Good evening and welcome to busboys and poets. My name is kristin king. On the book Events Manager here at the busboys and poets books and i want to thank you all for joining us this evening. A couple minutes before we begin first and foremost the book is available for purchase in the bookstore and will be available after the event. In addition to that there will be assigning. Second we do have a fantastic fall lineup coming up at all six of our busboys and poets locations this fall. Theres a signup list being passed around so please feel free to add your name and your email address to that. Thank you again for joining us. Please join me in welcoming andy and dr. Kendi. [applause] its a pleasure to have all of you here on this rainy afternoon although compared to whats happening our hearts and minds go to the people they are. I want to welcome all of you for being here and let you know independent bookstores are a dying breed. They can only make a comeback if you support them and i support them i dont mean just say its nice to have been there but actually to buy books there. I want to admonish to not to go home and buy it from amazon. Amazon has good things but looks are not one of those. Authors are very important in and i understand it but i think their bookstores are equally important and you can show your love for purchasing books there so thank you. We are thrilled to have with us this ibram kendi a professor of history and National Relations and the founding direct her of the Antiracist Research policy center at american university. He is a frequent speaker and has been everywhere lately. For those of you who may have hurt him or seen him hes been on many different programs and shows anything other of the book we are going to speak about today but also the black campus movement, black students in the reconstitution of higher education. The book we are talking about today stamped from the beginning the definitive beginning of racist ideas in america. Hes working on a third book right now, how i became an antiracist. And what should we expect in that book . That is what your publisher is asking. Exactly. Welcome to busboys and poets. Its pleasure to have you here. Many of you may know that this place was named after Langston Hughes. I want to ask you a very important let america be america again. Let america be the dream. He wrote that in the 1930s. A black man living in this country saying let america be america again and today we hear some who support donald trump make America Great again. I think Langston Hughes first of all i should say that such a provocative question. Its got my mind running and of course it like to thank you andy for facilitating and having a conversation with me today about stamped from the beginning. I would like to thank busboys and most of all you all for coming out to have dialogue with us about race in america. Back to the question or that gave me time to think about it. [laughter] i think the 1930s was a time particularly in the early 1930s in which america was experiencing the Great Depression which millions of americans were out of work particularly black people and in many ways you had many different types of people trying to imagine the type of place america could be and they were measuring that type of place they stomp dreams that america has long presented itself as. I think thats what Langston Hughes was speaking to. Black black americans have long been envisioning and dreaming for an america that was truly about freedom, an america that was truly about quality, an america that was truly about an america that lived up to what was professed to be the view. Thats what Langston Hughes was speaking to. I think what the current president was speaking to a somewhat different and that difference was in america for white and by white men and i say the title of stamped from the beginning was derived from Jefferson Davis the president of the confederacy who write before he talked about equality in the black to white racist things than from the beginning he talked about how the nation was founded for white men, by white men and over the course of American History there has been racial progress. There has been gender progress. There has been progress in many different ways but theres also been a progression of racism and other forms of bigotry. That progress for white men, that for them took them away from the america that they desired and america built on White Supremacy and i think thats the america the donald trump is trying to recreate. You speak about the idea that John Mcwhorter professor at Columbia University speaks about the idea that once a bomb at a collectively run a postracial america. Clearly that is not come to be true but speak about the state of race in America Today antitrump as compared to under obama. His trump better for his Race Relations or worse . And 99mile per hour softball. [laughter] i want to give you a moment to think about it prefaced with the understanding that what i mean by that just to be clear is that trump has opened up a lot of wounds that were covered up under obama. Those wounds needed to be opened the idea that by opening these wounds we actually address them. We ignored race and racism in this country are way too long. We kick the can of racism down the road hoping that somehow was going to go away and clearly thats not how conflict is resolved. We cant avoid it. We have to deal with it. His Trump Holding a mirror up to america and saying we need to look at this . I think so and to answer your question i think the beauty is probably not the best word but what is good is america has experienced obama and trump backtoback and what i mean by that is to me in many ways, and i think obama representative racial progress for america. But i would argue that donald trump represents aggression of racism. Historically americas racial history has been a dual history, a simultaneous racial progress and a progression of racism. Typically racist progress of the progression of racism has followed racial progress. In other words and black people broke down barriers when other groups broke down racist barriers typically what happened was those who benefited from those barriers figured out ways to create new evermore sophisticated barriers and then they created new and ever more sophisticated racist ideas blind us from the carriers to get us thinking the reason why inequality is persisting or growing is because they inferiority of black people. I think thats what certainly happening now. Donald trump has allowed people to see what they did not want to see during obamas presidency when they were so focused on his embodiment of racial progress. Now we are able to see trump embodied in the progression of racism and i think thats good for america. Especially from the perspective of people who are suffering under the foot of Racial Discrimination who are suffering under the flood of racist policies and for americans to finally see that foot. The book speaks about the definitive analysis of racist ideas. Can you give us examples and order some racist ideas and an america that we all as americans assume . To racist ideas that are very popular even within those communities of people who consider themselves to be progressives. That is this idea and the most dangerous racist ideas the idea of dangerous black people. Anybody know what im talking about . In other words the idea that southeast d. C. Is the most dangerous part of the city. Does anybody believe that . Has anybody thought that . How do we come to that idea . We have come to that idea based on crime data and crime data is typically based on arrests and incarceration rates. What that means is apparently the community that has higher levels of arrests and levels of incarceration have more crime than another communities what that means is people in this room every time we commit crimes we get arrested or certain neighborhoods and certain people are more suspected because of the color of their skin so therefore that leads to higher arrests and incarceration rates. There is no relationship between black men and Violent Crime. Thats why if you look at black communities black middle income neighborhoods do not have the same levels of Violent Crime of extremely poor black neighborhoods and that there was a direct relationship between and Violent Crime no matter the income level of the neighborhood there would be similar levels of Violent Crime but theres not. And when we look at across other racial groups we see a similar story whether white, latino or other. You have higher levels of Violent Crime of cross racial groups. For us to think of these neighborhoods is dangerous black neighborhoods when in fact we should be thinking of them as dangerous unemployed neighborhoods ordered dangerous impoverished neighborhoods but that would change the policy conversation. Then we wouldnt say the problem is blackonblack crime. The problem is family is pretty and said we would say the problem is jobs. Another popular racist idea is that black children are achieving at a lower level than white children. Thats what that basically says, the black children are intellectually inferior to white children, to asian children and how do people render this . Poor black children score lower on standardized tests. Therefore standardized test, we believe standardized test actually measure intelligence. But then when we actually study what standardized tests really measure we find standardized test primarily measure to things. If somebody can take a test well or there is a relationship between income level of someones parents and their score on a test so it shows us that somebody has money. We think that actually shows intelligence. The problem is these black children, the problem is their parents. The problem is they keep in many two of course take education more seriously. I could go on and on but those are examples of ways in which we use measures to render like people inferior and of course standardized tests were created by eugenicist him. Eugenics who use these programs with hundreds of thousands of black people in the south. You also speak about examples where in some instances they say black men are more violent actually. Only think of Violent Crime we dont include drunk driving in the category of Violent Crime then we start to think why do we consider drunk drivers to be violent criminals . They kill people and injured people. To boldly the people they injured killer people who are completely innocent and what i mean by completely innocent is when we look at some of these neighborhoods where there are high levels of Violent Crime these are people who are being subjected to homicides that are actually involved lets say in particular activities whether drug or gang at favortie but the people who are subjected to the wrath of drunk drivers or people who are trying to get home. We dont even understand that to be a Violent Crime. 1986 at the height of the socalled epidemic and there were more people who died that year from drunk drivers than they did from homicides and drug overdoses combined. When we look at the number of people who are subject violence of course you dont render those people to be criminals in some study showed the vast majority of drunk drivers in the country are white men. All of those communities with all those drunk drivers people dont understand their neighborhood is dangerous because people dont see why people is dangerous. To be dangerous is to be black. What prompted you to write the book . I find it really fascinating because a lot of times you have the same kind of i think yours is a very different fresh look at race and Race Relations. Is your intention here, what is the intention of the book . Im going to calm down. [laughter] this gives me the opportunity to calm down. I wish i had this beautiful sort of flowery story about the creation of this book but really it came about as a result of another project. A Research Project in which i was looking into the origin of lack studies in the 60s and i found black studies and calling for black studies were saying all the disciplines or races so we needed new discipline which they called lack studies. Then i started writing the history of the origin of lack studies and i wanted to chronicle the scientific racism that was pervasive in the academy and then i started reading up on the history of scientific racism and racist ideas were brought and i started finding many of these were saying racist ideas had become marginal in the 1940s. Have students in the 60s or black power more broadly stating that racism and racist ideas were pervasive. You have scholars and historians saying no, it became marginal by the 40 so clearly its the conundrum and what led me down the path of writing this book. And what i realized was the way we are defining a racist idea was actually the problem. These two groups were defining a racist idea differently. Students in the 60s particularly students who were inspired by black power who are pushing for black studies were calling assimilationist ideas racist ideas. Historic way scholars and historians have not classified assimilationist ideas as racist ideas. The book i differentiate between segregationist ideas and assimilationist ideas which are two kinds of racist ideas. Segregationist ideas are more well understood or known as racist ideas. These are ideas suggesting that lets say black people are by nature inferior. Black people are biologically inferior. And assimilationist ideas state that racial groups are equal but black people are inferior by culture. Lack people are not inferior by nature as segregationists would say. Black people are inferior by nature nurture. Black people are not permanently inferior as segregationists would say. Assimilationist would say we have the capacity to civilize and thats what we should be doing. Clearly the students the 60s who were inspired by black power growing their afrosat embracing the American Culture for them hearing their professors who were assimilationist who were calling themselves nonracist like every other racist in history, because you know everyone says they are not racist. Hes professors were black or white. Black or white, yes. Clearly when these people were suggesting that the key to solving the race problem is black people assimilate is the africanAmerican Culture of the black family was pathological. When they heard these things again they were inspired by black power and a few those ideas as racist and those were the ideas are primarily work dominating academia in the mid60s. These assimilationist ideas through the works of people like Daniel Patrick moynihan or or Nathan Glaser wrote a prominent book in 1963 with Daniel Patrick moynihan called the melting pot in the book he said black people dont have a culture that they can guard and protect. Or somebody like gun or mirror ball. He wrote a famous book in 1944 called the american dilemma which were largely in the civil rights movement. The book he classified africanAmerican Culture is pathological and that would be in the interest of black people to assimilate into the customs and culture that white people hold. These are the ideas these students pushed back against and these were the ideas that classified or i should say reclassified as racist ideas and show the way in which assimilationist and segregationists have long argued about how when why black people were inferior while antiracist were unknown. Hes divide the book by sections named after five major figures in American History starting with mathur and going to Thomas JeffersonWilliam Lloyd harrison w. E. B. Dubois and angela davis. We welcome back to Thomas Jefferson in a moment but i wanted to ask you more specifically how did you come up with the five individuals and why them . First of all i wanted to make this long history of racist ideas as accessible as possible to the average raider. I didnt really write this book for the Academic Community although the Academic Community is reading the book and using the book. I wrote it for everyday people because all of this are affected by these ideas. We are affected by how race in america and in doing so i thought what is the best way to prevent this very long and complex narrative that would be engaging and so we realized lets tell those stories through the lives of a major character or in the case of five major characters each representing a different section in a different time period in American History. I wanted use a major character whose life bracketed key. Then america so Cotton Mather primarily was the major character during colonial america. Thomas jefferson was primarily from the development or the push for independence until the 1820s. On the eve of the Abolitionist Movement and William Lloyd garrison come the third character from the Abolitionist Movement in the 1830s until the end of reconstruction and then dubois from reconstruction until civil rights and then angela davis from civil rights to this day. I also wanted characters whose lives were adjusting. In the case of Cotton Mather, he imagined christians had white souls. He was encouraging white people to become christians so you ca