There are three sections, fear, fly, and fortune. Its an epistolary work. Its a series of letters to my sons but of course its also a letter to the larger world. Both about the reality of the terror and anxiety and worry of being a parent to black children come in particularly black boys at this moment. Its also filled with my desire for them to lead a life of beauty and joy. And excellence. And self regard. Much of which i think one finds the lessons for an extraordinary tradition we have to draw from. Where did you come up with the idea to write your sons a letter . I actually have written them letters privately for years but my editor at beacon press, set is this something youd be interested in doing. Initially i think what we both had in mind was something that was probably aba story for them and the world. It became something more sober. I reached into the archives that i had in my mind of the works that for me did that and try to have a conversation both with the past and the present. It reads as if it flowed out of you. Its probably not the case but read that way. Thank you. It certainly the book that came out most quickly. I wrote most of it one of your own in japan where i was working for the summer. Its also the cases the conversation to the book of the conversations we had all the time. To craft those conversations to craft that that message took time but there is something that just flowed forth. And the Emotional Energy i think of this task which is kinda breathless and beautiful and exciting. Ready to come up with the title . Its so interesting because as many people guest, there is a reference there to Eric Gardners statement, i cant breathe. But theres also a reference a athe city i was born in rmbirmingham alabama had the worst air quality in the nation in the year i was born. I was thinking about the prevalence of asthma. An environmental racism. In the way it makes it very hard to breathe actually. Was thinking about the kind of holding ones breath and moments of deep anxiety around the threat of a violent moments of racial injustice. Also in part because connected to my first book which was on hiphop, i came in age and an art form thats largely about a athe extraordinary skill of wrappers that often goes unnoticed as to say all those words requires the management of the breath. I want them to breathe in a sense of having taken in what they need to survive and flourish. Navigating the difficult moments, which it means to get out 16 bars with barely catching her breath. It was a powerful metaphor for me. Fear, fly, fortune, what do they need . That structure comes both from Richard Wrights native son and tallahassee there is a modification that i will talk about. The fear is in some ways selfevident. The ravages of racism whether that be the kind of in the harrowing incidents we been seeing on video for several years but been throughout American History of the killing of unarmed black people often by police officers. Without any process without any just cause. For the most minor of infection. Or none at tiall. But the fear at large. The ways in which inequality can delimit your opportunities but also getting your head. Those kinds of fears are without question ever present and part of the task of parenting for me is to attempt to navigate around those fears with the recognition that tomorrow it really isnt promised. So you have to attempt to navigate but you also cannot be completely overwhelmed by the fear otherwise you wont live. You have to deal with the reality the tragedy and disaster are possible. Add fly is in some ways an indication of Toni Morrison and flight, for native son is the moment when the protagonist ab is running away from the law because hes committed and murdered edits prompted by his terror. Of being lynched essentially. I thought about flight and the sense of e actually taking flig in life. An extension of the idea of not being defied by the fear but how to take flight. Emits a direct reference to tony morris song of solomon. In the idea of flying if you give up the stuff that weighs you down as she says. And in fortune for me was a way of talking about the abundance that they have thats not about the material fortune. Its not about inheritance in the way that we tend to describe it as riches. But actually the fortune of a tradition of an ancestry of resilience of incredible beauty. Of creativity even in the face of constraint so i talk about everything from our ancestors to Thelonious Monk and his mastery, the repetition of a single composition over and over which really function as a way of thinking about, how do we navigate this . We have this set of notes which we could say as a metaphor for life and navigating the terms over and over again. Thats sort of the foundation of the structure. What we know about freeman and esa . This is a hard question to answer because sometimes they tell me Different Things to tell the world what im talking about this book. In some ways the most important part is that they are fully and absolutely human in all of its complexity. I say it that way because so often i think black children in particular are granted that recognition. I could talk about how they are distinctive i can talk about freeman is composes extraordinary music and he is an amazingly gifted artist. Both really good friends. All of these things. I sometimes have to hesitate because these things are true about them but i dont want it to sound as though im making them exceptional. Because i really do believe that all children are really a special. In many children who dont have parents who can draw attention to their gifts are often made to feel as though their children are inadequate. What about they think about the fact that you wrote a letter to them exposing them to the world . Thus far they are okay with it but i also they also understand that might change over time. Because my sons are 13 and 16. They are in a pretty intense stage of development each of them. I did give them veto power over the content in the book so i allowed them to say if there were stories they didnt want in the book if there were details that i hope maybe they let me tell later in life but maybe not. Who in our intimate domestic life i am not a public figure. That part of the day to day of our lives really isnt on display. Thats the most important piece for them is the relationship. From your book you write that racism is in every step and breath we take. It really is. When you actually start to deconstruct it in a detailed fashion and you see everything from households are constructed cobalt frequently the street cleaning operations take place, who can be aware, what opportunities exist, who has bank accounts, who doesnt commit walking along the street whose body elicits a clutching of the purse. We are there bookstores in which communities . What do the Schools Look Like . It is so pervasive. Its part of what makes an Uncomfortable Conversations about race are for so many people. We cannot function as a Decent Society without talking about it because we are in the thick of it all the time. Imani perry, on friday we sent out a tweet promoting your appearance here on sunday and in the tweet we put the words our white people irredeemable, asks imani perry at Princeton University you took a little issue with that. I did. I want to read from breathe a letter to my sons what prompted that question. We will put it on the screen as well. We will give you a chance to talk about this a little bit. Here is a confession, recently i have wondered if white people are irredeemable. Again, i have to issue a caveat for the sensitive, no i do not mean individuals, individuals are the precious bulwark against total desperation. And then we find the persistence of possibility. Of course a Single Person can be someones hell but a Single Person can be a have been too boyfriend. But i worry that white frpeople are irredeemable and it scares me. What would the complete dissembling of the kingdom of identity look like . How would the visceral pulse under cracked open surface. Given those two paragraphs. Without the larger context often sentences like that trigger a dispenser this step becomes impossible to gauge. This is the difficulty of social media all the time. The second sentence that its caveat is important because people here when you say i wonder if white people irredeemable, they hear all white people. They hear white people as individuals as opposed to whiteness as an identity that clung to. So that when i go on to the second paragraph where and what, what if i took this unidentity apart those people would not have a different history or body. But it would be a better relationship to identity. I think what would potentially have as a consequence a more humane relationship to each other. When i went into later in the first paragraph when im saying a person an individual can be a habit not talking about individuals and individual can be a heaven certainly both someone raised by a white man or as someone who thinks of so many figures like john brown or howard dan or bobs owner who i think are some of the most precious people in the world its important to me to not have a formulation that removes them from my sense of the struggle that im engaged in. One more question about breathe before we move on to some of your other books. Mothering black boys in america is a special calling. Yeah the sentence that my mother said to me. I think about it in a number of different iways. One of course is that there is of course all the risks. People talk about incessantly, in some ways that are difficult i think and maybe not necessarily helpful about the challenges that black boys face in this world whether mass incarceration or inequality and schooling org High School Graduation rates of College Attendance rates or unemployment. I think about it differently, i think about it, all those things are true but i think about the simultaneity of wanting to raise my children who are identified as black boys that in a way that doesnt delimit their imaginations their sense of possibilities it allows them to understand the facts of racial inequality. That keeps them from from thinking that they are superior o to people because they are relatively privileged. These are also the other people generally. And also that keeps them away from seeking patriarchy or dominance in this society that values those things highly. So that even though those things are more e elusive for black men to attain as a society that values that and part of the task is also raising them, for me, to not value that but to value their characters and their sensitivity and their complexity. And other people around them irrespective of what walk of life they come from. All of that is a special calling because the lessons about what it means to be a man across the board often times impaling things that are not so good and then in the lessons of what blackness is is often times not so good unless you counter both of those ofthings. With a story that i think is more accurate but also much more loving and gives a much greater capacity to be fully human. In the last 19 minutes, everything we talked about are these the types of things that you teach or in part at princeton . Not really, which is interesting. In some ways this is a departure for me. It is the spirit with which i teach. Certainly i teach the work of Toni Morrison and i taught the work of Richard Wright but i tend to teach much more fact driven and material driven as opposed to the kind of emotional register but i do think of teaching itself as a calling. Its important to bring to that ones sense of values and humanity and justice and love to the students even though we are supposed to be somewhat dispassionate. How does one get a phd and a jd from harvard at the same time . Unwisely. [laughter] when i was, i graduated from college i was 21 years old i was just completely in love with the life of the mind and i didnt want to choose and i want to do everything and i said i will apply to both graduate school law school i did two years of graduate school its with my orals and did my first year of law school it was sort of a frenzied pace but it was beautiful and i amazing. I loved it. I learned so much and every day i was being nurtured by all of these generations of people who came before me. And help me understand the world. We want to play a little bit of music and video this is from 1999. [singing] of course this is jesse norman singing at the rosa parks congressional goldmedal ceremony in 1999. What is that song . That song is lift every voice and sing. The song that was known as the neoNational Anthem and the black National Anthem after the 1970s. It is a song that i described as black americas most precious song. Just that clip of rosa parks who of course is a alabama woman and jesse norman who was recently departed incredibly moving. Youve written a biography. Of the song. Yes. May we forever stand is the name of the book. James Weldon Johnson and John Rosemont johnson. They are the author and composer they were brothers who were born in Jacksonville Florida renaissance man and of course back in the day they were called the race men people who thought every achievement that they had as being in service of the race. abbecame the first secretarygeneral of the naacp. The first black man admitted to the bar and for the really extraordinary but one of the signature accomplishments of both of their lives was a composition of the song. They were first generation born in the 1870s. Yes. Their mothers family hadnt been enslaved with bahamian and their fathers family had been enslaved in virginia but of that generation that emerged from slavery with all these hopes and dreams and aspirations that were so quickly dashed with the end of free construction. What was the reception in 1900s when the song was ao written. What was extraordinary is that the song caught on like wildfire United States did not have a National Anthem at this moment. ableft florida and moved up to new york to work on ab alias songwriters import because they had been a terrible fire. They actually work there in florida as the song caught on. It caught on across schoolchildren passed it on. Black club women circulated it. They reprinted it began to be printed in the back of omhymnal. It was sort of an anthem of the communities making. They did not describe it as an anthem. They did not intend it necessarily as an anthem but black communities throughout the south said this is our anthem. If we had continued playing the video we would have seen then president clinton. Yes. Who knows all three verses. Its one of his distinctions i think he may be the only. [singing] president who ever knew all three verses of lift from your book may we forever stand, hiphop uttered its farewell to the black National Anthem. Where you going there . One of the things, i talk about this in my first book is there is something that happens in the 70s and 80s which is a transformation both of some norms in black social and political life that have to do with the kind of Civic Engagement and associational life. And its also being connected to the industrialization and there is a piece where i quote the reverend Joseph Lowery sometimes on this where he says he said, may he rest in peace, black people are the moral conscience of the nation. Hiphop is a refusal of that position. It is bold, its not formal, its profane and insistent and unwilling to perform a particular kind of aas a reveling in outlaw. Which is a commonplace in american culture. But its a different kind of public presence for africanamericans. So that departure i think was significant but what i also talk about in the book is the song keeps coming back. There been various moments where weve seen it seemed like it was going to teeter out completely. It keeps coming back. Even though the kind of institutions, the kind of communities in which it was song on a weekly or daily basis dont exist in the same way in black communities. What did you learn about the song in researching this book . I will say the biggest surprise, so much of what i read about is about how it was ensconced in institutional life. In various kinds of organizations. It was so exciting to see the Graduation Program like dressmakers academy where they sing the song or every day when Dizzy Gillespie talks about ab singing the song on the porch of the school looking out on cotton fields. But what surprised me and was so beautiful was how many educators used it as a tool. I encountered all these curriculum in which there are vocabulary lessons that the song becomes the basis of, there are history lessons, there are plays, pantomimes in school so it really has so many functions and to see the way that the teacher so many black teachers segregated schools and underfunded schools took seriously the task of preparing young people not just for the future but to become warriors for justice was so moving. You s share your views on th in the book and i want to read that very quickly. You write i like many other people find singing lift every voice and sing alongside other people of conscience to be one bulwark against a pessimism that threatens to descend at every turn when i look around the room and see so many close mouth eyes focused on the page, nervous gestures im reminded not to be deceived about the moment in which we live grasping somewhat randomly into traditions and their archives and yet in desperate need of rebuilding tradition or building a new. Right. One of the things that emerged for me as part of the book and i talk a lot in the early chapters about associational life. Taking this from alexis de tocqueville to talk about americans love to join groups. Americans created club for everything that was so robust. The black americans associational life was very explicitly political in the context of jim crow. People would belong to like 10 or 12 different separate different organizations and have commitments to them over a lifetime. We dont live that way anymore, across the board, not just ymbuccaneers, thats americans general. But that is precisely what was necessary sto wage certainly civil rights revolu