Ongoing Virtual Event series. Were fortunate bringing authors and their writing to our community during these difficult times. Every week well be hosting events via zoom and just like always, on our website or sign up for our newsletter. This is an evenings event in time for your questions. If youd like to ask the speaker something, locate the q a button wherever you live where you can submit your questions. Well get through as many as time allows. If you go to the section, weve included a link to our website where you can purchase your copy of a more perfect reunion, youd like to contribute to the series in a different way, its included and greatly appreciate any and all support. And lastly, as you may know, if you participated in large gatherings lately, technical glitches may come up. We apologize in advance for that. If anything occurs well do our best to resolve issues as quickly as possible. Now, im so pleased to introduce the speaker. A journalist and novelist, some envelopes, a finalist for [inaudible] teaches at Columbia University graduate schools of the arts and previously taught at Middlebury College his nonfiction work is featured in publications, including New York Times magazine, and elsewhere. Katie odonnell worked [inaudible] she began publishing career at overlook press and worked on basic books before tonight, they will be discussing the latest book, a more perfect reunion, challenges one of the most insidio insidious through reading through American History spanning the First Constitutional Congress and reconstruction, civil rights to nationwide protests. The incremental progress americans have made in a just society. The result is a book thats elegantly crafted, and a Book Publishers weekly called a rich account u. S. History, politics and culture. Were so honored. We will now turn things over to calvin. The thank you so much. Calvin. How are you doing tonight . Thank you, katie for doing this for me. Im excited to have the conversation. And we started working on this in 2017. Yeah. And shes been invaluable in the process of making it. A joy. We started with some First Principles or assumptions that we think we can make in this space because were in this moment were having another conversation, another National Reckoning talking about race in america. Weve been doing that as we know for a long, long time. Why dont we start in the middle. Or lets start and make some things clear. So one of the things i wanted to say is that we dont have to talk about it or explain that we believe in the humanity of black americans, black people, all people of color in the u. S. We believe and we know about how Structural Racism works in this country. Theres probably some other things that you want to add to that list, calvin. A correction, we think that we know because it is the feel that storms us and so were aware of this idea of systemic racism and i want to begin this begin for people who are intelligent and dont need to be told the things you just said that racism is bad, but who think deeply and have some prior knowledge about race, about history, about american culture. And to avoid the repetition because its one that begins with the revolution itself in the years leading up to the continental congress, people realize they had a race problem and we realize that weve had a race problem again and again and again and were realizing it anew. The things that were saying have all been said before and i began the book, assuming that we know these things, that theyre on the record, that you can go back, that you can read de tocqueville, you can read douglas, you can read baldwin, read wright and so forth and those things are about race, but the question, how do we move forward is a more active question and i think some of the other conversations that we wanted to avoid. Right. So why integration . And why that word . So we talk a lot about diversity, talk about inclusion, talk about representation, we even talk about desegregation, but you are very clear about talking about integration, that that is our goal and you find it in a personal way and talk to me about that. So, it was an intuition as someone who long studied africanamerican literature, africanAmerican History. I intuit that integration was the real goal and because race makes no sense. Because race is a construction. So, what is it . What is it that racism is all about . Integration. And you go back through the record and you see thats where malcolm ends up. Thats where martin ends up. Thats where douglas ends up. De tocqueville writes about it in the 19th century, two ways people can go, wholly part or wholly integrate. Thats it and then you go styling further and further back, theres a lawyer from a boston lawyer from the 1600s who points out and as a lot of the revolutionary thinkers point out, we can end slavery, but how do we integrate these people . And thats where everyone was stuck. Where the abolitionists were stuck. You could be an abolitionist and still harbor racial feelings, negative racial stereotypes against africanamericans. You be be a liberal and still build a life for yourself that segregates you and to me, integration was not assimilation, all right . Because that reduces or flattens the black self. Not diversity because you can have a lot of things in diversity, you can put a we are the world, people gathering and say now we have diversity. Its integration. And by integration i mean making available tools of American Society to all its citizens and thats what the country historically shied away from when it comes to africanamericans. When we talk about things like the new deal or the g. I. Bill, its always, but not for them. And even here in the National Conversation people saying, sacrifice to make things better for black people, im willing to give up we dont think that its a giving up when we talk about anyone else. When we talk of european immigrants coming here, we say, theres enough for everyone. That is what we do. We create opportunity. But when it comes to africanamericans, its always this assumption that somehow a zero sum game that its somehow a competition and i wanted to push past that because there are always of these psychological barriers in the american mind, in the mind of all of those who have been who have been kocolinize or bee colonized when it comes to race. You have to go to the material conditions, the cultural conditions, the interlocking structures where race is that create race. And the economics and narratives that we learn and the things that we hear in private and then our interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. How i think about you. How you think about me. How i think about myself. How you think of yourself, all of those places are raced and when we think about diversity when we talk about frames, postracial or color blind, you find that people want to move beyond it. 90 of the country supports principles of racism, but when you come down to those mechanisms that we know create greater opportunity for africanamericans, people stop. So why do they stop . I mean, this is weve been, as this book shows, pt first half of it really delves into the history of the country and the moments at which we have stopped. And as part of it, i think, its that we race so defines america, as always so defined america that we have a hard time imagining what this country is without it. So talk a little about that. Why do we keep getting stuck . So, i want to correct that slightly and in the beginning, if one goes back to one goes back to victorian england im sorry elizabethan england, you dont have the in shakespeare there are shades of skin color, ingredients of hair texture, but its not race in the way that we recognize it. Race is a thing that is constructed. Its constructed hand in glove with the slave state. You know, as Frederick Douglas says, anything made can be unmade and so when you ask the question, why do we stop . Youre talking why dont we unmake this . And there are two essential mechanisms, id argue, and one of them is a real resistance on the part of on the part of american conservatives and this begins in the revolutionary period. So, theres very little and it continues through the civil war and it snaps back and we are theres nothing being said in this current moment on the right that has not been said before or theyre not original great thinkers, they simply use the new tools and theyve had these from generation to generation. Its true on the left as well in a different way and because race becomes Something Like, i mean, i call it a belief system, Something Like a religion, it is the thing that shapes us, and in some cases, its very consciously used to create an american melting pot and or all of these, we have all of these people, these new immigrant groups that we did at the turn of the 20th century coming over from europe, how do you make one people of them . So, and david nassaus amusement book, and one of the one of the things that you see happening is, you give them a narrative of whiteness and how do you create a narrative of whiteness . You create these spaces where you have the price of admission, you can go to a ball game, you can go to a theater, but you see the ballpark is segregated. There are no black players there and the theater is showing minstrel shows literally and this extend to advertisement and so this is the culture itself is creating this, its giving you this narrative, racist. Degrading africanamericans and telling you you are not that and whiteness as a construct exists in opposition to that, it is not black, it is not brown, it is not yellow. And to and so to direct the question, thats hard to let go of. If thats the narrative that shapes you, its hard to let go of because even in ways that, you know, we say im not a racist. Someone did some heinous crime. Theyre looking for a final solution and they say, but were not racist. And on the left, im not racist, but you see, we have these narratives of race that are constantly reinforced. Theyre reinforced every time you open a newspaper, go to the cinema, theyre also told in private. And so we have a performance of race that we do in public for the benefit, right, because its socially unacceptable to be racist, however, we have another conversation, we have other conversations in private. And you say things, i use the david chase example here when he says to his credit, he admits it, but completely unaware of it, oh, i grew up in a family they werent what you called white chic racist, but its just the accepts that they want to take what you have. And theyre that, theyre this and everyone is growing up with that. So i guess the question then is, how do we get out of this rut . So we are for this way that we have defined ourselves, you know, since weve grown up with this. We cant we cant imagine a world beyond it so we keep having the same conversations over and over again. How do we have a different conversation . I think you have to focus on outcomes and one of the things that i mean, one of the things i was thinking about as i was writing the book was walking through walking through new york city and looking at all of the states that we would say are integrated, and then going a bit deeper and actually, its a performance were adjacent to one another and asking the question of every space in which we participate, how integrated is this space truly, and by, this, i mean, to what extent, a, is it representative of the peoples of this country . B, do what some of those people are free to be themselves, and to what degree do i almost i looking through racial frames . But also, and thats a thats an esoteric question, but you go into a restaurant, its like why are this only one kind of person in this restaurant . You go into an office and you look at the you look at the employee pool, you look at the distribution of those in position of power. Whats going well, you see, all of those are racial, racially segregated spaces and the way to move beyond that, back to desegregate all of these spaces and thats where people stop because it means going back. And its a it becomes an interlocking system. I am im the manager of the company. I increase my pool of africanamerican employees, but theyre not coming from the universities i recruit from, all right. So you just knew that. I am at the university versus and they dont have the test scores or theyre not coming from the high schools that we recruit from, so you pish it you push it back and you go well in the case of new york city, they didnt have admissions tests to get into the most selective schools. The problems in the middle schools and its always the problem is always somewhere else, and in fact, its all of these places. All right. I want to talk a little bit about how long youve been thinking about this book because you know, you were just saying, you walked through the city and you think that new york city, where we both live, is a melting pot, its an integrated city, but it is anything, but and that you move through spaces and that the word really sticks out to me. And i know that in your fiction, youve been working through some of these questions for a long time and trying to understand what a free consciousness really means. But why this book . And how did you start feeling like this is the book i need to write . Okay. Ill tell the story. The semi fiction and this has been a 209year long project and ive been writing about what it means to live in a multicultural Pluralistic Society world and also what it means to inhabit a black consciousness that is performing for a white gaze that isnt selfconscious. And deboise says the black conscious, asian awareness of itself. What does it mean to have a fictional world in which one does. As talking to very a brilliant friend who has a lot of books and he says to me one day, calvin, youre too far ahead of people. These are youre answering questions to problems people dont know they have and i sat with that and i said, whats the disconnect . And oh, i get it. And also, this frustration that i want to talk about a whole society, a whole self in my fiction and i wanted to talk about the relationships and connections between america and the rest of the world. I wanted to talk, all right, and the idea that its always been a multiracial space, always, and theres always been a black presence. I cant get there until i move past race. To look at the conversation and that we were having about race and just the real frustration as someone who grew up reading baldwin, grew up reading dubois, that were repeating ourselves and may not be saying it as well the second time, third time, as we did in the first instance. The conversations themselves are being captured and theyre being captured economically, so what do i mean by that . I mean, its a performance and becomes a performance. Weve talked about that this. Theyre necessary performances in some cases, they help people, theyre cathartic. Baldwin makes this critique either late 1940s or early 1950s about protests and how protests denudes the self, flattens the self. All youre doing is reacting against. And the self is so much more than that. I wanted to make a book that spoke to the host of those, as much heart as mind, as much mind as consciousness and to do that meant what does that mean . What does that mean to talk about these problems in a whole way . And then i came across that quote from freud in civilizations and its discontent. Lets pretend that rome isnt a physical entity, but a tactical one, one thats come into existence, ever ceases to exist, we are the layers of the theology or as you talk about your childhood, you talk about your dreams and like in the nation, all of these things exist, and race is inflicting all of these points. So if i was protesting dependence police shootings, im not talking about whole self. Im not talking about the whole society because everything is policed. And how do you move past not simply that harm to the body, but that harm to the spirit, that harm that happens every day in major and minor ways, where you see the only answer to that is integration. And it took a lot of digging. I intuited it, a lot of people intuit it and now i have the receipts, i dig through it and you go through the culture and you break down a lot of the silos a lot of the academic silos, a. If i know history i dont necessarily know literature, dont necessarily know socialology. Also we compartmentalize our talk about race now were going to talk about the race problem and after this were going to watch football. Right. Youre not going to talk about music, were not going to talk about pop culture. Right. Were not going to talk about Public Comments and physical break aways, the way our cities are organized and towns are organized. Were not talk to talk about it, well talk about the absent, the race problem. Weve learn about a language and hope that it makes us where we need to go and it never does. Does. Right. So, in investigating this in the book, you made some really you made some choices. You told us the story someone like ben montgomery, who i, in spite of having read some, not enough history, but did not know the story and i wonder if you could talk a little about his story and what it represents. I love the story of ben montgomery. And so its one of the first black columns in the country and comes into existence right after the civil war. And founders, ben montgomery, who was born in virginia, is sold down the river, is purchased by a lawyer named davis who is Jefferson Daviss brother. The president of this, it turns it from a back woods operation, the fifth or third most profitable plantation in the state. During the war,s running jefferson daves plantation as well. During the war he is winning both Davis Brothers money. Eventually he buys the plantation outright for, i think eight million in current cash and then after and during reconstruction, he loses a challenge from the very large davis clan and moves the town. He moves the town north to a place called mount bayou. But the idea, davis is fascinating to me because what a remarkable man to thrive under these conditions. The relationship that he has with these people is with the people being the davises is nearly equal. Hes still a slave, but hes respected and Jefferson Davis tried to have a patent issued for one of montgomerys inventions. And like, oh, this is exceptionalism. This is this is something that we know whereby, and something throughout the history of race. And i talked about that as a way of showing that you can have a completely racial statement and davis thought that he was or davis was a utopian, he c