Professor, what is the structure of your newest book breathe. Fear, flight and fortune. It is a letter, a series of letters to my son but also a letter to the o larger world, bh about the reality of anxiety, the worry that comes along with being a parent of lack children in particular black boys at this moment in the United States. But also filled with my desire for them to lead a life of beauty and joy in excellence and self regard. Much of which i think has lessons for an extraordinary tradition we have. Where you come up with the idea to write your sent a lett letter. I actually have written him letters privately for years but my editor at the beacon press said is this something need be interested in doing because i talk about my children all the time. I write post about them on social media, initially, what we both had in mind was something that was a bit more lighthearted but then when i started to reflect on what it would mean to try to tell a story to them about my expectation and my learnings and the depth of my love and a story for the world, it became something more sober and i reached into the archive that i had in my mind and tried to have a conversation both with the past and the present and for their future. It reads as if its blown out of you. Thats probably not the case but it reads that. Thank you. It certainly is the book that came out most quickly. My previousl previous work withe foundation and i wrote most of it in japan where i was working for the summer and theres a way which provided contemplation and retreat that allowed it to flow forth but its also the case of the conversation in the book by the conversation that we have all the time. Into crack those conversations into crack that message took time but there is and the Emotional Energy of this task which is reckless and beautiful and exciting in the childrens lives is just like that. [laughter] where did you come up with the title . It is interesting because many people just that there is a reference to air gardner statement i cannot breathe. But there is also a reference the city i was born in birmingham alabama had the worst air quality the year i was born. I was taken about the prevalence of that and the environmental safety and the way it makes it hard toth breathe actually and then i was thinking about the holding off deep anxiety around violent moment of Racial Injustice and also in part because it is connected to my first book which was on hipaa, it was largely about blacks and the extraordinary skill that goes on noted into stay all of those words, the choir of the breast. I want them to breathe and taken what they need to survive and force. But also managing the bo blacks. In navigating the difficult moment which is what it means to get out and fix it without catching a breath. It was a powerful metaphor for me. The fortune what does that mean. The ceo part, i should say that structure comes both from Richard Wright between the world and me and a modification that i talk about, the fear part is self evident. The fear of racism, rather that be the harrowing incidents that we have been seen on video for several years that have been out through American History of the killing of unarmed black people, often by Police Officers without any process and just cause for the most minor infractions or for none at all. That privacy but this year at large in which inequality can limit your opportunities but also get in your head. Those kinds of fears are without question ever present and part of the task of parenting. To me its attend to navigate around the fears, whats of recognition that tomorrow is not really promised. Every day, so you have too navigate and also cannot be completely overwhelmed by the fear, otherwise you will not live, you have to deal with the reality, tragedy and disaster areis possible. And then fly, in some ways is n indication of Toni Morrison an and flight is the moment when he is running away from the law because he has committed aat murder of being lynched essentially. But i thought about flight in a sense of actually taking flight in life, so an extension of the idea not being defined by the fear but how to take flight in a direct reference of coming north with solomon. And the idea of flying if you give up the stuff that weighs you down. And in fortune for me was a way of talking about the abundance that they had that was not about the material, not about inheritance and away we come to describe it. But actually the fortune of her tradition of ancestry of incredible beauty, of creativity in the face of constraint and so i took about everything from the sisters and the repetition of a single composition over and over which functions as a way of thinking about how do i navigate this. But we had this set of notes which we can save for life at navigating the time over and over again. So, that is the foundation of the structure. What do we know about freeman and visa. This is a hard question to esanswer because sometimes in some ways the most important part is that they are fully and absolutely human in all of its complexity. I say that because so often i think, black children in particular are granted that recognition. So i can talk about how they are distinctive she, is a brilliant monthly in understanding human relations in a beautiful writerr and freeman composes extraordinary music and an amazingly gifted artist and they are both really good friends and all of these things but i sometimes these things are true but i dont want it to sound as though im making them exceptional. Because i do believe all children are really special and many children who do notre have parents who can draw attention to their gift are often made to feel as though their children are inadequate. And later home much to offer which that disproportionally falls not just on what children but busboys in particular. So they are really human. To they think about the fact that they wrote a letter to them exposing them to the world . That is why theyre okay with it but i understand that might change over time because my sons are 13 and 16 at a pretty intense stage of development, i give them veto power over the content so i allowed them to say if there were stories they did not want in the book in detail but i hope maybe theyll let me tell later in life but maybe not. But with respect to the idea of being a book tour in the book getting public attention, thats not particular interesting to them and i am not in the intimate domestic life, a public figure and that part of the day to day of our lives is not on display and thats the most important piece for them as a relationship. You right racism is in every step in breath that we take. It really is. You know when you actually start to deconstructed in a detailed fashion and you see everything from how homes are constructed to how frequently the street cleaning operation takes place, who can beware, what opportunity exist, who has bank accounts, who doesnt, who has stock, who doesnt. Walking along the street, whose body elicits a etching, who gets followed in the store, where are their bookstores and rich communities, what do the schools look like, what is the quality of the air we breathe. It is so pervasive in its what part of us makes us uncomfortable as conversations are about race 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. On friday we sent out a tweet promoting your appearance on sunday and in the tweet we put the words are white people you redeemable ask her from princeton university. You took a little issue with that. So i want to read what prompted that question and will put it on thei screen as well so 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 i did not mean individuals, the other precious against total desperation. In them we find the persistence of possibility. A Single Person can be someones hell but a Single Person can be a heaven to or a friend. But i worry that white people are irredeemable and it scares me. What with the complete assembly of the kingdom of identity look like, how would the visceral pool under a cracked open surface. Would we all shatter . Could we put something together again, i dont know, im losing some of my ability to dream a will. So given those to paragraphs is on the queer rather accurate than asking the question. Let me say why the single sentence question is hard for me. Because without the larger context, so often sentences like that trigger a defensiveness that becomes impossible to engage. So the difficulty of social media all the time that is not unique and certainly experienced it. But that second sentence that is a copy yet is important because people here when you say i wonder if people are irredeemable and they hear all white people, and they hear white people as individuals as opposed to identity that is two. When i go into the second paragraph and essay what if we take this identity apart, those people would have a different history or body but it would be a different relationship to identity but i think weha potentially have as a consequence a more humane relationship to each other. Whawhen i went later in the paragraph and i said in individual could be a heaven, were not talking what an individual, certainly both of them that were raised by white man or someone who thinks on so many figures like take for example john brown or howard zinn or bob zellner, who are some of the most precious people in the world, it is important to not have a formulation that removes them from my sense of struggle that im engaged with. One more question before we move on to your other books. Mothering walkways in america is a special calling. That is a sense that my mother said to me, i think about it in a number of different ways. People talk in some ways that are difficult and not necessarily helpful about the challenges that black boys face whether its mass incarceration or inequality in schooling, college attendance, all those sorts of things. I think about it differently. I think about it all of those things are true but i think about wanting to raise my children who identified as black boys that in a way it does not limit their imagination, the possibility, it allows them to understand the facts of racial inequality that keeps them from thinking their superior because the relatively privileged and also it keeps them away from seeking patriarchy or dominance in a society that values those things highly so even though those things are more elusive to black man to attain, its a society that values that an private task is also raising them to not value them. And for the characters in sensitivity and complexity in respect of work of life all of that is a special calling because the lessons to bewh a mn across the board are not so good in the lessons are often not good unless you counter both of those things with the story and also gives them a much greater capacity to be fully human. In the last 19 minutese everything we talked about are these the types of things you teach or in part at princeton . Not really its a departurere for me in the spirit in which i teach. Certainly i teach the work of Richard Wright but i tend to teach much more fact driven and material driven as opposed to the emotional register but i do tethink about teaching of the calling and its important to bring to that of value in humanity and justice and love to the students even though were supposed to be passionate. How does one get a phd and a jd from harvard. I when i graduated from college i was 21 years old and i was just completely in love with ideas and they did not want to choose and they wanted to do everything and i said go to graduate school and law school and they did two years on gravid joint school and then my first year of law, it was a frenzied pace but it was beautiful, it was amazing. I loved it and i learned so much and every day i was being nurtured by the generation of people who came before me and helps me understand the world. We want to play a little bit of music and a little bit of video this is from 1999. Of course that is jesse norman singing other was a parks congressional golden metal ceremony in 1999. What is that song . That song is lift every voice, the song that was known as the International Anthem in the black National Anthem in the 1970s and it is a song that i describe as black americas most precious song gosh, just that clip of the park in alabama and jesse who has departed is incredibly moving. You written a biography ofep the song, may we forever stand is the name of the book, james and john johnson. They are the author and the composer. They were brothers. Who were born in jacksonville, florida, renaissance men and of course in the back of the day to raise men and people who thought every achievement that they had as being in service and became the first secretarygeneral of the dublin cp in the first black man importer. But one of the signature accomplishments as a composition of the song. They were firstgeneration freeman born in 1870s . Yes. Their mothers family had been in bahamian and the father was in virginia. They were of the generation that emerged from slavery with all of the hopes and dreams and isolations that were so quickly dashed. With the end of reconstruction. What was the reception in 1900 and the song was written. What was extraordinary was a song, a wildfire and it was almost immediately embraced a black america. In one of the things i tried to detail in the book is United States does not have a National Anthem at this moment. People were referring to it as an anthem and a big deal in the johnson brothers were educators of the time of the composition and they left florida and moved to new york to work on the alea songwriters in part because thee was a terrible fire in city so they went there in florida as a song caught on. And it caught on, block club woman circulated it, they reprinted it, began to be printed in the back of hymnals, an anthem of communities making. They did not describe it as an anthem and intended as an anth anthem. If we are continue playing the video wehi wouldve seen presidt clinton. , singing. Is one distinction, he may be the only u. S. President that may operate three verses. From your book may we forever stand hiphop uttered its farewell to the black National Anthem. Where are you going. So, one of the things i talk about this in my book is there are some things that happen in the 70s and 80s is a transformation both of black social and political life to have to do with an engagement of an association on life and industrialization. And there is a piece in as a reverend quoted,nd he said black people are the more conscience of the nation. Hiphop was the refusal ofth opposition. It is bold, not formal, it is profane and not an unwilling to perform a particular raveling and outlaw which is a commonplace in american culture. It is a different public presence for africanamericans. So that departure was significant but what i also talk about in the book, the song keeps coming back, there was various moments that it was going to teeter out completely and it keeps coming back even though the institutions in the communities in which it was song on weekly or daily basis dont exist in the black communities. What did you learn about the song in researching. I will say the biggest surprise, so much i lied about was how it was, it sunk an institutional life in various kinds of organizations. Its so exciting to see thes. Graduation program on the dressmakers academy where they sing a song every day and they talk about it on the porch of the school. But what surprised me and was so beautiful was how many educators used it as a tool so i encountered all these curriculums which the vocabulary lessons that the song becomes a basis which is a history reference that is played and painted mice in school and it really had so many functions and to see the way that the teache teachers, so many black teachers and segregated schools took seriously the task of preparing, to become warriors for justice was so moving. You share your views on this 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 it alongside of conscious toot be one against te pessimism that threatens to descend every turn but when i look around the world as a mini close mouse, our eyes focused on the page, nervous gestures and im reminded not to be diffused about the moment in which we live grasping randomly in traditions and archives in desperate need of rebuilding and building new. Right. One of the things that emerged with me with part of the book and i took but in the early chapters about associational life. It was so robust in the black American Life was so political in the context of jim crow the people belong to 10 12 different organizations and have commitment overha a lifetime and we dont live that way anymore. Thats not just black americans, thats americans in general. That is precisely what was necessary to wage into superlight revolution. Its necessarily to solve social problems, you have to have a sense of being a member of a community who are working together whether its mutual dependence. And so theres a way in which aa very emotional and maybe sentimental but what was most important about it was it was a tool for creating an emotional bond in the service. Servic that the community itself is ultimately what was most important. More important than whether we sing that particular song is the kind of ritual and commitment that made it so powerful thats what we need to reembrace. Author and princeton professor imani perry is our guest this month on indepth. Whats a month we invited author to talk about his or her body of work and you take your calls and we reach that point of the program. We will put the phone lines up you will see them in a minute, 2027488200 if you live in the east and central time zones. 7488201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. If you cant get through on the phone lines and would prefer to send a text you can send a text message to this number 2027488003 and we will put that and leave that up throughout the program so you get the correct number, 2027488003. You can also contact us via social media just remember booktv. Imani perry is the author of five books, six books. Profits of the hud was her first politics and poetics in the hiphop in 2004, more beautiful and more terrible the embrace and transcendence of racial inequality in the u. S. 2011 sexy thing on gender and liberation came out in 2018 as did may we forever stand history of the black National Anthem and looking for lorraine the radiant and radical life