Covid19 pandemic hosted by the National Low Income housing coalition. Were glad that youre able to join us for this conversation with ceo diane yantell and best selling author dr. Ibrahim kendi. Submit questions by clicking here on the left side of the screen and you have to start have technical difficulties or have a question, click here on that right side of the screen button. The event will be recorded and available on this site within 24 hours. Its now my pleasure to turn the it over to diane. Great. Thanks, dave, and welcome, everyone, to todays conversation with dr. Reeb bram kennedy. Im really looking forward to this conversation, and im so glad that almost 5,000 people have registered for it today. Im so heartened and encouraged by the level of interest in this topic. So im president and ceo of the National Low Income housing coalition. We are a Membership Organization that is dedicated to achieving socially just Public Policies that insure that the lowest income people have decent, accessible and affordable homes. And as participant of that work part of that work, we have worked on disasters, housing response, recovery, rebuilding, for many years through our disaster housing recovery coalition. And weve done this work recognizing that decades of Structural Racism and other structural inequities puts our countrys lowest income and most historically marginalized people people of color, people with disabilities, people experiencing homelessness, lgbtq people, people reentering their communities from jails and prisons and others are at most risk of being harmed by disasters. And without our dedicated and intentional focus and effort, we know theyll be left behind in the housing recovery and rebuilding. So covid19, in our view, is the latest disaster to hit our with with our country with the same pat persons of harm and neglect caused by decades of Structural Racism in our country. This disaster is different in some ways, right in its unprecedented in scale and magnitude and duration. But our urgent need to Center Racial Equity for all historically marginalized people in the response and the recovery as critical as ever. The coronavirus is clearly disproportionately harming people of color, and its illustrating in even historical and systemic racism. I believe that we have an obligation in our housing and homelessness work on covid19 to Center Racial Equity. And at this moment when we are working together to get congress to fund over 100 billion in rental assistance and other critical housing and homelessness dollars, dr. Kendis work if guidance is so important. He urges us in really profound and practical ways to develop policies and programs that are explicitly antirace is cyst. And racist. And he offers us guidance on how to do it. So, you know, this moment that were in right now is unique in so many ways, most very terrible ways. But just as were seeing covid19, in covid19 maybe one of the clearest expect most obvious and the most obvious manifestations of Structural Racism in who is harmed, who is impacted by covid19. We also have this tremendous possibility with hundreds of billions of dollars flowing to statements and cities states and cities in response to up due some of that harm, reverse inequity. So im just thrilled to have dr. Ibram kennedy join me today kendi join me for this conversation, one of the worlds foremost historians. He is a New York Times best selling author and founding director of the Antiracist Research and policy center at American University in washington d. C. A professor of history and international relations, dr. Kendi is the author of starred from the beginning stamped from the beginning, the definitive history of racist ideas in america, which won the National Book award for nonfiction. And his most recent book, how to be an antis racist, reinher eyeses the conversation about Racial Justice in america. So, dr. Kendi, im a big fan of your work. Thank you so much for joining me today. Im glad were able to have this conversation. At long last, yeah. So we have a lot to discuss in an hour, and theres just so much of your wisdom and your work that i really want to glean for our collective housing and homelessness work. But i want to start with some of the really foundational components of your work that can guide the rest of our conversation about Racial Equity in housing during and after covid19. So most, if not all, of your published work really centers around racism being a core tenet, right, of the american way and foundational to our country and around the need for us to overcome the scourge of racism. New the work of antiracism. Through the work of antiracism. You say that its not enough to not be racist, we have to be actively antiracist. Is so so can you describe, define the different terms and talk about what you mean by that. So i, i define a racist as someone who is instructing a racist idea, and racist ideas typically suggest that a particular racial group is better or worse, peer your, inferior than another or this is whats wrong or right about this racial group. And so i define a racist as someone whos expressing a racist idea or supporting a racist policy with their actions or even inaction. And throughout the course of american history, almost every person who i would classify as being racist denied that they were being racist, denied that their ideas were racist, denied that their policies were racist, and so the term not racist, i am not racist, has really always been the sound of that denial. And ive never really been able to figure out what being a not racist truly is other than someone denying their own racist ideas, denying the policies that theyre supporting. But i do have a clear sense of what being antiracist is. But if a racist is expressing an idea of racial hierarchy, then an antiracist is one whos expressing antiracist ideas that theres nothing wrong or right, superior or inferior with any of the racial groups. If a racist is supporting a racist policy that is leading to inequity and injustice, then an antiracist is someone who would be supporting a policy, an antiracist policy thats leading to equity and justice. So theres really no in between, no hierarchy of inequality. In between notions of racial policies that lead to equity and inequity. And so, again, i dont really know where, what it means to be not racist, but i have a very clear sense of what it means to be racist. And antiracist and so im encouraging americans to be antiracist, because if theyre not, chances are theyd be racists. Yeah. Yeah, and part of this definition or idea is that being racist is, its not a fixed identity, right . Its not it can be a temporary state of being and that all of us that are working towards being antiracist have ebbs and flows, right . Certainly including me and including you. And you wrote about in your book you wrote about your own process of being racist to working towards being actively and consistently antiracist. Is so can you talk a little bit about your process and how that applies to others. I think the process for me was largely coming to terms with definition, for having a very clear sense of what it means to be raysest or even antiracist. Can you imagine if you do not have a very clear definition of a racist, its easy the deny [laughter] that racism because we dont even know what that truly is. So i think, first and foremost, it was coming to terms with basic definitions. But then i think one of the problems with classifying someone as a racist is, as you mentioned, we are actually taught that a racist is a fixed category. Its literally who a person is, not what a person is. That its literally in their dna, its in their heart, its in their bones that someone becomes a racist. And thereby a racist is an evil, bad person. And theres really no, no remedy for those racists. They cant be cured. And so with that type of perspective, i can understand why so Many Americans are like, no, im not racist, you know . Im that person, you know . Thats actually not how we should understand racists or even antiracists. And these are descriptive terms. They describe what a persons doing in any given moment. And the reason why this is you had white abolitionists who, when they would emphasize, people like William Lloyd garrett would say things like, call for immediate emancipation, that slavery is horrible, it should not live another day. In the moment they were being antiracist. But William Lloyd garrison and other white abolitionists sometimes in the very next moment would say and the reason it should end is because its so evil, and its is so evil that it has literally made black people [inaudible] theyre human. So we need to not only free them, but civilize them. That very next moment they were being racist. They were potentially like slave holders imagining these enslaved black people as subhuman. And so in talking about how racist isnt an insult per se, right . Its a changeable state of being, and its just a fact. Its not, its not necessarily a judgment. I think its really important because that definition really then compels all of us to name and call out racism when we see it. And i think that a lot of people and maybe especially white people feel uncomfortable calling things racist. Theyd rah rather say, wed rather say Racial Disparities or racial inequities and the outcomes. And thats true, but its not the sole truth, right . And in being unwilling to call something that is racist racist, we can actually do more harm than good. Can you talk why that is . Why its so where it can lead to when we talk only about racial outcomes and not about the racism that created those outcomes . I think, i think with anything when were talking about human beings, when were talking about problems, it is absolutely critical to name problems for what it is. And that, you know, even if its a personality character of one of us. Well, the personality character of america, right, or an institution, the first step in its receiving treatment, in it being remedied, in it changing is identifying the true problem. And i think its the same thing with racism. It is hard, you know, particularly if were selfidentifying our own ideas as racist or selfidentifying our country or our institution or our sector of society. Its a its hard. Which is why so many people and so many institutions and so many societies refuse to grow and refuse to change, because the first step in that growth is recognizing the problem. And so i just dont know how we as a nation can transform ourselves if we dont truly recognize the true source of this pain. And that true source is racism. Its almost like the rword. Its not the rword. Its not a pejorative term, you know . And its not the equivalent of saying i dont indeed, Richard Spencer once said that. He lectured to white people that racist is a pejorative term. Its the equivalent of saying i dont like you. And it just so happens he was a white supremacist. And white supremacist have been spreading those ideas particularly toward white people so that they will continue to deny their own racism, to those white rationalist organizers can recruit them. Uhhuh. And, and also not naming racism as racism and talking only about outcomes, it can lead it gives room for people to blame personal failings, right, on the outcomes rather than the structural inequities of the racism that created those outcomes. And i think in how, when we talk about this, as an example of, you know, we know that people of color are disproportionately low income and are disproportionately rentburdenedded. And we know that black and native people are disproportionately homeless. And then some see those outcomes and say, well, its a result of personal failings. Ben carson, the secretary of hud, today talked about how poverty is state of mind and that the kids should read more like he did. And so he sees poverty as a personal failiing and so then his proposals about fixing character flaws in individual people when that so clearly and probably purposefully is Structural Racism that causes these disproportional outcomes. So aside from ben carson, i think that there is now a broad understanding by many of us in the Housing Field that many past housing policies are racist. Redlining, blockbusting, subprime loans, right . A lot of other housing policies fall more into the racenewt neutral or raceblind, color blind category. And they also do equally if not more harm to people of color. So can you talk a little bit about how raceneutral policies can actually harm people of color, perpetuate racial disparries disparities . So in the 1960s and certainly by the 1970s, that is when a lot of affirmative action were put in place. And the racist reaction to affirmative action policies that were actually leading to reductions in racial inequity from state contracts to the, to admissions and highly selective colleges and universities, their reaction to it was to create this framing of a raceneutral policy versus a raceconscious policy. They created this idea that a policy that has no racial language in it is raceneutral and not racist, and a policy like an affirmative action policy that has racial language in it is reverse racist or racism. But, in fact, when you look at the fact of the history of american racism, the vast majority of policies that americans collectively consider now to be racist did not have any racial language them. So were talking, i mean, you mentioned housing policies. We could go to voting policies from literacy tests to grandfather clauses to poll taxes kid not have any racial did not have any racial language. Even the u. S. Constitution itself which especially made it such that slave people were threefifths of a there was no racial language. And so just because a policy does not have any racial language in it does not mean it is antiracist, right . So again if were thinking about policies as either racist or antiracist, the frame of a raceneutral or a raceconscious policy falls to the wayside, and we can replace that framing with if a policy leading to racial ipg equity inequities, then its racist. If a policy is leading to Racial Equity, its antiracist. The reason why for many people who are supporting racist policies, the reason why they want us to conceive of this idea of a raceneutral policy, it is because they do not want racist and antiracist policies defined based on their outcome. Because if we define all policies as a racist or antiracist based on their outcome, they then will have the burden of proof. Proving that their policy somehow is, quote, not racist as opposed to us, like, as we do now. And as far as im concerned, being antiracist [inaudible] leading to equity and justice. Let me just say very is quickly also when you have a racial inequity, it either is the result of policy that is favoring or disfavoring political racial groups, or its because theres something wrong or even right with [inaudible] and if youre a policymaker like ben carson, you and youre not instituting policies that are leading to inequity i should say equity or justice or you dont want to be blamed for the persisting inequities under the administration, then your going to articulate the only other option. The problem is the people, not my policies. Yes. So how do we create antiracist housing and homelessness policies from the start . Where do we start and how do we create these policies that could achieve Racial Equity. So i would suggest, first and foremost, figuring out the true source of the problem, meaning what, what what are the racial inequities. And so collecting not only the sort of quantitative data, but even the qualitative data. Speaking to the people, you know, to truly seek to, you know, understand the source, you know, of their housing harm. So once you have a clear and consistent and sophisticated and complex understanding, you know, of the problem, then from there, then from the evidence, from the research, from the data, from the story of low income people, you can then those policies based on that research, or i should say create policies based on that research that has the capacity to alleviate the harm that has been more or less expressed new that research. And then through that research. And then they become test cases. In other words, okay, are these policies reducing racial ink bity. And then if they tonight inequity. If they dont, we should go back to the drawing board and innovate new antiracist policies and keep testing policies in different places based on different circumstances until we have a bent of what policies work or we use policies that are working in certain cities in others. Uhhuh. So theres so much to, so much that we can apply that to now especially with covid19 and with new resources going to communities to recover. So certainly were seeing a tremendous amount of Racial Disparity in covid19 and who gets sick, who dies, who loses their job, whos harmed. Youve created very recently, i think, a covid racial data tracker. Can you talk about the project and what you hope to achieve with it, what youre finding so far . Yeah. So we, we started calling for states to release racial Demographic Data on covid patients, you know, in early april. At the time only a handful of states had released breakdowns of who was being infected by race and who was being killed. By the second week of april, more and more states started policing this Demographic Data, and there was no place, particularly the federal government was not collecting and presenting this data. Is so my colleagues at the Antiracist Research and policy center, we partnered with the covid tracking project to begin collecting that day data and, ultimately, with the efforts to present the data. Our site went live this morning [inaudible] but not only did we want to sort of collect and present all of the racial Demographic Data, weve been able to compile the most comprehensive data set available. We also a had to building a network of people concern build a network of people in different states who are calling there for this data and continuing to call for this day eta. Some states are only released infections and not deaths. Were tyge finding that in state after st