Includes nighthawks, doctor kings refrigerator, dreamer, facing a good thing and Middle Passage for which he won the National Book award in 25 years ago now. 1990. Wow. In 2002 he received the arthur letters award in literature from the American Academy of arts and letters. In the format tonight will beam remarks by Clifford Thompson and a conversation by doctor johnson and mr. Thompson and then we have time for your questions. Without further ado, help me welcome Clifford Thompson. [applause] thank you, thank you all for coming. And thanks to the library for hosting this, its great to appear with doctor johnson. I thought what i would do is read the first few pages of the introduction to my book what it is and then lay out the way the rest of the book is set up. Put on my old man specs so i can see. This is from the introduction. I am a black man, brooklynbased, 54 years old as i write this, for many years as i can remember there has been at the core of my being making me who i am or who i feel i am the belief that i must treat everyone as an individual that i must not base my judgments on anything as inconsequential as skin color. For most of my adult life i have chosen to see myself as an american because of the contribution the black people have made to this country and how inextricably the country is tied to my heritage and despite the white racist beliefs that this country is there is one that it is mine. But living according to these principles has somebody been taught. In 1920s moving to integrated circles in college and beyond i sometimes felt like the only black person i knew who was not reluctant because of distrust dislike or both to be in the predominantly white settings were made interests often took me. I cling stubbornly to my beliefs and in my mid20s i found what i considered to be what i picked up somewhat belatedly the books of james baldwin. Moving aside for the moment the music of baldwin sentences the grandness of his vision the wisdom and lyricism he brings to expressing the anger and ache of being black in america he was the first model i found one who brought everything he had to bear on opposing racism without being racist himself. In the underappreciated how long the train has been gone and his nonfiction no more eloquent than the fire next time of the abloves deeply and without regard to the pigmentation. While the assassinations of malcolm x and Martin Luther king jr. Along with other aspects of the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement left baldwin embittered and disillusioned they did not ultimately compromise his humanity or make them into a racist he remained for me a model of how to conduct ones self with regards to race. Yet i still felt confusion, there was one substance of difference between me and the white people in my circle, being white i discovered to make one exempt from the question of who one is. They were americans these white people and never seem to occur to them and certainly no one ever indicated to them they should think otherwise. Many black people of course are exempt from this question of who they are by virtue of living and working largely or wholly among other black. If a persons life and interest have taken them to places where he looks different than most others that person may begin to ask where the similarities between himself and the others and of the differences beyond the obvious when began. What the basis for these similarities is and what the basis for the difference is and to watch camp similarity or difference nationality falls. With regards to the very question of whether nationality constitutes a bond or barrier between oneself or others the basis of this question is an unspoken assumption that runs so deep that is reinforced so often and in so many ways that i passed three decades of life on earth before i questioned it. The assumption that being american means being white, at best, the place of blacks in all the seem to be the one described Comedian Chris Rock that said for us america is like the uncle who molested you and then paid for your college education. As much as i would like to say i began to question that assumption on my own, i had help, it was the work of the essay of Stanley Crouch which in turn led me to the work of his mentor and soon to be mine, albert murray, that open my eyes. Murrays books beginning with the only americans proposed an alternate view that america whether simply being white monster that feeds on people of color and only the most self hating of dark skinned folks would identify with is in fact largely black creation in terms of everything from culture to physical labor and that the blood sweat and investment of generations of blacks make america our home as much as it is anyone. According to this view, the struggles blacks have historically faced or provided the obstacles over which we demonstrated the ability to triumph. As murray wrote in the army americans the legendary exploits of white u. S. Backwoods abbecome relatively safe when one sets aside the breathtaking escapes of a fugitive slave beating himself north to faraway canada through swamp and town alike seeking freedom. Nobody was chasing daniel boone. Just say im an american then is not an act of capitulation but the first step toward claiming ones birthright recognizing the setting of ones ancestor triumphs and adventures its tense amount to saying i am home. The similar for this idea the art form that allows me to celebrate this notion of laying claim to home birthright and identity is jazz. Basis of jazz, black contribution to american and world culture is improvisation. A metaphor for the story of black americans who have historically had to make a way where none existed before. Every time a jazz musician insert the passage he celebrates history. The crusty vulnerability of bed websters tenor sax the spare melancholy of miles daviss trumpet the sheer might of the colon hawkins the a beautiful eccentricity of felonious monks piano the inventiveness of the Young Freddie hubbard as he played trumpet lines over and through the thundering drumbeat support blakey. For any jazz musician any black person anyone at all. So in my early 30s new father to biracial child abutting essay is to learn to earn his living aba secret after cultural knowledge i set out into the big bad world reading book after book while strap hanging on my way to and from work listening to the jazz records that were the record of my peoples contribution believing all the while in the likeness of calling myself an american as years and then two decades past. Along the way events may have shifted at the outside of my beliefs killings of brought blacks from Trayvon Martin sandra blatt and so many others name me to question whether i really wanted to call home a place where the police were seemingly paid to kill people who look like me. Yet no one had ever said i would have to fight to protect my place in this land i call home. With many others that took to the streets over those killings and believed i was doing so in service of my country perhaps some blackandwhite wondered how i could be so even killed and perhaps some white as well as black wanted me to be angry. I did not have time to be anyones conscience and there was a way for one who does other work for no pay and im not thinking of in turn so my belief at bottom held steady and then came the election of donald trump. All stop reading there and just say that the 2016 election to challenge the foundational beliefs that i just read to you about so the question for me became how to proceed in the face of this reality because especially after it came out that the majority of white voters supported trumpet even though he received the endorsement of the ku klux klan and ran a campaign that was founded on divisiveness and xenophobia that became the question that led to the writing of this book in search of the answers i decided what i needed to do was go beyond my Little New York bubble and talk to folks who thought differently from me. I talked to a small but highly varied group of people and conducted indepth interviews with people including people who voted for trump as well as a social worker and other people. The book has five chapters, the first two chapters trace my path from youth to middle age and trace the development of my thinking. Chapters 3 and four encompass the interviews and my responses to the interviews and the fifth chapter is kind of a reflection as a whole. Thats how i would describe the book. Now i think we talk, right . Okay. [silence] testing. Hes good. [laughter] [silence] testing. Okay. Its an honor for me to sit here and talk to this gentleman. We have corresponded over the years but weve never met facetoface until tonight. I have admired his work from afar, not just the essays and nonfiction but also the paintings too. And one of cliffs printing comic paintings proceed every one of the sections of this book. We have friends in common. The writer novelist mark service was one of your students and poet ethelbert miller in washington dc and arch activist has interviewed you twice he told me on his digital program. This is familiar because its one of the best writers of america and the subtitle of the book abthis man thinks. He thinks hard, he thinks critically. No clichc, no bull, theres no assumption in his thought. Somebody who wants to know the truth even if its painful. And in terms of some of your own assumptions and selfcongratulatory actions when you talk about your transgender students. And how you talk about, am i really as good as i think i am . Cliff just explained basically what its about. Here i grew up much the same way. Ive always seen myself as an individual and the only way i would approach anybody in this life is as an individual. I came over here and lyft and the guy said to me where you going. I said the library he said why. I said theres a guy Clifford Thompson have to talk to stop hes in abhes from brazil hes been in this country 20 years, he got really excited, theres a lot of stuff he wanted to talk to me about ab why he thought we had the divisiveness we do. This book is of the moment, its important, at this moment which i think is a critical moment in the history of this country. What happens right now today, tomorrow, next 2 to 3 years, i think will determine the situation of black america for the rest of the century. Thats my fear. So you and i both believe in individuals, we believe we are americans. I think our story in america is a story of heroism stop thats what i think. I think its about overcoming odds and put in the way of my ancestors, her broken the way that we not only overcame them but did what was necessary to live with other nonwhite people in this country during the Civil Rights Movement. We have a reason to be proud. But that Civil Rights Movement was half a century ago. So the question now seems to me is, can you hold onto your belief in the priority of individualism. Being happy to be an american. The i who drove me over here, from brazil, he said other people are coming to america they dont like me america. That question, can we continue to hold onto our beliefs and being individuals and evaluating people as individuals and embracing america is very much the question i set out to answer for myself. My answer is a qualified yes i guess i would say. It seems to me not just in america in 2019 but in life generally as you get older i think you find one of the challenges of life is to come almost like a game in which the object is to hold onto yourself. You can come to a point as i have come to anything many of us have come to that which you find yourself in what youve always believed to be challenged in the question then becomes, am i a fool for holding on to these beliefs in the face of this newly revealed reality or is now the crucial time the most crucial time to hold onto those beliefs . I felt it was important to hold onto your integrity. But also i wanted to see and get a clear idea as much as i could of what that reality is, what is my ultimate decision to be informed by that reality. Thats what led to the series of interviews i conducted. The interviews, there are several people that cliff talked to who voted for donald trump. Bob is wanda, i think jack is another. And then there is a black man, the last of the people you talk to. You and the book with this. He started an africanamerican gun range and he went to it for the first time i guess. Talk about, if you would, talk about why did the people who voted for trump like him . What did they see in him . What did they see in trump . I think, i talk a lot in the book about what i call rootedness. The idea that his very difficult to get to this life without a basis and belief set of beliefs and community or something thats larger than you. I think i would say that a lot of trumps base is made up of people who are not necessarily racist at least not necessarily identifying themselves as racist but people who are rooted in these certainty that america is abthey are resistant to anything that challenges that belief because that belief is so central to who they are. So that when somebody like truck comes along who seems to, who seems to stand for what they already believe, then they will embrace that. Part of being rooted in that belief in america ais not seen what a lot of whats happening. When trump talks about building a wall and i think it speaks to a particular rootedness that these people have. They are rooted in belief of the american dream. And everybody you ask you talk to you ask whats most important about this country . And also the same thing. They believe its a country of the tree and if you work hard, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and so forth, they will do well. There would be any obstacles to your success in america. A lot of very republican talking points before trump. They been there for a long time. They believe that if you didnt make it in america it was your own fault. You had to be the cause. And even ask yourself throughout the book is there something black people couldve done . Is there something we could have done to make our situation today better . When do you come to rest with that . In saying that i was trying to be as honest as i could about my own feelings in past years about the situation of white people in america and there is often kind of a abi know about racism in pretty much every area of American Life and yet i wondered if in spite of that there was something that we could be doing that we werent doing. And this feeling is not rooted in any data or anything like that it was more of a feeling based on i dont even know what. I think when it comes down to an individual to the individual level there are things that things that some individuals can do that theyre not doing but thats not the main problem. Thats not the main challenge facing us and thats the difference in my attitude now in my attitude in the past. Whats the root of the problem . Racism and in so many areas, institutionalized racism, there is redlining there is underfunded schools. There is what they call the school to prison pipeline lack of opportunity i could go on and on. I think thats what i would call it. He interviewed trump voters. You interviewed a woman who, whats your name . a social worker. Yes. What was her response to your questions . What did she see as being the necessary solution for the problems we face. Her big thing was fairness. She works with schoolchildren often and what she sees is the inequity of the way that black and brown people are treated as compared to white children. If something horrible happens in a predominantly white school what are they due . If theres a killing or some other traumatic event. They send in psychologists and social workers and try to work and make sure the students are okay. And then they send in cops. They have metal detectors. As a punishment. Other than trying to help. [inaudible] is there anything else that you point out as being necessary . I think her big thing was fairness. There is an apparatus in place and it was interesting she talked about families are very fearful of being separated from having your children separated from them which is a reality in the communities where she works. So they will go to Great Lengths if they have a child in their family who is misbehaving or are doing poorly in school they will isolate that child so that the rest of the family is not split up. Theres a great inequity. And bureaucracy that gets in the way. What struck me about what she said, it really left this as a take away for me. She said everybody wants to fail a nobody wants to fail. Ever he wants to succeed but sometimes people dont know how. You have to provide them the means by which they can understand how to succeed. She would be somebody who would feel and i guess this is my assumption is president obama the government has a place in the lives of people to help conversely the other side, they want limited government. As little government as possible. I think you point this out, youve got two conflicting polarizing visions of what america is. Sometimes you could hit a middle zone america is not completely indifferent to the plight of people, not since the new deal when we first had to address this. This book is very important for our discussion right now. Im curious, why did you end, what is this guys name . a philip smith. I guess thats his name with the africanamerican gun association. Why did you put that in there . In trying to talk to a varied group of people, while i was thinking about that, it came to my attention there was this Organization Called the National Average american gun association. I thought about that name. The term africanamerican has been around for a generation or more and we use it we almost dont hear it but i still find this especially in this era i still find the word africanamerican to be a very provocative term. Because of the way that things and people of african origin are often despised. And marginalized. And if you put that word african together with american, does that what you saying when you use that term . Is that a term of defiance . Are you saying, yes im an american, of african descent, deal with that. Or is it an act of capitulation to attach american to the african part . I come down on the side of it being defiant and proud. I think its political. I think the term africanamerican is political from the beginning. It was chaffee abchampioned by jesse jackson. I use black american. I have a buddy in San Francisco who is a screenwriter he works with young black males in the prisons, he is furious whenever he sees the term average american. I dont think its accurate. I have friends