To be doing inperson eventuals until 2021 which is a bummer but we want to be real and safe and smart. Well keep bringing you interesting conversations with authors; so we have everything from wonderful event coming up in october with layla a conversation you tent want to miss dont want to miss. Everything from that to a conversation with matthew mcconathy. If thats not a wide ranging list of events witness ill be quite a fall. Follow our events on magic city books. Com. Tonight im so thrilled to have a conversation with mychal denzel smith. A book that was seems like written for the moment were living in, although books are written planned quite a bit before their published and printed but stereotype wed have these he prescient minds that are tapped into what is going on, and so especially for us here in tulsa and everything thats been happening in our community, 2021 is going to be such an important year for our community as well. Stakes is high. We had an event with just one of my favorite books heavy, a powerful book, and im kind of ripping off a blush he said but a stakes is high, book that kind of understand this pandemic before the pandemic actually happened because it gets americas response. Mychal understands mrs. In a way he was able to presage the world were living in, this weird 2020 space. I think youll really enjoy this conversation and thank you for writing the book. Its kind of a mirror for us to see who we and are what were doing right now. So, we have had the great pleasure to doing these conversations. Ive get ton interview a lot of wonderful people but always thrilled to hand that off to another wonderful write who can be in conversation, so tonight our very special guest moderator is has written an Award Winning book. Well post links, sabrina and karina, lets see. Won the american book awards, a finalist for the National Book squared, a finalist for the prize. Its gotten a Pretty Amazing list of accomplishments and just a killer book of stories that you will not soon forget, and i think hopefully im not spoiling this bus i heard theres a novel on the way in 2021. So colleen and mychal will be in conversation. If you have questions during the chat, please put those into the q a and well get to those throughout the conversation. And i know you have tickets and you had a copy of stakes is high but if you want more copies for friends, relatives, read it more than once, whatever the around, well be posting links and also have colleens book here as well so you can get a copy of sabrina and karina so ill turn it over to colleen and say thank you for joining us. I appreciate you give us the time. Thank you so much, jeff. Hi, mychal. Seeing you virtually like this. Im so excited. I have so much to ask you tonight. When i was going through the book i was like, seriously reading the with a i used to read when it was a teenager. You found a secret treasure trove of information. And i actually was like printing off quotes from you and i ran out of ink. I was like i was like, wow so begin the become is a triumph. Its glorious in how much youre able to pull in from the current moment, from history, and you have all these wide ranging topics that do stick together because theyre part of the american story. These issues range from gentrification, the metoo mom and essential ideas of the american ethos and how we as a make, in particular those in power, want us to see ourselves and who we are. So, my first question for issuing just want to get right into it, what was the process of putting this book together and what is the story of america that you are trying to tell with stakes is high . Yeah, thank you. First of all, to jeff and magic city books and you for participating in this and everyone who is watching us and tuning in and who has bought the book already, thats fantastic. So, the book came together this wasnt the book i intended to write after my first one. I published invisible man, watching the summer of 2016, and was very happy with it, and i had achieved my goal, its published a book and that was all i wanted for my life. And then i turned 30 that year and i turned 30 two days before the election of 2016. And there was the sort of exstep shall crisis of turn existential crisis of turning 30 that i wasnt planning on. Thought turning 30 was not that big a deal, its just a number and my waist size grew by an inch and i was like, oh, no, this is different. Something is happening to me. But i say that because i didnt have a plan for after 30. So suddenly anytime this position in which i have to think about what do i want my life to look like. Like still relatively young black man in america who didnt plan for having a life after the age of 30 because i presumed i would not make it to that point. So now like a future i have to start thinking longterm and start thinking for the future. But then two days every turned 30 the election of donald trump it and was just like maybe there wont be a fewer. Maybe we are at the end. But it sort of sitting in between those two feelings of saying that i want now to plan for my own personal future but the world seems to be at this impasse at which we could go toward our extinction in a relatively short time or actually work on the problems we have. And so this book was trying to find the place in which we could build that next world, and so the intervention that i was trying to make or what i was feeling was that theres a narrative that we tell ourselves as americans but america and about being american, that prevents us from seeing our problems in any way that fosters collective action toward eradication of them. When i started on a different book, scrapped that one, started on this one, and had at first like 13 different essays i was going to write and just different subject matter, and i thought that was the way to good about it but in the writing process everything collapsed around certain broad themes. I was finding when i was writing this, relate today this thing over here and ways of come comen combining these things and they collapsed into this. And i was think about which is so present in the book about new york city where i live, and had come to with all of this idealism, the idea that i was going to be like all the millions of people that come to new york, just be going to find my community, find my success, find everything that im looking for. Not realizing, even as critic of america and the american dream, i was doing exactly the same thing i was criticizing people for doing, and its like, new york city was just this microcosm of this broader idea that theres just more possibility here. Theres just more potential. But new york city is a gilded city. Its poverty right here. Its people Homeless People sleeping right there in front of those buildings that good for millions of dollars, and police sweeping them off the street. Its the place where donald trump and his family was able to become this rich family by virtue of being slum lords, and then so it holds all that possibility we want for it but also defined in so many wees by a the structures, those ideologies that run throughout American History that one throughout every institution that we have. And so i was trying to find a way to own my own place in that story. To say, look, even those of us who spend our time looking at American History, looking at the american present and trying to critique it into its best form, are subject to it. Not just subject to it but get swept up in the idealism of it, and that we think that our critiques need to be couched in certain ideas around american patriotism, wanting the best for the country, but that makes us devoted to certain symbols and things that keep us attached to an idea that america in and of itself possesses this type of spirit that is able to overcome everything, and so the story i was trying to tell but america and trying to capture about this moment and how the book comes together, its me wanting more for all of us to be able to say that the story that we have committed ourselves to is the one that is leading to our destruction. Thank you, mychal. I also want to let the audience know, if you have questions, you can use the q a feature and i can see those at any time. So, this is also fascinating and while you were talking, you and i share something really strange and common and that is my birthday is november 9th, and i turned 30 the day before the day after the election, and i the book opens, stake is high opens with that fateful night and you talk but the american story and one thing that was really challenge are for many americans, especially those who consider themselves liberal and progressive was the fact our country elected donald trump to the presidency on that night. And i walked by the hotel where we had this big party in denver, supposed to celebrate this historic win of the first woman president , which did not happen. Can you talk about that night and that significance and why you chose to open the book with this night . Yeah. Just was the tee finding moment of our most defining moment of our most recent history. Inescapable. When i say i was walk us on another book it was something was completely divorced from the ideas im exploring in this book. Suppose to be like black masculinity, and where the ideas are formed and look at the Basketball Court and prison and all of this stuff and thats where i was going to start. And one of it was one sites is the barber shop and going to explore the barber shop and everything and when i started writing that book, the first sentence was but election day because i was in the barber shop on election day and there was about the conversation that was happening. And so i knew i couldnt escape it and thats what made me switch to writing this book and its so pivotal because i think the seek key of those people psyche of people who feel. Thes to be liberals, progressivessen people on the right side of history, the psyche was broken and there was something that was unfathomable pout this, and i cant say that im i was completely immune. Dont want to pretend i was in a position in which i was like, of course donald trump will win this. I wanted to believe that Something Else was possible. I was like, oh, no, we have the first black president , first woman president . Seems lying natural progression but i think what so many of us didnt take into account and what i was trying to get through that night because i was on democracy now during the election coverage, and trying to come to terms with the fact that donald trump was going to win while being on air. It was like, well, of course this happened. If we look at American History, we know that every moment of progress, no matter how, like, minuscule, how benign, whatever it is, theres always a backlash, always a return, the powers that be, the ideology that have been inscribed in the founding always find a way to reassert themselves. We went thank you eight years of the first black president and theres so many things to talk about with regards to that president. I can critique the entire time i lived through it and i critiqued obama as a public figure and public intellectual and owl those things. For all the limitations of the first whether black presidency is representedded for many was a form of progress, theres new possibility available to people. But for a large section of the country, especially aggrieved white men who believed america to be their birthright, what it signaled was they were losing, they were losing something. They were losing hold of their identity, losing hold of their power. And so they fought back, and donald trump is that last gasp. It is this that boxer that is just like, look, im on the ropes and i got try one last thing and they throw that haymaker and hope for the best. So sorry for the sports analogy but thats what it was. And they landed. They landed the punch. And were all paying the price for it. And so it was if i was going to examine america as it is, and who we say we are and who we say we want to be and break down who stutzman we, i had to look at that moment. I had to look at that night and had to reckon with my own emotions around it and my own shortcomings around not being automobile being able to see it. The grief still rippled out today. It will keep going. You talked about the white men and this sort of like last reach for power, and which bring me to the section of the book justice. You talk but modern policing and a lot of americans are starting to learn the history of modern policing and how did we get this system and what does reform look like, what does abolishing the police look like. Where is the history of this come from and i know in the book you mention the London Police so could you talk but that, please . Yeah. The first modern the First Modern Police force in the world starts now london and what theyre doing there is theyre looking for a cheap alternative to the army to be able to suppress uprising in their colony of ireland. Eye repeople are fighting for irish people are fighting for their. In england doesnt want to let control. Theyre using up lots of resources with the army and trying too figure out new ways of then suppressing the folks, controlling the population. So they adopt the idea of the modern police force. Where you have when we say murder modern police force but you can see different forms of policing, Medieval Times in europe and say the knights are police. They work on behalf of the monarchty and they collect the taxes and they enact violence on people who do not live up to the laws that have been set forth by the monarchs and all of that stuff. But the modern police force which is kept, one that is publicly find, one that is armed, one that is part patrolling neighborhoods, that starts in london andgets copied in the u. S. Post independence, and in the 1800s when theyre looking for in northern cities ways of doing exactly what they were doing in england which is to suppress labor uprisings. You have workers that are saying, like, these capitalists, robber barons are taking my wages or paying me low wages, putting me none safe conditions. I dont like it and then theyre going to strike. And what do the capitalists, robber barns do . But form Police Forces to be able to suppress those uprisings and then those get those become part of municipalities, and then you also have to recognize the way in which policing has format arises in the south, in southern cities and southern plantations as a means catching runaway slaves. Thats what their job is. So, thats the history of how we established policing in the u. S. And i point to it often because i just want people to understand that i hasnt moved far from that. The job of the police in those days is to reinforce a second class citizenship to say who is valued, what is central ud. It is to protect the property of the land owners, of capitalists, and it is to in some of that property is people, some of that property is enslaved people. And it is to reinforce racial hierarchy, and it does the same thing, now and also polices gender identity. It is Police Determine what counts as a crime and what happen they responsibility to Domestic Violence calls in which its so often its just man beating on this woman, they take the side of the man who has been beating on this woman because theyre reinforcing the idea this form of violence is legitimate and it is not something that the state needs to get involved with. It reinforces gender identity in that so many trans women are policed fish bodies policed on the streets. Lots of trans women doing survival sex work who are then arrested for doing that and then thrown into jail and theyre doing that work. Theyre always reinforcing the very ideas that are at the core of who america views as a citizen, who america views as legitimate and worthy of rights. So, in understanding that, then, if we understand police that way, which i dont think we do in the popular imagination, so much of how we understand police is shaped by our tv shows and films in which police are heroes, doing these daring heroic acts and swooping in and saving the day from the terrible bad gays that exist in the world that are hell bent on our destruction and we theres american imagination that says they are preventing us from all out chaos but what police have been called in to do is reinforce and then ensure that the inequalities baked into the system are maintained, and if we think of police as that way, then the question becomes, what purpose would police serve in a just society. Guest what purpose would police serve if we were in a position in which everyones needs were met . No one was a social pariah on the basis of race, gender, sexual identity, class. What would happen if there wasnt so much ownership of private property and there was more public ownership. What would happen if everyone had access to education and healthcare and clean water . I think but that so often, just the fact that theres people that dont have clean water. It beingles my mind but boggles my mind but its being policed. Its saying these are people that deserve this and these are people that dont. But in a just society in a society that establishes those things as rights for everyone, what role would police serve . And i think it scares people right now to think of a World Without police because all they can see, because of what theyve been socialized to believe, is that danger is always knocking on my door. Danger is always out there. So people that are other are always out there. The people that are when he wasnt president yet, he said mexico is sending criminals, its sinning rapists, people believed this and they think that its the police and whatever form they may take, in this instance i. C. E. And the police are going to protect you people with guns that are armed with andthe authority of the state to kill with impunity will protect you from this imagined other that is coming to hurt you. But if thats what youre afraid of, the solution is never going to be police because all that the police can do is arrest those people and throw them in jail or they can kill those people. Well, you have a society that is always going to be producing those people . You always going to be producing those kinds of people. Youre always going to be sew sowing the divisions and always going to be putting people in situations of desperation that they need to action in ways that we deem criminal in order for their survival. So, if police are necessary in this system, in order to make someone feel safe and they dont make all of us feel safe. But if theyre necessary in this system why would they be necessary in a system in which everyone actually has the access to things that make them safe . I think its a reimagining of safety, reimagining of community, its a reimagining of what it takes to ensure that the behaviors that you dont want to see in the world are not actually taken because so many things cr