Were going to be presenting an imported book to the mark in history which unlike 18th century behind the name or current important books by some of the major in our country. It also be reporting by the historian who works at the institute. It must frequently on health education. And then we will guide a question and answer questions our state and pretty in the Program Sponsored by them please go to our website. Now enjoy. Khalil muhammad hello and welcome everyone today pretty july 19th, 2020 addition of the institutes new Digital Program a gain in august today is a professor and he be talking about his book the condemnation of blackness. First for those of you are new to the institute pretty we are the leading Nonprofit Organization dedicated to k12 History Education while also serving the general public. And her mission is to help promote the knowledge and understanding of American History through Educational Programs and resources such as the Hamilton Education program online, teachers seminars and also an incredible access to thousands and thousands of primary source documents that are part of the institutes collection. I am your moderator flowing and when im not working here i am usually part of the Hamilton Education program team. And today i am supported by our support specialists in one of our great interns cameron murray. For you guys, and our audience out there, you will notice that your muted and cameras are off. If theres wrong. This is just make sure that everyone is going to have the time. Im sure that todays discussion will generate many many questions so make sure were going to try to get as many questions answered. You just check at the bottom of your screen. You see that great little q a icon, please go ahead and submit any questions you have there. And they are being monitored as they are being submitted printed and you can send anytime you want during this program and if you could come to some this note where your writings are from. We want to know where our audience is coming from. Now our guest today and is professor of greek and Public Policy and susan young murray professor at the Radcliffe Institute for advanced study pretty is also the former director of the Schomburg Center for research in black culture with the division is a division of the New York Public Library in the worlds leading library of global back black history and before leaving the Schomburg Center see both professor mohammed was an associate professor at Indiana University and today will be speaking with him about his book, the condemnation of blackness, race and crime and the makings of modern urban america. And professor mohammed it is great to have you here in the program pretty think is much for joining is pretty. Khalil Gibran Muhammad thank you for having me and it is a pleasure. You do a really great work. William to kick up the conversation, just finished reading your book this morning. It was an incredible read. It is a great book of history in its own right. It also touches upon so many important issues that we are dealing with as a nation today. Systemic racism, mass incarceration, please change in the criminal Justice System. In one of the questions i have to get started im interested in how you came to write the book and especially the. That you focused on and the progressive area at the end of the 19th and early centuries kissing times just in general American History, we kind of go from the civil war to the mid 20th century knowing about this huge. In American History. So please tell us a little bit about how you came to focus on this period of American History. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is a great question. Its interesting because the money the teachers and others who followed, and certainly appreciate that these matter. Particularly as we understand that modern america states. So much of the regulatory state is in our contemporary moment. Those born out of the progressive area, income taxes, agencies that protect our food supplies. In the basic infrastructure of a social welfare system has the truth in the progressive area so i was always fascinated by it is a graduate students. But i was particularly interested because when i started to try to understand what was the experience and africanamericans in the criminal Justice System in the late 19th century outside of the south, i looked at the literature is mostly silent on black experiences. A lot of it was european immigrants, the settlement house experiences so on and so forth. So there was this gaping hole and i attempted to fill it. William and when you start the book and Something Else very relevant for us today is the kind of the change in the way that race was being looked at from after the civil war from this biological perspective to more sociological culturals perspective. The role of data and how that started to come in to make this idea of criminalizing be black. Can you talk a little bit about that. And one of your chapters frederick huffmans train and how that started to play a greater role at the end of the 19th century. It. Khalil Gibran Muhammad so many ways, the blackness, is a big complicated story the condemnation of blackness. It sets out to tell a story and at the same time that is tracking these three lines it carries from the. After slavery when you see the emergence of black codes and the development of leasing especially when the criminal Justice System in the south attempts to re enslaved African Americans. There was a loophole, that you can no longer simply take advantage of black people by enslavement but you could take advantage of them if you could criminalize them. So that through line is the story of the night 19th century and jim crow and right up to the civil rights movement. Time in the way of knowing that you described a lot of people think about the street. But it turns out that there is a separate trajectory that in many ways is lesser known to be sure. But also perhaps more revealing of our contemporary crisis of mass incarceration and racialized policing. It is a story outside of the south in a story that doesnt so much involved wench mobs and the German Shepherd but its about a technocratic language that emerges worried as a kind of national way the black people werent dangerous criminal class and that story runs through a particular person is a fascinating figure. A lot of people know the history of Public Health or more generally known that the history of their occupational actuarial science because from about 50 years, he was perhaps the nations leading demographer, a Single Authority on an expert in homicide in the nation. Any kind of cut his teeth in the late 19th century when the time when most american demographers were just getting started. He was quite distant and being emerging trends in this data particular run health and mortality. So how does data tell us something that is much more relevant to temporary times to say, lynch mobs dont tell us. So the first thing that you have to know about data is a part of a political project. An expression of power. It is an artifact of complicated realities the sort of sliver of something. Many americans today often think about data as a spec. So if theres a fact that some many people in prison. That is a fact its a fact that some many people are arrested annually in a number number of cities. This is all true. But those facts are themselves born of political decisions we make about where we deploy police. How many people do we incarcerate. You cant get to prison unless somebody as a punishment is incarceration. Solo these facts that we are comfortable with. They were particular in the way that they were ordering racial hierarchy. So again, we might recognize that there was rapid White Supremacy and discrimination in the south in the late 19th century. Most people do not dispute that to the state. To vote for republican in the south, you might be intimidated from showing up at the polls. He might actually defend your right to vote as a black man, having won the right in the 16th amendment and if you talk back, you might be arrested for anything so that is just one part which meant what. But people were prosecuted from crime and sentence and sometimes served time in prison farm rated or in a traditional prison. Develop produced data. The data accumulated so much so that by the 1890s, which is really the first instance where an entire cohort of africanamericans were sort of measured against another imagine previous generation the people said well, black people they been enslaved and theyre kind of dangerous, damaged goods. It really cant tell what theyre capable of because they been enslaved. In the proslavery people believed that black people were not capable of strong governments. Suits no longer slaves, of course are going to backslide into some kind of savagery. Slavery was morally corrupt. It is abomination. Integrated people. So people will rise to the occasion. They give you a sense of this debate that was happening. Its kind of like a perfect generational cohort. If youre 25 years old, if you were born at the end of the civil war, you never experienced slavery so for that and generation and it was like hey, see how they are doing. How many babies are the having, what kind of thesis that the contracted. Are they getting arrested for crimes. Are they up in the prison systems. The first generation of demographers, but there were many others. And what did they find in the 1890s census. They found that the africanamerican population in america at the time of 12 percent but is overrepresented in the prisons at 30 percent. Now, we can stop there william. We get in a full conversation say is an interesting fact, lets move on. With no that was just the beginning of a national conversation. That was the opening fact or redefining that National Spirit around an idea that we twominute. If africanamericans are overrepresented in our nations prisons, one for generation after slavery, this maybe this whole evolution thing was a mistake maybe granting them full citizenship the 14th amendment was a mistake. And it began to narrow the conversation about whether or not black people could infect truly be real citizens of the nation. And it began to close this ideological divide between northerners and southerners. It is exactly this moment that confederates monument started to pop up all over the country in the late 1890s by the united daughters of the confederacy. What. A lot of people didnt stand in the way. So you begin to see that anomaly, the Racial Disparity in prison, statistics was not about the over incarceration of the criminalization of the racial terror or the opportunities that happen are the black people who were chosen were taken to them to be sold at an auction so they could be put back on the scene plantation that their parents had been freed from. All of those disclaimers of those footnotes, none of that was part of the conversation. And in this book, it was published in 1896 was the first person to kinda popularize this. Does the person the person to use the kind of Malcolm Gladwell analogy. He was the outlier who helped to tip the conversation in the nation sources kind of new understanding like what yes these people do have a special problem with crime so well keep an eye on them. And we are going to create the practices and placing braided were going to segregate them in northern cities. Were not going to give them the same access and that was kind of set in motion a whole lot of other things. William you mentioned also theres so much material about immigrant communities of other timing and that a lot of the studies back and showed how that wasnt overrepresented tatian of criminality in young new immigrants to the country because northern cities were filled with all of these european immigrants. Actavis, identified with those communities but it was the conditions that they were living in is the cause of a lot of that. You called it americans in progress. Thats how the work described. So there was a way to alleviate that. If they be brought into the fold. But then the same way of thinking was not apply to africanamericans especially during the great migration with africanamericans living from south to northern cities. Will they have to themselves up by the bootstraps. They have to do it themselves. Can you talk more about that. And it was a double standard. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is a really great part of the story. And its one that would suffice most readers. While people can sort of understand and appreciate theres northern racism story that emerges in the late 19th century printed and crimes become a way for northerners to say, they are criminals so maybe we should keep an eye on things. People did not learn this in history class with the sort of understand that that make sense. What is not so obvious is this universal eyesight idea that all criminals get treated the same his completely false idea. Officially theres a version of deserving and undeserving in the market path. What happens is demographers who were interested in making an argument against the presence of southern and Eastern Europeans. The people who supported the movements and immigration restrictions. So there were too many italians in america pretty they were polluting the nordic stock of the nation. There were too many catholics and too many russian jews. Those people were not oldfashioned hardworking background anglosaxons that were the pureblood of this nation. So there was a lot of racism directed toward the southern and Eastern Europeans. A lot of negative but is on. What occurs there becomes another parallel debate about how to understand Crime Statistics. The Crime Statistics by the italians were used as a way to restrict italians. And everyone knows the bite 1924, that is exactly what happened. We passed and immigration quotas acted basically cut drastically the number of italians they could come into the united states. Thats one blissful conservative triumph of using Crime Statistics to say that something is wrong even with the class of the europeans, the northern europeans. The late 19th century was the high watermark of pure raised science in america. Invented leave too many people in touch by this. But progressive, liberals, overwhelmingly the northerners. To begin to make an argument it is a waving of minutes, absolutely not. The evidence of disproportionately noumenal offending by the italian immigrants or the irish first generation americans or the polish catholics is not an indication of how something wrong in the blood of the body. It is in fact a representation or evidence of the class of the quality of the economic inequality, the blinding effects of industrialization on immigrants who are here and being taken advantage of and have to survive by participating in underground economies because industrial economy is not fully incorporating them. So you get this very strenuous argument in favor of a structural critique of capitalism that we immigrant Crime Statistics is evidence of class inequality. And what condemnation shows the same people including Frederick Hoffman who argued that for Lower East Side of new york city immigrants who were struggling and committing various kinds of underground crimes or killing each other because they were short tempered and for soft and alienated from society. Frederick hoffman actually made a progressive argument to say that the evidence of those homicides evidence of industrializations effects on people. Wheres hoffman and many others said that the evidence of high rate of crime among africans is their pathology. And i wanted to read from the book of one particular person because it was not as if all of this happen without a counter argument. And so when named in did nearly recent study that took on the argument that hoffman was making. And you can hear in his frustration in this court that i will share with you that he is in fact taking on the same kind of statistical critique that many people today argue about Crime Statistics. So heres the quote. He says that figures in themselves mean nothing. They must be carefully analyzed and studied in connection with social convictions. Without taking into account known factors, specifics were insufficient basis upon which to draw conclusions i could easily be become misrepresentations of reality. Wrote there are three kinds of lies. Someone says white lies, likewise and statistics. So i sure that because it is not as if hoffman went unchallenged in the white prison inspector in philadelphia at the time dad in early on. And there was a challenge of Frederick Hoffman. Ida b wells, challenge him and the body of work that was just fine lynching happening around the country but the basic idea that this can be read or interpreted it or to justify just about anything. Which is the story of european immigrants. Progressive uses to help people printed in the same progressives and other conservatives use black statistics say move will isolate segregate and discriminate against these people. William and actually that fits in my next question. Africanamerican stories as well into boyds. And in some the very difficult position they were put in in a way because they both wanted everyone to recognize the situation in these African American communities and urban communities. They were also almost trying to agree with some of the scholarships at the same time and can you talk a little bit more about some of the work they did to highlight these issues at that time. Khalil Gibran Muhammad we can spend the remaining time talking about them because they deserve that much attention. So encourage everyone to learn more about them if you go to teach and use their voice they left quite a remarkable record of primary documents behind. Great critiquing students about racial ideas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But really the First National black expert to come of age in the progressive era is an anti racist scholar. This how we meet described him. But the root was really no pure in terms of his scholarly credentials in the body of work that he produced printed in the first of which in terms of significant conversation was with the publication in 1998. The philadelphia negro really lays out an argument that basically says this. Black people are not monoliths, they are heterogeneous based on class and culture. In the vast majority black people are hardworking law abiding respectable people trying to achieve their hopes and dreams just like any other group of people in this country. If the state, they face two problems. The ravages of and in equal economic system. It was the air of the gilded age. In a massive response to that which is essentially gave us the american welfare states. So the voice was a critic of capitalism. And made this argument that black people suffered under the ravages of capitalism just like anyone else. But they also suffered from systemic racism. In a type blackness. So for all of the ways that do voice recognize that certain Eastern European publishers also dead cremations or chinese immigrant immigration, he also recognized anti blackness was particular derelict form of american racism in the nation. And so he explains how the political economy function in urban america at a time when most people really were not paying a lot of attention what was happening to black people aptly left the south. Philadelphias population like chicago like new york in the 1890s, was roughly less than 5. Most people had kind of armchair thoughts and opinions about the black people but nobody systematically studied them. So do boys, exclusivel he was dy sociology using census data and had no real understanding of the black people experience he could be trusted. Marlis called him a white supremacist scholar. Uses own research and evidence to try to counter. And the voice was mostly ignored. Hoffman was prayed printed and are not talking about like opinionated writers of the spirit of talking about like all of the academic journal alluded richer. Just dismisses work the most part. And then weighing in on this question of systemic racism and White Supremacy because she loses Three Friends in an active racial terror in 1984 in her hometown of tennessee and by the time to set journalists, chicago 36 who had did to their friends the writer out of dan berger down and she eventually lands in chicago. And spent the rest of her life there working alongside white women in government and then as well as a black settlement house worker trying to basically create infrastructure to support low income black migrant communities. She also use the power of repentance mighty sword to talk about racism in a callout this statistical rise that lynching was proof to write systematically about lynching it was never really about socalled threat of black men as racist. But in fact was a cover for this very kind racial act. Lynch mobs were there to discipline black people into the second class citizenship. Had nothing to do in her opinion with actual crime. So pervert stood like to voice his work as a powerful rebuttal to the white supremacist lies told by people like hoffman and some of others. But by and large, they were ignored in social science, they were ignored in political circles pretty they were marginalized even within white liberals. William in the book, from the settlement houses and policing, you talk about philadelphia. He is philadelphia as the african communities, the work of the black churches, in philadelphia, at the time but then also how the political system, the Mayors Office how policing became more racist in philadelphia and ultimately ending in 1917 and 1918 to riots. Race riots within philadelphia. And then in 1919 nationally across 22 cities. Can you talk a little bit about philadelphia and then also tout this. Going into the 20s and 30s how policing became more racially influenced but also the statistics were finally starting to be questioned as well. Khalil Gibran Muhammad so this is the part of the book, there are two books here. The first book is really about how these ideas surround statistics grow and spread nationally really change the conversation about the meaning of black freedom is everywhere. In the part of the book, the one that youre describing now uses philadelphia as a kind of single place to see them because of these ideas have circulated predict what they look like on the ground. But help to explain something that happen pretty significantly by the end of the story that i am telling. So in a nutshell, the Settlement House Movement is reinforced segregation. And im not telling that story to look for the first time. I am centering it in a way that a lot of people put written about the Settlement House Movement thought like its a really good middleclass progressive mormon who are doing right by poor people largely european immigrants in the hippo people would say blind spots they didnt quite transcend the racism of the times of the didnt always do for black people what they were willing to do for immigrants. I have to say that story remains true even still. But theres something more pernicious in their legacy. Because with the essentially do is they justify the segregated settlement house activity they are engaged in printed and ultimately discrimination that they systematically support. Because they basically say immigrants are capable of changing their behavior with a little help. Noise of black people cannot benefit from help so they help themselves. And what they do essentially is argue from Crime Prevention all of this external support to help immigrant communities become more middleclass economically vibrant in ways that basically say, we cannot help black people. They have to get their crime problems together. It is kind of a lot like what you have people say today. Why are we talking about black lives matter would black people kill each other. They need to, solve the problem. It could have themselves printed will thats exactly with the settlement house limited. They threw everything they could to say against foreignborn children from all parts of europe and they did very little to support black children in their own neighborhood. They would support things in the south. Is that with the event essentially was that the settlement houses were not there for black people. And he was there for black people. Turned out number many people. As more migrants came to these places like in the great migration for income a lot of turmoil that took place like populations that began to grow as well in the face racist backlash against the right neighbors. Please not there to protect and serve black people. So a series of racist attacks on blacks renters and homeowners and neighborhood residents eventually led to a series of race riots. Chicago has its own and what comes out of this is not only the willingness of northerners, white and liberals and european immigrants of those who are barely hanging on as americans are americans and process. But there all united essentially in a kind of systemic and that blackness and Police Officers to a lot of this work of enforcing these white norms of exclusions against black people were being restricted and eventually redlining in the 30s and someone prayed in the evidence of Police Complicity in creating this condition of segregated black communities in the north become overwhelming in the wake of these race riots. And the attacks of black communities. These came out of the 1919 chicago riots. As the hundredth university. I wont go into the details in this you want me because were getting us to q a. But just to say in a nutshell, the systemic evidence of Police Complicity in northern racial violence gives black people in the construction of black ghettos in the north, is part of the legacy of the progressive era in the early great migration crane and the pattern and tactics of Police Behavior in those cities, from decades to decades to decades, 20s to 30s to 40s to 50s and 60s. They really leave us with by the time we get to the 1960s with a uprising in all these things happening outside of the jim crow south. Incredible record of systemic racism that runs through the Northern Police forces. William thank you. We are getting close to the q a so this will be my last question. But we want to get to the audience questions. The majority of our audience and our students and teachers, and this is such an incredibly important history. Where you did semi very research and where you got some of your resource as well. There are two things that can be helpful to teachers and certainly my book in the footnotes, i encourage you to read the book in the section that you find really compelling, look at the sources, use the footnotes to pull a few primary sources. The negro in chicago which is published in 1922 is the first Blueribbon Commission is actually a full scan of northern racism, like the housing, jobs, health and everything. In ways that often educators even to this very day only think of the north from the 60s forward because they think about black history as a selling story and it most is demographically, that is true but if youre trying to disrupt the way in which students try to think about, the south was racist up until, pick a date, argue a little bit, theres not one that is still ongoing but nevertheless if you are trying to get students out of the habit of thinking about historical racism as a southern problem, that primary source is incredibly helpful and you can pick any part which would be very compelling, you could do the same thing with pamphlets, and the boys of the philadelphia negro and of course you can turn to the black press, i use the Philadelphia Tribune which is in historical newspapers and they can look at my citations and pull some of those articles, they are incredibly rich, black people editorialized their conditions, this is never a story where black people arent speaking for themselves and articulating the double standard that their bearing witness to or arguing for change, they did not need white saviors to come in and explain their condition, they need white people to explain their behavior. From a teaching standpoint turning to the primary document is incredibly compelling and powerful for setting up lessons. Professor, thank you so much, im going to hand it over and she will ask you questions from the audience. Hi professor, we have some really good questions today and im going to start off with the question from brenda kelly and shes a phd student in Washington University in st. Louis. Her question is, could you speak more to hoffman and credential ensuring companies are normalizing the over policing black communities with companies today. She also said you cite the africanamerican as sociologist Kellen Miller warning that the flexibility of law must be involved to save order from anarchy, can you describe the democrats and progressives today undermine the calls of Defunding Police department and call this a move towards anarchy. That is really two questions, leave it to a phd student, thank you it was great. The first one, i will say hoffman represented both the technical mastery over his administrative data, that is very much part of our contemporary moment, this is maybe a way of bridging those two great things, people who described neoliberalism as a way of organizing the distribution of public goods visavis the private sector, attitude practices, ways of thinking about efficiency. The market knows best attitude within our Public Sector is essentially what your liberalism has given us, hoffman was a perfect neoliberal in that essence. He basically said we have limited resources, we automate the most insufficient move of those resources and if black people are predisposed to premature death, lets withhold the argument as to why they were exposed to premature death from his point, there are bad insurance risks, we should not write insurance policy where black people get the same race and pay the same premium as white people because the evidence says theyre more likely to die and that is bad business. So he was pushing back against efforts in the late 19th century to essentially create nondiscriminatory causes and practices within insurance system he made the argument that it goes for itself and then argument that neoliberals made which is why we got Michael Bloomberg supporting stop and frisk in joe biden being the lead author on a crime bill, the evidence of black people commit a lot of crime and some people might call racist but we call it being smart on crime. So that tradeoff and how the data has become justified discriminatory practices is what hoffman legacy got about and getting us all the way to the Democratic Party today is very much been in support of various ways every and scribing inequality in laws based on the technical evidence that empirically black people dont work as hard, arent as smart, more likely with behavior, obama had a series of arguments like this and i know it gives people back up because we live in trump land and everything that obama did was wonderful by comparison and i would tend to agree by that comparison. But this is the way it shows up today, Something Like this, and africanamerican boy born to a single mother is more likely to underperform in school and a kid who underperforms in school is more likely to become a juvenile delinquent in a juvenile delinquent is less likely to get a job, a person is been a juvenile delinquent and does not have a good job prospect is likely to end up in prison. So those are actuarial planes. Those are predictive claims. Those are claims to macro aggregated data and so no part of that series of logical progression is by definition by felt but it doesnt tell us very much about the condition of life that actually creates that chain of events, nor does it tell us about the individual who lives under those conditions many of whom defy those predictive claims. Thats a problem with the Democratic Party, they have been wedded to that kind of way of thinking of which biden has been invested for 40 years and so of course when you say defund the police to come to the second part of questions, when you come to defund the police, is very destabilizing, what does that look like, what is the evidence, how can we predict what will happen if there is no longer any police, everyone who is committed to a very technical solution, more technical data to support it before they put their neck out to make the kind of extractions that are required or to reimagine how to do this. But thank god that the 19th century antislavery abolition were not technocrat, had they have been the needed data to prove that slavery was wrong and discriminatory and racist, then god knows what kind of country we but had even worse than the one that we lived with for a long time. You are muted. The next question is from don little from syracuse new york who teaches in syracuse and is question is, how did the lead in africanamerican respond to what was happening at the time, douglas, wells, washington, are there sources you would recommend . Thats an easy one because they are the answer that one. I mentioned the boys and well, there are many others who are lesserknown in part because with any study because where im standing more or less i was looking for was the crime problem in the last question kelly miller is fascinating, hes there at the very beginning and he writes extensively on this issue, hes also a mathematician by training and he had a particular interest in the misuse of them and he found the University Sociology department and i certainly recommend reading the book to learn more about kelly miller and the fascinating figure, the person who had the negro in chicago reported that her dimension was an africanamerican sociology name Charles S Johnson who is trained at the university of chicago along with another contemporary named monroe and work, all these people are featured, black woman named Anna Thompson is one of the first researchers for the urban leagun league and she does today what we would recognize as the best Racial Disparity analysis on over policing and theres incredible report who was an undercover prostitute and in philadelphia in filing report after report showing the corruption within the Philadelphia Police department, it is fascinating. And some you can find more abo about. The next question is from richard from california, he asked, how could one argue today with the racist argument that Crime Statistics illustrate black criminality even some black scholars justified ideas of black criminality due to black cultural failure to justify Police Conduct against a larger percentage of black americans versus white americans. That is probably the Million Dollar question in terms of his conversation i wrote about the takes on the question of very explicitly. I talked about how they were criminalized, lets just say for hypothetical and historical boundaries for the conversation at the moment with the time that we are remaining to emphasize at this point why they have a biological or cultural predisposition that was made against ever european immigrant that i described you. The response was not to double down on more policing and the solution to real criminal offending men people get caught up in the loop and that black people were suffering from industrial inequality and capitalist inequality in africa everyone is innocent. They said if you want to solve the problem of guilt in criminal offending you dont qualify policing in incarnation. That was argument that progressives made in support of european immigrant. They argued for more Economic Opportunity and they argued for Civil Service and Police Reform because they recognize Police Officers were enforcers and enforcers of machine politicians to simply use the police like a gang leader might use police to deploy them against their political enemies and there was tremendous Police Corruption and police mentality directed towards european immigrants in the solution to violence in chicago and eire about capone, we all know the stories, and it was tinted glasses and they said they were so wonderful and hardworking, no they were despised by many people in america and the solution was not to lock up as many as them into say how do we rebuild these communities and how do we get exit ramps out of poverty and on ramps into the middle class and the new deal picked up on this the champion of the working class, i use the term in the book, one of the primary mechanisms for arguing against the criminal organization in the mistreatment and further abuse and segregation of irish italian americans were not more Police Officers or more investments was in fact to take away the physical surveillance of those groups, i use the term white flight because of the 1920s when you can look at local of west in city after city you can see how many italians commit a burglary or arm robbery, by the 1930s, you cannot see that anymore. You cannot answer that question, that was not an accident, it was on purpose, was purposeful because everyone knew that as long as you single out italians for crime, they would be discriminated against, they became white, physical white flight, a crime that became reclassified with white people. Black people had never disappeared from the crime, they had ways been there so we are stuck with the same dynamic justifying racism and inequality and policing and prism, rather than let me be explicitly clear, rather than actually doing what it took eight days of investment to do going from the 1900s to the 1970s to say were going to redistribute tax dollars to publicly invest in the very White Communities that we have been discriminated against and we have been isolating and ignoring, we are going to give them on roads to the merc and dream, black people are still dealing with jim crow in the south and dealing with jim crow in the north at the exact same time period. The next question i have is from don and he says Michelle Alexander and the new jim crow show how incarceration is used as a major way of disenfranchisement america, African Americans, as you say in your book, taking away black freedom, do you believe that major Prison Reform especially and long prison terms for minor drug offenses as the upper step towards reconciliation. Absolutely, there are many policy levers that could be pulled with regard to decriminalization and the cursor ration, that is if we can imagine that the rate of incarceration that this country could go back to 150 per 100,000 which is where was the 1970s when at the time about 350,000 americans were behind bars in some way and the demographics matched the nation about 70 of those behind bars that were white and about 30 were people of color and everything has been reversed since the 1970s, now about 70 black and brown and 30 white and now we have 2. 2 million imprisoned in incarceration rates probably around 600, it is really remarkable. All of the policy levers that we pull to create mass incarceration can dismantle mass incarceration, is not that much more complicated and at the same time we know the inequality, people who have never broken the law and never been criminalized and never ended up in prison also have grown more intense in this country. We also have to think about decriminalization, d cursor ration and reinvestment in the very communities that have been exploited more or less in the name of global capitalism over the last 40 years, that is a big step two. My next question is from katie in boston and she teaches u. S. History and her question, she has been thinking about how she can point out another example of White Privilege to her white history students is that immigrants are facing discrimination and becoming accepted americans by changing the language, cultural practices and et cetera because there eventually considered white. In eloquently speaking about africanamericans continue to be discriminated against because they cannot change their race, would you agree with this statement or would you rephrase it or add to it . Its a really good question, there has been a lot of thinking about White Privilege and a lot of writing about it, of a former graduate student who is working on a book that is a brilliant book that describes White Privilege, not simply with in color privilege but also in terms of under earned advantages and essentially every step along the lifecycle because we think about White Privilege is that they say i cant control and i dont want to be racism part of this business, that is true for a lot of people. But we also dont recognize that it isnt just whats in your heart and in your capacity to empathize or to change behavior, its also that the system is designed at every lifecycle if your little bit of an advantage, his argument in the wonderful book of his writing is our privileges is that they compile and its kind of like a 401k, if you start your 401k 22 years old with your first job and put a little bit of money under capitalist system, were all complicit in this, over the course of 40 years, your income is just compounding, exponentially growing, that is argument, when your mother is on the labor and delivery bed giving birth to you, there is a little bit of an advantage, the doctors are going to take care of her and she has more of a chance of surviving the process and her black counterparts, that is advantage number one, the next stage comes with the typical white child that will be seen by the preschool teachers of the kids and possibilities are limitless and certainly more helpful than the typical black child, im not going to run to the lifecycle but to make a point that each of those investments has key junctures and had up to a lifetime of opportunity and advantages that are very hard to get back, to catch up and so weve got to expand our system in such a way and hold it accountable and be really clear about how the system works and so people who are born to the beautiful roundness that god gave them and it doesnt penalize each one of these. Can you speak specifically to how black women fit into and are affected by these ideas of black criminality in the policing of black people during the progressive era. Absolutely. As it is true today, it was true then that generally speaking about 90 of people who are criminalized in incarcerated by criminal Justice System were men. When i cited the hoffman statistics, they are referring to a population disparity which is nine out of ten men that are overrepresented by their color line. That being said, black women were criminalized not so much with the system of criminal justice but with the discourse of sexual obedience. So we know today that the conversation of single parenting or what they put in circulation 50 years ago blames black women for not being able to properly to send them on a path to criminality in danger, hoffman himself articulated that essentially that illegitimacy rate in the disease rate among black women were the gender analog to the black male crime problem. Those two things were always intertwined in indeed white liberals tried to step in a little bit and to help the situation at the turn of the early 20th century, frances color it was essentially a pioneering white woman criminologist studied black women and compared them, their incarcerated group with their college group, she literally did the experiment, she compared black women who went to the College Student compared to black women who were incarcerated and they wanted to test whether they have the same mental capacity and how did she do this, she did memory test, you show someone something and then you take it away and you show them Something Else and they say are these two things the same, she did for the woman incarcerated in the College Student and she found out, there is no difference, they did not have mental problems, they were just one group incarcerated. She was doing good work with the biological argument about race and at the same time she felt like black women migrants who were coming to north had a sexual promise this gritty. And they can keep their legs closed. But she basically blamed black women for ending up in prostitution as a racial defect on their own, and they also did this as well and we look at liberal reform, there is a lot of antiblack women racism that are being articulated around sexuality and i have a whole chapter on this in the book, the third chapter in the book of people are interested. This next question is our final question would have time for all the other what would be the other single most important insight with a regular high school students, leaving history or economic government, what would be the primary document or short secondary reading that the student might be tempted to read and other clauses. I have written a lot of short things including book reviews, i wrote an article in the New York Times called playing the violent card, it depends on how secondary you are talking about but is trying to translate a lot of what ive talked about here today, i also go to profits as sections about policing and it might be 2000 words and its very easy to read and clear to understand how these dynamics are playing out today, i read about Michael Bloomberg and they matter in our contemnor a moment in policing in question the things you would want to teach a student is Crime Statistics on their own dont tell us anything. They dont tell us anything, we have to decide through political processes, through normative claims about the society that we want to live in, what to do about people who are hurting themselves or others, that is it. So any notion that high rates of crime by definition means we have to put more Police Officers there is a thought notion. And we live in a society post 9 11, the war on terror with the notion of National Security and Public Safety and domestic surveillance, portland right now in the midst of the floyd protest, we have federal agents jumping out of unmarked cars grabbing white people off the street, talk about jurisdictional violation of constitutional norm of what our military should be doing and what are state and local government should be doing, thats plain out right now we have the obligation as educators to teach what they are and what they consistently followed short, past and present and we have to empower students with the idea that there is nothing automatic in our society, there is nothing about data by itself means we have to do ask why using, we get to decide what were going to do when we produce data and when we decide what the data tells us what we ought to be doing. Professor, thank you so much for this great conversation, thank you for corralling all those fantastic questions, im going to share my screen one more time so everyone can see the great resources. If you want to purchase this great book the condonation of blackness or any book that is feature here on brooke like, go to the guilder learning page, this will not only help support us but it supports local independent bookstores as well, please at the end of the program, you will be taken to a quick survey, please go ahead and fill that out, we always like to know how we are doing and how we can improve and we really appreciate your feedback and i hope youll be able to join us next sunday july 26 at 2 00 p. M. Lutheran time when our guest will be shane sapir oh and shakespeare in a divided america and what it tells us about our past and future and you can find out more going online and if you want to find out about any of the other great programs and resources that it institutes go to guilder learning. Org. And not to worry, all these links have been posted in the chat and they will also be sent in a followup email as well, professor mohammed, a giant thank you, thank you for joining us, thank you so much for all your help in our audience out there, a big thank you to all of you as well and i hope you will be able to join us again next sunday, we are going to shut our screens off but we will leave the screen on if you want to write down these links, please remember we will be sending a followup email as well. Have a great noon everyone thank you so much. Put tv on cspan2 has taught nonfiction books and authors every weekend, tonight at nine eastern on after Words Yale University professor edward on his book which looks at White Supremacy through the lens of his great, great grandfather, a member of the ku klux klan and postcivil war louisiana, he is interviewed by cheryl, author and georgetown University Professor of law and civil rights and social justice. And then at 10 00 p. M. In her book how i lead, Susan Eisenhower of how president Dwight Eisenhower in the. Decisions you made during his presidency. Watch the tv this weekend on cspan2. Now on the tv after words, science journalist Deborah Mckenzie reports on how covid19 became a Global Pandemic and offers her thoughts on how to prevent future outbreaks. She is interviewed by Georgetown University center for Global Health professor claire stanley. After words is a weekly Interview Program with relevant guest host interviewing top nonfiction authors here about the latest works,
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