Is professor ron miller on his book sellout. When you and i spoke on the phone to book this interview, you said that since moving to lynchburg, the perspective had changed. Can you explain that . When i wrote the book i was on the outskirts of washington, d. C. , and the center cover that has an influence on the perspective and view of things and i was politically active at the time so all of those things made the book not only a memoir explanation of how someone could grow up in a family and cited with very conservative values and then end up becoming politically conservative. Coming into the present situation of lynchburg, it is an academic perspective and since it is a private christian institution, the logical perspective came up to play as well. I think a lot of the issues that i talk about in the book were Political Solutions that look to more spiritual solutions. Particularly since the community that i dont live here but just Liberty University that lynchburg has given a different perspective and maybe more empathy about the challenges people are facing and what they need to do to overcome. Host we talk about some of the topics which you are tackling. Guest the titl title is probably a provocativwaspubliclg that makes it stand out, musings from uncle toms porch. Part of it is because there tends to be a reaction on the part of some people that youre a conservative or a black man for that matter and some people react poorly to it so i used to joke that when you say youve are a conservative, you can inherit things your mother never gave you and i just decided to go in the name and use it as a way to start a conversation particularly about the phrase uncle tom which has come to me in modern discourse but if you read the novel it means something totally different. The author. Beecher stowe said that christ like archetypes so it evolved into what it has and i thought im going to reclaim it, so that was the purpose to get a few eyeballs on the cover and then back. With some of the issues that you were talkinyoure talking book. It talks about how i arrived personally and the temperament and the ideas. I talk about the areas that seem to be really troublesome when we talk about a black experience in america. I talk about education, i talk about the economic wellbeing of the community, the Family Structure and all the things and with my view was and what i thought the solutions were from a political perspective. What has changed name me is that i acknowledge that because of my upbringing, a lot of things that i experience are not the experiences of a love black people in these communities. I was raised into a military family, two parent family. They are still married and celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Always an integrated neighborhoodin integratedneighbs corrugate, datedcommunities. I think over time its become more political and spiritual and i thought to myself was wha wouy life have been like if id been born in west baltimore maryland to a single mother or in the ferguson missouri or any of these flash points that weve seen in the news, what is the only thinif theonly thing i saws risk and threat. One of the only father figure fs we have are the teenagers on the street who gathered together as a gang. What if my time i is my time ins just trying to survive much less learn anything. I started to say i cant discount experiences that are not my own. Experiences are very personal and even in the book you may disagree with what i say that thesbutthese are my experiences. And i think that applies both ways. I still believe in the power of the solutions and the agency and ability to take charge and overcome the circumstances on which we find ourselves i understand that that is not easy to do when you start off with a deficit and i also understand that all of the walls into Political Solutions in the world dont mean anything if there isnt a hard life change. I even mentioned that in the book and can conclude with the idea if you lik that i feel likt go far enough with it and in the writing ive done since then i emphasize the idea taking it out of the realm of the political in todays era where the politics has become so fractious but we are polarized a dont think it is a place that they can be found particularly when you are talking about something as longstanding as the relationship. We are approaching almost 500 years since the first slaves were brought to the shores of what is now the United States of america. They were slaves that landed in the carolinas in the 15 hundreds. They escaped that was the first time so we have been dealing with this for a very long time and ever since the emancipation proclamation, we have had walls and amendments to the constitution. Weve had guidelines, executive orders, you name it. We are still struggling with this all of these years later and i believe that it is going to take a spiritual solution and for my perspective, it is going to take a spiritual community, the Christian Community by example. They have done a poor job have it to this point and that is where i developed by emphasis on the statehouse or the white house and a lot more when the church house. If theyve been wanting t done m a discourse that created the concept of the other and whenever there is an other it becomes the enemy and it is easy to set them apart unless we start relating to the fact there is an inherent godlike in all of us that he didnt distinguish between me or you or anyone else that he didnt put the image of god in massive breaks down the ability to put us on the other side. They lend themselves to this change and there was an article about the gun laws in the state of illinois and the city of chicago and this was in the wake of the record session. We are going to make it as challenging as possible to get. People that lived in the suburbs were looking toward them to protect themselves from crying icrime intheir neighborhoods. And so, i am thinking to myself this is a Second Amendment issue. Im going to publish an article like this and all of my conservative friends will be up in arms about all these people trying to protect themselves but cant get access to what they need. What i got was a bath of very disappointing commentary from conservative friends about black people with criminal records not being able to get concealed carry permits. Im not saying that everyone commented that way but enough of them did to where it was almost like its left me in the face and i said to myself i have defended this Political Community or whatever you want to call it, and i never expected that an i dont want anyone to read into that i think that all conservatives are racist, i dont. That response surprised me becausbecausebecause if it has e workingclass community i wonderewonderif they would havee same way with those kind of comments and stereotypes. That made me step back and start to think maybe i need to reflect on where we are in america right now as a nation because there are some things out there that still have not changed. The colleagues that responded that way, did you ever bring up how you were taken aback by the response and what did they say . They were not the majority that there was enough that it was a concern, they shrugged their shoulders. It seemed if you showed empathy toward the other, whomever it was when he became one of them, so i cant tell you how many times i put something out there and somebody would push back. If you do not yield or acknowledge their point of view is correct, all of a sudden your credentials gets take get takend you lose your card. So i kind of learned to brush off. Its a little bit of a wasteland when it comes to dialogue or any kind of supervised dialogue. I took of the communication being there to inform, inspire. I try not to inflame but sometimes it is going to happen and i just accept it and never respond in kind and i just move on. If you couldnt say anything to the Current Congress going on with what your message be to them . If the purpose was otherwise, then consider whether or not you need to be there. Twice a month we take American History tv on the road to explore the life and history of a selected city working with our Cable Partners because it various sites and we interview local historians, authors and civic leaders. You can watch any of the past interviews and tours by selecting the cspan2 or from the dropdown at the top of the page or by visiting cspan. Org. You can also follow the tour on twitter for behindthescenes images and video. The handle is asked cspan cities. Author talks and callings, this years festival features charles sykes, military historian max boot investigative journalists johnson and many other authors. Later at the virginia festival of the book in charlottesville and the National Black writers conference in new york. In april we are headed to texas for the san antonio book festival and will be live once s once again at the Los Angeles Times festival of books. [inaudible conversations] good evening and welcome to politics and prose and thank you for coming out on this rather chilly evening. I am th the coowner along withy