black church. Look at black lives matter. I mean, easy black women who are not necessarily pushing themselves forward, but the girl scouts did a thousand girls study and what girls of all races and what they found out was that black girls intended to change their community, but they did not intend to leave their community. That they had the factors of leadership, they were resilient, smart and when i say black women can do everything i dont mean that in a flip way. I mean, they are being trained to do it all and they have managed to do it all because of survival. I asked why dont you stop if you are tired and they say i cant. There is no one else to do this if i dont do it, so thats what theyre selflessness means and yes, black women have been coopted by power structures both in black culture and outside of black culture and that is an example that you use, so that if the shia turnaround and called up a more me of other mobilized black women, that story might have ended differently. I want to know what i mean, i wonder about our community and our response to what happened. When Martin Omalley was allowed , if you will for lack of a better term, to refer to her this way. This was a woman who grew up in mississippi, in a segregated style, so the dynamic was fascinating. But, i wonder about our community, black communitys response and specifically responds from black men to what transpired. I wonder if we had any special responsibility to come to her aid for lack of a better term steve and i would argue black men and women had responsible the to come to her aid and we didnt. So, i guess can i asked the question as to why. You asking me . [laughter] i didnt know about it. Maybe i was a kid. If he had set it to my wife or my mom, he would have had his head knocked off. I notice he said by them and often black women have been trained that we dont stand up for ourselves. We stand up for everyone else. Tim watts, the notional definition of whiteness i can get been challenged for a long time for generations. There was an article in 1984, essence magazine called on being white and other lies. Give us a sense in 2015, in the context of this we had to take our country back and on one end of the spectrum and what whiteness is in 2015. Well, i am done with rachel. I think a lot of people are. I think i speak for millions of people when i say that. I wont even bother and wasting a lot of time. She has her own stuff to deal with. But for the rest of us white folk because she is one as well, but is not clear on that. The other 200 million, proximally socalled white folk, i think its important and its important the context of what we have been talking about with regard to baltimore and issues of Police Racism and violence in all these things. Its import for us to get clear on what baltimore was very clear on. Im paraphrasing here, the problem with white folks is that first and foremost we think we are white and as long as you think your white there is no for you. What he meant by that was that when you allow yourself to believe that there is this thing called the white race and its real and may be biological or or even cultural, then you are already lost because there is no such thing and there never was any such thing and theres no such thing genetically, biologically and there is no such thing culturally or politically because at least not historically, there is now, but certainly there was not because the white race did not exist as such. European peoples that most of our time killing each other before we decided to kill other people and oppress them we were just really good at doing that to ourselves and so the idea that there was this team called white people. Northern italians would never have believed that those were not even considered part of the nation or the people or their folk were talent, let alone would anglos have thought the irish were of the same group or vice versa. This i did is preposterous and is really only created in the colonies of what became United States. That is essentially and shakespearean literature, any way shape or form like this today. In the old days, and factor in the time when shakespeare was writing, this person we hold up as a arbiter a white literature, went the term white would be used it often was used to generally it had been used to connote positivity and literature, but in chicks. It was used to refer to people who were lepers, leprosy. It was not seen as amazingly positive, so they did not call themselves that. They may have call themselves christian or englishman. Whiteness was graded to take these groups like the ones i write up in the book of working class peasants with nothing and say you have nothing, but you do have this and so you are on our team and you are sort of at the end of the bench. We will not actually get you in the game unless we are winning by 30. You are wearing a uniform, its a bit raggedy, so we dont like you a lot, but we like you enough and what they did is they took for europeans and put them on slay the patrol and said you could to help us keep those folks new line. You mean i get a badge and a with pentagon . Will, goodness. Im all for that. Then, they said we need you to go out there and fight for the homeland, meaning the south because if they get freed they will take your job. Then white folks were i dont want them to take my job i had to rally behind the white team. But, that enslaved person already had no in a white person has to charge a dollar a day. Gusty gets the gig . The one who is free every day, so in fact low income white folks were undermined. Labor base for low income white people, so all throughout history this has been a trick and if we dont understand the trick, they do because possible for us to look at baltimore as an uprising of irrational dark skinned folk as opposed to a rebellion rooted in the oppression, economic depression of working class and not low income people, which is the kind of stuff that once upon a time workingclass white people engaged in on the regular like if you go back to the colonies, rebellion was that. If you go back and look at West Virginia and the mining wars where you had black miners and white miners walking with guns thousand people deep ready to kill the National Guard not the National Guard or the militia or whatever they had at the time and they had to come out and start shooting people to break this Multiracial Coalition because there was a time that people it did not identify it in this way, but increasingly those that of us are called white neck should mean something and as a result of that we dont see the solidarity that existed always among working and oppress people and not something i think we have to work through. Stomach that is like the crux of the question because what you are saying, is completely true, but why does it persist. It is something that has troubled me as a reporter. You write stories like lead poisoning and lead poisoning in baltimore. Nothing is more probably damaging than lead poisoning in children and its a fixable problem and we spend a couple you million a year taking the lead out of the houses. Even though its one of the most lead infested cities in the country. The idea you are talking about persist and still seems to have force to keep implementing these policies despite the failure. Its not a failure. It succeeds or what they want. I am i dont assume their goal is the thing. This is like after katrina, everyone said spike lee himself and i love this film he self, but he said it was a system breakdown of my mental proportion. Didnt break down. That was the system. You can only believe that if you thought black poor folk in new orleans [inaudible] i think the system was producing that outcome that it was intended to. This is this tough thing that is for us to do antiracism work. It means the idea that what we define as assess and the system defines a successor to toll Different Things and rooted in a hostility to blackness, a hostility to indigenous people, a hostility to people of color that we will literally sacrifice our self interest on the altar of White Supremacy. I dont know for sure how to move through that, but i know that those of us who are called white and see that program have to stand up and steer resources and attention attention to the folks of color so they can solve those problems because it is clear that the majority of us are not going to see its. We are program not to see it and do the opposite of it, so those of us that ducey had to make sure that people that live it have the power to make the decisions that will alter those decisions on their own. There is no little events beginning to suggest that might, i dont know if it will happen enough, but we have been having these revelation of racist video said racist songs and racist emails, these are things that other people did not know or happening among white people. Some white people are now starting to call out other white people. We wouldnt know these videos exist are the emails existed unless a white person had called out another white person and i think that is the beginning of something. Whether it ever gets big enough, we dont know. Some things are beginning to happen that did not happen 20 years ago. Lester spence. I went to push back against a couple of comments. If we work under the assumption that what our issue is his teaching black kids how to read, write that that is actually the fundamental problem like the reason we have a crime problem is because black men are not reading books a lot im willing to bet i am a political scientists and im willing to bet the people who are doing the most reading of the dictionary went dexterity in their language. But we have is an economy problem. We focus on black kids learning how to read and what we will miss is in a city like baltimore we only have three high schools who routinely send kids to hopkins, where i met. That is a structural problem with to deal with, the economy. The other thing is we are missing that there is not just a psychological way to whiteness, there is a material wage. The fundamental issue that baltimore and the cities have another cities like it have is a problem with the redline. Not the right line that hogan got rid of. Its the red line, that Technology Used to determine who got housing money and who did not. That was started around 1930 and a funded by the federal government. If you take everything the problem baltimore has an layer that 1930 read online on top of it, every single problem is concentrated in that red line. There is a material way that people get when actually are outside of that red line, so the challenge, the reason i talk about material wage, psychological ways is because there is a way where we transition to the political results of a psychological wave of whiteness argument is not always this, but a lot of times its therapy. What we need to do is teach white people about themselves. We need to teach people to check their privilege. Its a political problem. You need therapy, yes. We only therapy. But, we have to separate there is a dynamic from political organizing. Those are two very different projects. D. Watkins. I agree with almost everything you just said, leicester, but i spend a lot of time with a lot of rappers in this city and you they are not reading. When we talked about that issue, you know, i think when sean brought that question up, i was not saying that reading is the only answer. Im saying thats what works for me and our ideas that we push the kids through the School System, but we are creating people that was the tool to help me and i just want to pose another question and piggyback off some of the things that you and tim were talking about, the whole idea that if i am a poor white person in america and i dont have money, resources, the only thing i have is White Privilege and be able to be white and said dont have to be black. Why would i want to acknowledge privilege and come up off of that . Lester spence, you brought up hiphop. On the way in hours listening to black on both sides that he said we are hiphop. You want to know how black people are doing but see how hiphop is doing. How are we doing if we think about where hiphop is in 2015, what are your thoughts on where we are as community if that equation thats a loaded question and no i will take a piece of that. When i talk about liberalism, staring in the darkness and knocking the hustle is this idea that we have to become increasingly entrepreneurial, the perfect person is not the citizen, the perfect person, i title at the prosperity gospel where the bible basically becomes a selfhelp guide. If there is a phrase that communicates that, the phrase is just one phrase its, im not a businessman, im a business, man, watch me handle my business. Talks about hiphop in a role in perspective, which goes back to what they were talking about. Go ahead. I guess the best way to understand it is to kind of look at black film. Hundred hiphop started as the voice of the people and now its the voice of capitalism. They made the three first black films, when melvin van peeps, they thought he would kill re revolutionary but the got away and they saw how people reacted and the black panthers mad the film required viewing if you wanted to be a black panther. They took the hero away from corporate america. The stopped the revolutionary from being the hero and the in heros were pimps and dope dealers. Corporate america has the sources and able to distribute it to erv and they can create the message and whoever the new hero should be. Lets talk about we kind of alluded it to earlier in the conversation. Lets talk about the election coming up in april 2016. Obviously the mayor is not running for reelection. But i guess my question is a bit of a broader question. Can we continue on operating within the infrastructure. The political infrastructure we have operated under, mostly blackbed led for the last self decade is. Can we continue with this infrastructure and be successful in 2015, 2016 and beyond . As a reporter covering city hall, i dont think so. The unity thatm was talked about is not sustainable fiscally and almost impossible to change, it appears, at least the regardless of the facts, each mayor has adopted the policies and the expensive and havehanded policing has persisted despite plenty of evidence theyre not going do work in the long and run the evidence we see before us. So, i think at nights a candidate has to come out of nowhere or somehow change the political alliances that have created the machine that exists. The machine must, i think, in order for then city to change its direction, has to be dismantled on some level in a very simplistic form. I dont think so. Anybody else . I think we have to work outside of the political sphere. We have been talking about segregation as a bad thing, but what they used to be a very rich, black, public sphere during sing degree gages, and we have segregation and we have to replace that public sphere. I was razed by main street and took care of a lot of the functions we have offloaded to the state, and the state isnt doing it. Because the studies show that encounters with the criminal Justice System decreases Civic Engagement. It will be difficult to replace because of where we are at this point, and the other big problem is the mayor is so powerful, that its going to be unless we have someone from a radically different perspective or overhaul or change the structure of city government, think its going to take something really radical just to be able to shift the perspective of the city in the way well facilitate what youre talking about. The one benefit the we have a strong mayor system, the mayor actually controls most of the power in the city. And theres done structural dynamics. We have to change the city charter, and wore closer to than than we have been but its incredibly hard. What we have gotten now with a combination of the predie gray uprising, the politics reason that, then the occupy baltimore which occurred a few years before that. We have a couple of really powerful radical tendencies that give us the opportunity to do something this election. The best thing that the mayor could have done was actually decide not to run because what that does is it creates a pace for more competition, and shely dixons case, some argue she would have been basically that the election on lock because all she had to do was talk about what mayor blake didnt do, not that Rawlings Blake is out of the picture. She has to run or her record. Her record is kind of shaky. That gives other candidates a possibility to kind of run on their own record and gives folks who are interested an opportunity to kind of inject this economic violence narrative that will be the most important narrative we need somebody to take hold of. I want to agree with that and add something. Might get in trouble for saying this. With ron flake out of the race, the money candidate is out of the rails. She has a huge bank roll, and we have to look at who is backing the mayor and where the power is coming from. So that creates a vacuum where we in that vacuum we can have different kinds of conversations. Im so jade with politics, im not even excited about the election. If you want to make a difference, look in the mirror and ask yourself, what can you do . Figure out what your job is, how to get in communities and take the skis you learned in college and from your own neighborhood or whatever skills you have and share them with the people who dont have access to those resources. I used to be one of those people who dish used to sit around and say, change the schools, save the schools. No, social reproduction is real. The schools are create a permanent underclass of people. Thats what they do. Everybody in america cant be doctors and lawyers and politicians. They want some people at mcdonalds, some people homeless, and they want some people to go to jail. These are the people who you see on news, the people who you judge and who say, theyre crazy and why they act like that . No. They like that. The piggyback off what tim said, its system for the creators and its impossible to change it by subscribing to the same system. My answer is, again, we have to acknowledge these problems. I dont even tell students or talk about school reform. I talk about the skillset you need to develop to make it through Public School to go to college. How do you take the crappy resources, figure out your own idea of success or what a win and is then attack that. The politicians are not going to do that. The reality is that most of the money that flows in these races comes from the Downtown Coalition of developers and lawyers and the fop and organizations like that. And if you want too mount a campaign, youll be in the control i dont think theres a Bernie Sanders type of model yet for baltimore that would work, that i can see. So thats actually true in some sense. Gets you in there hold them absolutely. Theres now would to be a able to raise substantial money. It would be very difficult to stage an insurgent candidacy without some source of money other than those normal places that fueled the past couple of administrations. I think wider thought . I want to ask the audience to thank our panelists for a lively discussion. Really quick, i want to give a shoutout. So before our freddie gray was murdered there were a number of incidents of Police Brutality that resulted in death and theres a group of folks who have been organizing for approximately 820 days or so can around the death of tyrone west. Theyve been organizing every wednesday, something called west wednesday. If youre interested, my man, mike, over to my left, theyve been organizing for weeks. Its tyrone wests family and what we have to do in spaces like this is talk as we can about people who are actually doing activist work and organizing on the ground. Much respect to sister jones who has been the heart and soul of talk about sisters doing work. Out of her own pocket. Much to do with mayor moseley being elected. [inaudible] at the all. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] youre watching booktv, television for serious readers. Watch any program you see online at booktv. Org. Many of this years president ial candidates have written books to introduce themselves to voters and to promote their views of issues. Heres a look at some books inch his newest book, replay all, jeb bush catalogues his email correspondence during his time as the florida governor. President ial candidate and former neurosurgeon ben carson argues that a better understanding of the constitution is necessary to solve americas most pressing issues. In his latest book a more perfect union. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton looks back on her time servening in the obamas a energies in hard choices in a time for truth ted cruz recounts this journeyal a cuban. So i top saginaw. Carly fiorina is another declared candidate for president. In why rising to the challenge she shares lessons she learned from her difficulties and triumphs. Lindsey graham released an ebook on his webs, in my story he details his childhoods and careein the air force. Mike huckabee gives is take on politics and culture in god, guns, grits and gravy and john kashich calls for the return to what he says is traditional american values. In stand for something. George pat pataki look back on his path to the governorship. And rand paul calls for Smaller Government and more bipartisanship in his latest book taking a stand. More president ial hopefuls with books include marco rubio, in American Dream he outlines his plan to advance economic opportunity. Independent vert vermont senator Bernie Sanders is a candidate for president. His 18997 autobiography now titled outsider in the white house was updated to include his time in the senate and the launch of his president ial campaign. And in blue collar consecutive Rick Santorum sis he rep Republic Party must focus on the working class to retake the white house. And donald trump outlans his political platform. And finally, governor chris christie, and former governors Martin Omalley and jim gilmore announces candidacies but have not released books. Booktv has covered many of these candidates. You can watch them one our web site, booktv. Org. This is booktv on cspan2. Television for serious readers. Here our primetime lineup. Tonight at 7 00 p. M. Eastern, npr correspondn tom gelton looks at the immigration act, and then at 58, mariry norris discuss grammar. At 9 00 p. M. Eastern on book tvs Author Interview program, attorney row bert could kaplan talks about the defeet of the defense of marriage act. Then at 10 00 even, the transformationoff hoe american family, and then at 11 30 glen beck talks about his book, pile is about islam. All tonight on booktv. Next on booktv, dem meet treeus minor talks about his book preservation and purpose. [inaudible conversations] good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I guess the microphones work. Okay. My name