Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Bookshelf Richard Rothstein T

That deep, deep research that goes to the bones of our country and unearths the things we are not interested in talking about. So im deeply thankful to richard and i am paying back the favor by being here in conversation with him. The second part of this is there is an notion i have been doing whatever i can to reverse this. We have conceived of ourselves as a country with a racial problem. Underneath of that is there notion is that there are pure races in this country, a white race from europe, a black race from africa, and asian race from asia a latino race that hails from, i dont quite know where. Increasingly in arab and muslim race. This is the path we are going down and what this language does is obscure the fact that race and racism in america is a done thing, that the name comes after the attempt to take something from somebody and what that allows us to do is feel like we are some sort of divine, god in with some sort of divine, god made problem when we are in fact dealing with the things done by our ancestors and that we continue to do to this very day. A term forlds is this called race craft, and that the way which racism the things , people do become trans figurative to race. Tonight, we are going to talk about an act of race craft. That how race was created in the past and continues to be throughout our housing policies in this country. I thought it would be good if we and you could talk about why housing and the Place Housing occupies in the american imagination and in our daily lives . Richard let me say it this way. The fact that we are living separately, every metropolitan area is racially segregated has enormous implications for the country as a whole and many of the problems we face. I spent a lot of time writing about the achievement gap and a good part of that achievement gap is attributable to the fact that when you concentrate children with serious social and economic advantages, they cannot possibly achieve at the levels they would achieve even with those same disadvantages where they were in schools where those problems were predominant stop were not predominant. We know africanamerican children generally have Poorer Health than white children. So they are absent more often. If a few children are absent in the class, the teacher can accommodate to that and pay special attention to the children who need special help. If every child in the fact is in every child in the class is in poor health than the typical middleclass children, then there is no way to give every child special help. The curriculum as a whole has to become more remedial. If a few children in class are stressed because of Economic Security or their parents are unemployed and they are acting out, a teacher can deal with that. If every child is coming under stress, much more attention and resources have to be spent on behavioral issues than instruction. It affects the fact that children were concentrated with these disadvantages in single single schools affects the major education problem we face. We spent a lot of time in the last few years focused on confrontations between police and young africanamerican men. That is strictly a function of residential segregation. If we did not have racial segregation, police would behave to serve and protect their communities, not as occupying colonial forces and young men would not be hopeless because they are living in communities where there are no jobs or access to jobs and attending schools where teachers have difficulty accommodating the overwhelming problems they face. So that problem stems from residential segregation. We are concerned about growing inequality in this country. Growing inequality, economic inequality is driven in part by residential segregation. We know from research, for example that low income children who grow up in a middleclass neighborhood are much more likely to be middleclass as adults than low income children that grow up in a segregated neighborhood. So money problems we face stem so many problems we face stem from residential segregation and that is why i bought it was important to explore how it happened and what we might do about it. Tanehisi why is it that segregation has to lead for worse outcomes for africanamericans. Why cant it be the old trope of separate but equal is it the , mere fact of living separate but equally or does it come from more than that . Richard it is primarily because lower income children who are concentrated in single classrooms reinforce each others problems and prevent teachers from being able to address those individual problems without disrupting the entire class. If every child in the class has those problems, then it becomes more difficult to deal with. I guess you could say if you could integrate low income africanamerican children throughout middleclass africanamerican neighborhoods, you would not have those problems. But as we know, the income in Income Distribution in the Africanamerican Community is lower than the white community, in part because of the history of residential segregation. So that is not a realistic policy alternative at this point. I would never suggest and i dont suggest black children have to sit next to white children in order to learn. Low income children who tend to be disproportionately africanamerican in this country have to sit next to middleclass children to have a productive learning environment. Tanehisi its not merely these africanamerican children come from low income households, they come from low wealth households. Richard yes. They come from low wealth households and thats a legacy of residential segregation. I can talk about that now or later if you want. Tanehisi i think its really important, its not just the living apart. Richard the wealth difference is essential, but its going to be a long answer. Tanehisi they are here to hear you. Its an important answer. Richard most people think of residential segregation today as something the Supreme Court coined the term they called it de facto segregation. Its something that happened by accident, because of private prejudice, because of Real Estate Agents who steered people to different places because People Choose to live with one another of the same race. Under the constitutional theory the Supreme Court has adopted and most of us believe, and as i accept for the purpose of this argument, even though it may not be a good constitutional theory, but you can only have one fight at a time, so i accept this distinction. Under our current constitutional theory, if something happens through private action, there is no constitutional remedy. If it happens by state action, federal, state, local action, not only is there a constitutional remedy, but there is a constitutional obligation to remedy it. How did this wealth gap you are talking about as well as many of the other problems ive alluded to already, arose because of a history of statesponsored segregation. Thats the subtitle of my book a forgotten history, because it was once wellknown. There are two main aspects of it. I have to describe both of them and how they interact with each other to answer your question. The first is Public Housing most of us think of Public Housing as a place where low income, mostly minority families live, sometimes highrises, vertical slums, low incomes, unemployed, single parents. That is our image of Public Housing. In fact, that is not how Public Housing began in this country. Its a recent development. Public housing began in the new deal under the Roosevelt Administration during the depression as a program for white, middleclass and lower class families i merely who are primarily who were homeless during the depression and lost their homes during the depression. Some projects were built for African Americans. That is what made the Roosevelt Administration progressive. Other administrations might have built Public Housing only for whites and not for africanamericans. So, and cities across the country, these segregated projects were built. It started in the new deal, segregated neighborhoods that were negative that were never segregated before. In the first half of the 20th century, there were many neighborhoods and areas in this country that worked it out. People of all races and ethnicities lived close enough and had to be able to walk to work it didnt have long distance. I talk in the book about Langston Hughess autobiography. In which he referred to how he describes how he grew up in an integrated neighborhood. His best friend was polish, he dated a jewish girl in high school, it was an integrated neighborhood in cleveland. The federal government came in, demolished it on the guise of slum clearance and built segregated housing, segregated the neighborhood that he had known. Except a project for black spread skipping ahead, and this is getting close to the answer of your question, but we are not there yet. This went on through world war ii. Defense housing for workers who migrated to the defense Production Centers where it was built, many of these cities had no African American populations before the war, so they were not preserving segregation, they were creating segregation. In california, there were very few africanamericans living there. The big center of shipbuilding. The federal government segregated those cities that were all white before the war and by the end of the war were completely segregated retro paulson areas. Metropolitan areas. In 1949, getting closer, 1949, president truman proposed a massive expansion of the Public Housing program. Because there wasnt a norma civilian housing shortage even then. After world war ii, no materials were permitted to be used during the war for civilian Housing Construction and all these veterans returning to the country needing housing, so president truman proposed this enormous Public Housing program, primarily for white families. Just to emphasize this point in the early years of Public Housing, cities had social workers visit the homes of applicants for Public Housing, white families, to make sure their children were well behaved and they had good enough furniture to put into the Public Housing and they had to show a marriage certificate to prove they were not you know what. That is what Public Housing was. President truman proposed this bill and conservatives who wanted to defeat the Public Housing bill, not for race reasons because this was for whites, was to defeat the Public Housing built because they were opposed to any public involvement in the private housing market. They thought the private sector should take care of it even though the private sector was not taking care of it. The way they came up to defeat this was with the till amendment. Poison pill amendment its amendment opponents of a bill put on a bill in hopes the amendment will pass and make the entire bill palatable. So conservatives in congress put an amendment onto trumans housing bill that from now on, Public Housing had to be integrated. So theres no secret Public Housing was segregated, but they put on an amendment that it had to be integrated. The idea being if liberals supported the integration amendment and conservatives were opposed to Public Housing also supported it, the amendment would pass and then the entire bill would fire integration and then democrats would abandon the bill and the bill would fail. So liberals in congress fought against the integration amendment led by hubert humphrey, led by paul douglas, another great liberal at the time. They fought against the integration amendment. It was defeated and the 1949 housing act wasnt passed, to continue this segregation path. Thats how we got these giant towers. Cabrini green in chicago or the Robert Taylor homes, im getting closer. These were segregated. We think of the pruitt towers as towers filled with low income people but the pruitt towers were for africanamericans. The other towers were for whites. Not a fact of though. Not because they happened to apply, this is how they were designated. They were filled this way and after a few years, the white tower was vacant, largely vacant and the pruitt tower had long waiting lists. Getting closer. So why is it that after all these years, the white Public Housing has vacancies and black Public Housing has long waiting list . And the reason is another federal program run by the federal Housing Administration that subsidized movement of white families out of central cities into singlefamily homes in the suburbs that were exclusively white. So the federal government guaranteed loans to mass production builders, the most famous example is levittown. Levitt could have never assembled the capital to build 17,000 homes for which he had no buyers. He got loans guaranteed by the federal government on explicit condition explicit condition , i want to emphasize that. That no homes be sold to africanamericans and every home in the development had to have a clause in the deed prohibiting resale to african markets. Now i can get to your question. Africanamericans. The entire country was suburban eyes this way. Suburban eyes suburbanized this way. Whites were moved out of the cities, African Americans had to remain in cities and the cities became poor because industry moved out. The entire country became suburbanized. In 1947, 48, when levitt built that development east of new york city, those homes sold for 7,000, 8,000 apiece. In todays money, thats about 100,000. Africanamericans who were equally capable of paying that money for a house, especially if they had an fha mortgage or v. A. , no down payment policy in fact, they paid less in their monthly carrying charges for those houses than they were paying in rent for Public Housing. To own a home in levitt town they pay less than to pay rent in Public Housing. Today, those homes sell for 300,000, 400,000. The africanamerican families who were prohibited from moving into those homes and rented apartments in the city did not gain 200,000, 300,000 in equity. White families gained that equity and today, those homes are unaffordable to workingclass people. 100,000 in 1940 in our terms was twice the National Median income. Workingclass families could not afford them with fha loans. Today, those homes sell for seven times the National Median income. Workingclass families and middleclass families cant even afford to move to the suburbs created in the 40s and 50s. So, today, nationwide, we have a ratio in income African American income on average is 60 of white income. Africanamerican wealth is 5 to 7 of white well. Wealth. Most families gained their wealth through housing equity. This enormous difference between a 60 income ratios and 5 wealth ratio is almost entirely attributable to unconstitutional federal housing policy practice in the 1930s, 40s, and into the 50s. The wealth gap is attributable to this segregation. Tanehisi not wonderful and how it is but in how you synthesized it in which you have African Americans confined to one tract of housing and white americans gifted, i would say, to another tract of housing. An opportunity to build wealth for one group and state subsidized opportunity, not a private investment opportunity. A state subsidized opportunity. And another one in which African Americans were excluded from and i agree with you in terms of the consequences being profound, but it begs the question why . Why was this done . Richard thats a difficult question to answer. Thats not the sort of thing thats not in the papers, its not in the archives, so i can speculate about it. Thats something for journalists to speculate about. [laughter] i think there were several reasons. We have to remember the Roosevelt Administration, progressive though it was on economic issues, was a still an expression of the white anglosaxon middleclass. We are familiar ruling class. We are familiar with their refusal to admit refugees from nazi germany. The fact they considered whites a superior race is not surprising. Theres been a lot written about in many cases, the Roosevelt Administration reluctantly made made, made compromises with southern democrats for the new deal. Occupations, African Americans were precluded from Social Security or the minimum wage. That doesnt affect a fly but housing. Southern democrats were perfectly content to have integrated housing in the north. Social security is a national program, so if its going to exclude African Americans, it has to be nationwide. Southern democrats were perfectly willing to have integration in the north so long as they could preserve segregation in the south, going back to the time of slavery. There was never a dispute about whether slavery could be prohibited in the north, but the northwest free to integrate so long as the south could preserve segregation. That doesnt explain this housing issue. The other reason, i think, is i guess its not really an answer to your question, its a reason why it is so hard to think about this problem, and that is we desegregated formally every other area of american life. We desegregate us is, that steak, Place Housing<\/a> occupies in the american imagination and in our daily lives . Richard let me say it this way. The fact that we are living separately, every metropolitan area is racially segregated has enormous implications for the country as a whole and many of the problems we face. I spent a lot of time writing about the achievement gap and a good part of that achievement gap is attributable to the fact that when you concentrate children with serious social and economic advantages, they cannot possibly achieve at the levels they would achieve even with those same disadvantages where they were in schools where those problems were predominant stop were not predominant. We know africanamerican children generally have Poorer Health<\/a> than white children. So they are absent more often. If a few children are absent in the class, the teacher can accommodate to that and pay special attention to the children who need special help. If every child in the fact is in every child in the class is in poor health than the typical middleclass children, then there is no way to give every child special help. The curriculum as a whole has to become more remedial. If a few children in class are stressed because of Economic Security<\/a> or their parents are unemployed and they are acting out, a teacher can deal with that. If every child is coming under stress, much more attention and resources have to be spent on behavioral issues than instruction. It affects the fact that children were concentrated with these disadvantages in single single schools affects the major education problem we face. We spent a lot of time in the last few years focused on confrontations between police and young africanamerican men. That is strictly a function of residential segregation. If we did not have racial segregation, police would behave to serve and protect their communities, not as occupying colonial forces and young men would not be hopeless because they are living in communities where there are no jobs or access to jobs and attending schools where teachers have difficulty accommodating the overwhelming problems they face. So that problem stems from residential segregation. We are concerned about growing inequality in this country. Growing inequality, economic inequality is driven in part by residential segregation. We know from research, for example that low income children who grow up in a middleclass neighborhood are much more likely to be middleclass as adults than low income children that grow up in a segregated neighborhood. So money problems we face stem so many problems we face stem from residential segregation and that is why i bought it was important to explore how it happened and what we might do about it. Tanehisi why is it that segregation has to lead for worse outcomes for africanamericans. Why cant it be the old trope of separate but equal is it the , mere fact of living separate but equally or does it come from more than that . Richard it is primarily because lower income children who are concentrated in single classrooms reinforce each others problems and prevent teachers from being able to address those individual problems without disrupting the entire class. If every child in the class has those problems, then it becomes more difficult to deal with. I guess you could say if you could integrate low income africanamerican children throughout middleclass africanamerican neighborhoods, you would not have those problems. But as we know, the income in Income Distribution<\/a> in the Africanamerican Community<\/a> is lower than the white community, in part because of the history of residential segregation. So that is not a realistic policy alternative at this point. I would never suggest and i dont suggest black children have to sit next to white children in order to learn. Low income children who tend to be disproportionately africanamerican in this country have to sit next to middleclass children to have a productive learning environment. Tanehisi its not merely these africanamerican children come from low income households, they come from low wealth households. Richard yes. They come from low wealth households and thats a legacy of residential segregation. I can talk about that now or later if you want. Tanehisi i think its really important, its not just the living apart. Richard the wealth difference is essential, but its going to be a long answer. Tanehisi they are here to hear you. Its an important answer. Richard most people think of residential segregation today as something the Supreme Court<\/a> coined the term they called it de facto segregation. Its something that happened by accident, because of private prejudice, because of Real Estate Agents<\/a> who steered people to different places because People Choose<\/a> to live with one another of the same race. Under the constitutional theory the Supreme Court<\/a> has adopted and most of us believe, and as i accept for the purpose of this argument, even though it may not be a good constitutional theory, but you can only have one fight at a time, so i accept this distinction. Under our current constitutional theory, if something happens through private action, there is no constitutional remedy. If it happens by state action, federal, state, local action, not only is there a constitutional remedy, but there is a constitutional obligation to remedy it. How did this wealth gap you are talking about as well as many of the other problems ive alluded to already, arose because of a history of statesponsored segregation. Thats the subtitle of my book a forgotten history, because it was once wellknown. There are two main aspects of it. I have to describe both of them and how they interact with each other to answer your question. The first is Public Housing<\/a> most of us think of Public Housing<\/a> as a place where low income, mostly minority families live, sometimes highrises, vertical slums, low incomes, unemployed, single parents. That is our image of Public Housing<\/a>. In fact, that is not how Public Housing<\/a> began in this country. Its a recent development. Public housing began in the new deal under the Roosevelt Administration<\/a> during the depression as a program for white, middleclass and lower class families i merely who are primarily who were homeless during the depression and lost their homes during the depression. Some projects were built for African American<\/a>s. That is what made the Roosevelt Administration<\/a> progressive. Other administrations might have built Public Housing<\/a> only for whites and not for africanamericans. So, and cities across the country, these segregated projects were built. It started in the new deal, segregated neighborhoods that were negative that were never segregated before. In the first half of the 20th century, there were many neighborhoods and areas in this country that worked it out. People of all races and ethnicities lived close enough and had to be able to walk to work it didnt have long distance. I talk in the book about Langston Hughess<\/a> autobiography. In which he referred to how he describes how he grew up in an integrated neighborhood. His best friend was polish, he dated a jewish girl in high school, it was an integrated neighborhood in cleveland. The federal government came in, demolished it on the guise of slum clearance and built segregated housing, segregated the neighborhood that he had known. Except a project for black spread skipping ahead, and this is getting close to the answer of your question, but we are not there yet. This went on through world war ii. Defense housing for workers who migrated to the defense Production Centers<\/a> where it was built, many of these cities had no African American<\/a> populations before the war, so they were not preserving segregation, they were creating segregation. In california, there were very few africanamericans living there. The big center of shipbuilding. The federal government segregated those cities that were all white before the war and by the end of the war were completely segregated retro paulson areas. Metropolitan areas. In 1949, getting closer, 1949, president truman proposed a massive expansion of the Public Housing<\/a> program. Because there wasnt a norma civilian housing shortage even then. After world war ii, no materials were permitted to be used during the war for civilian Housing Construction<\/a> and all these veterans returning to the country needing housing, so president truman proposed this enormous Public Housing<\/a> program, primarily for white families. Just to emphasize this point in the early years of Public Housing<\/a>, cities had social workers visit the homes of applicants for Public Housing<\/a>, white families, to make sure their children were well behaved and they had good enough furniture to put into the Public Housing<\/a> and they had to show a marriage certificate to prove they were not you know what. That is what Public Housing<\/a> was. President truman proposed this bill and conservatives who wanted to defeat the Public Housing<\/a> bill, not for race reasons because this was for whites, was to defeat the Public Housing<\/a> built because they were opposed to any public involvement in the private housing market. They thought the private sector should take care of it even though the private sector was not taking care of it. The way they came up to defeat this was with the till amendment. Poison pill amendment its amendment opponents of a bill put on a bill in hopes the amendment will pass and make the entire bill palatable. So conservatives in congress put an amendment onto trumans housing bill that from now on, Public Housing<\/a> had to be integrated. So theres no secret Public Housing<\/a> was segregated, but they put on an amendment that it had to be integrated. The idea being if liberals supported the integration amendment and conservatives were opposed to Public Housing<\/a> also supported it, the amendment would pass and then the entire bill would fire integration and then democrats would abandon the bill and the bill would fail. So liberals in congress fought against the integration amendment led by hubert humphrey, led by paul douglas, another great liberal at the time. They fought against the integration amendment. It was defeated and the 1949 housing act wasnt passed, to continue this segregation path. Thats how we got these giant towers. Cabrini green in chicago or the Robert Taylor<\/a> homes, im getting closer. These were segregated. We think of the pruitt towers as towers filled with low income people but the pruitt towers were for africanamericans. The other towers were for whites. Not a fact of though. Not because they happened to apply, this is how they were designated. They were filled this way and after a few years, the white tower was vacant, largely vacant and the pruitt tower had long waiting lists. Getting closer. So why is it that after all these years, the white Public Housing<\/a> has vacancies and black Public Housing<\/a> has long waiting list . And the reason is another federal program run by the federal Housing Administration<\/a> that subsidized movement of white families out of central cities into singlefamily homes in the suburbs that were exclusively white. So the federal government guaranteed loans to mass production builders, the most famous example is levittown. Levitt could have never assembled the capital to build 17,000 homes for which he had no buyers. He got loans guaranteed by the federal government on explicit condition explicit condition , i want to emphasize that. That no homes be sold to africanamericans and every home in the development had to have a clause in the deed prohibiting resale to african markets. Now i can get to your question. Africanamericans. The entire country was suburban eyes this way. Suburban eyes suburbanized this way. Whites were moved out of the cities, African American<\/a>s had to remain in cities and the cities became poor because industry moved out. The entire country became suburbanized. In 1947, 48, when levitt built that development east of new york city, those homes sold for 7,000, 8,000 apiece. In todays money, thats about 100,000. Africanamericans who were equally capable of paying that money for a house, especially if they had an fha mortgage or v. A. , no down payment policy in fact, they paid less in their monthly carrying charges for those houses than they were paying in rent for Public Housing<\/a>. To own a home in levitt town they pay less than to pay rent in Public Housing<\/a>. Today, those homes sell for 300,000, 400,000. The africanamerican families who were prohibited from moving into those homes and rented apartments in the city did not gain 200,000, 300,000 in equity. White families gained that equity and today, those homes are unaffordable to workingclass people. 100,000 in 1940 in our terms was twice the National Median<\/a> income. Workingclass families could not afford them with fha loans. Today, those homes sell for seven times the National Median<\/a> income. Workingclass families and middleclass families cant even afford to move to the suburbs created in the 40s and 50s. So, today, nationwide, we have a ratio in income African American<\/a> income on average is 60 of white income. Africanamerican wealth is 5 to 7 of white well. Wealth. Most families gained their wealth through housing equity. This enormous difference between a 60 income ratios and 5 wealth ratio is almost entirely attributable to unconstitutional federal housing policy practice in the 1930s, 40s, and into the 50s. The wealth gap is attributable to this segregation. Tanehisi not wonderful and how it is but in how you synthesized it in which you have African American<\/a>s confined to one tract of housing and white americans gifted, i would say, to another tract of housing. An opportunity to build wealth for one group and state subsidized opportunity, not a private investment opportunity. A state subsidized opportunity. And another one in which African American<\/a>s were excluded from and i agree with you in terms of the consequences being profound, but it begs the question why . Why was this done . Richard thats a difficult question to answer. Thats not the sort of thing thats not in the papers, its not in the archives, so i can speculate about it. Thats something for journalists to speculate about. [laughter] i think there were several reasons. We have to remember the Roosevelt Administration<\/a>, progressive though it was on economic issues, was a still an expression of the white anglosaxon middleclass. We are familiar ruling class. We are familiar with their refusal to admit refugees from nazi germany. The fact they considered whites a superior race is not surprising. Theres been a lot written about in many cases, the Roosevelt Administration<\/a> reluctantly made made, made compromises with southern democrats for the new deal. Occupations, African American<\/a>s were precluded from Social Security<\/a> or the minimum wage. That doesnt affect a fly but housing. Southern democrats were perfectly content to have integrated housing in the north. Social security is a national program, so if its going to exclude African American<\/a>s, it has to be nationwide. Southern democrats were perfectly willing to have integration in the north so long as they could preserve segregation in the south, going back to the time of slavery. There was never a dispute about whether slavery could be prohibited in the north, but the northwest free to integrate so long as the south could preserve segregation. That doesnt explain this housing issue. The other reason, i think, is i guess its not really an answer to your question, its a reason why it is so hard to think about this problem, and that is we desegregated formally every other area of american life. We desegregate us is, that steak, African American<\/a>s can set anywhere on the bus. We desegregated lunch counters, the next day African American<\/a>s can sit at the lunch counter. We desegregated schools, next day African American<\/a>s could go to their neighborhood school. But if we desegregate neighborhoods, what happens . How do we put our heads around what we are going to do . The next day, African American<\/a>s can move to affluent suburbs because we passed a law banning segregation. So its difficult to think about this problem and as a result, we have avoided it and come up with this myth to protect us from thinking about it and the myth is it all happened i private by private action. We call it de facto. Therefore if it happened by accident, it can only be undone by accident and we dont have to worry about it. Tanehisi its also the citizens and state to evade responsibility. One of the things about this narrative is there is a common idea where racism is basically linked to a conservative south and everything had everything ad flows out of that. What is it mean where you have a situation where not just an administration when folks want to critique barack obama, they would often compare him to roosevelt. This is seen as the liberal standard of high point of liberal progressivism stop what liberal progressivism. What does it mean that it was the exact point that a lot of his policies that ultimately deprived African American<\/a>s of wealth actually began. What does that tell us about the possibilities to any sort of ridding ourselves of the phantoms of whites premise and racism that is so pervasive . Richard i dont know that i would go that far. The new deal was the First Administration<\/a> actively involved in the american economy. There was no opportunity to implement these policies beforehand. Its not that previous administrations were less racist, although some more and some were not. The Wilson Administration<\/a> was explicitly racist. The harding and coolidge and hoover administrations, less so. But none of them were involved in the american economy. It was the new deal that first got involved the economy and housing. The first civilian housing was built in the new deal. There was no civilian housing before that. I dont know this happened because the Roosevelt Administration<\/a> was more racist than others. In fact, it was relatively progressive, i hate to say this, it was relatively progressive on race because it built some housing for africanamericans. The likelihood is previous administrations would have only built housing for white families. Tanehisi i want to push on that a little bit. If we follow the implication of your work, much of the inequality we see between africanamericans and whites can be traced to this progressive action. Richard absolutely. But thats because the inequality could only be created by government if it was involved in the economy. If the government wasnt involved in the economy, it could not create this kind of inequality. It was the opportunity to be involved in the economy that gave the opportunity to segregate. Tanehisi what does this call us to do now . Richard as you heard, i gave a lot of lectures as i was doing this research and wrote articles and people always ask me that question. I didnt want to answer it. Finally, i got pestered enough that i through a chapter in here in the book about remedies. But i dont think we can really creatively think about remedies until we disabuse ourselves of this myth of private causation. So long as we have this consensus, and it is across the political spectrum, conservatives and liberals alike use this term de facto segregation. Most of us in this room think of it as de facto segregation. As long as we have that consensus, we are hobbled to think creatively of remedies. I will give you a radical answer which i think is absurd because theres no political consensus that would support it. I gave you the example of levittown. If we understood this history with statesponsored segregation, it was unconstitutional, a violation of the 14th amendment, i argue in the book even the 13th amendment, we might do the following congress, 15 of the metropolitan area in new york is metropolitan is African American<\/a>. Congress might adopt a program where Congress Buys<\/a> up homes in with the federal government buys up the next 15 of homes in levittown and sells them to qualified africanamericans. That would be a constitutionally justifiable remedy in light of the history i just described. I guess i did just say it in public. I was going to say i wasnt going to say that in public but i just did. [laughter] but that kind of thing cant be debated unless we understand history. What we should be doing now is trying to do everything we can and you are a star in this area to make people familiar with the history. Your article about chicago, the case for reparations did this. A writer for the New York Times<\/a> magazine has been writing about this. We need to make this part of our national conversation. So we can begin to conceive of these remedies that may be people will think of that i have not out of once we begin to have a conversation about it. But we cant have a conversation about it so long as we have this myth. A very simple thing one thing i report in the book as i examine the most commonly used High School Textbooks<\/a> in america today. Every single one of them lies about this history. They lie about it. Thats a very simple thing to fix. If we dont fix it, the next generation is going to be no better to fix it than this one. The most widely used American History<\/a> textbook, kids carried around in backpacks, has one paragraph and the entire 1000 page book devoted to segregation in the north. Within that paragraph, it has one sentence devoted to housing in the sentence reads as follows in the north, africanamericans found themselves forced into segregated housing. Thats it. Passive voice. No discussion of who did the forcing, passive voice, they woke up one morning and looked out the window and said whooptydo, here we are in a segregated neighborhood. [laughter] as long as we are teaching our young people that, theres no very little hope of having a serious conversation about remedies. You said in your articles that the first step has to be understanding this history for a talk about remedy at. Tanehisi im being instructed to now throw it to the audience, so i believe we are going to take questions from the audience. Now i dont have a microphone, but that is ok. Richard we can share. I was wondering if you can comment on housing segregation being a result of partially having to do with the fact many gis returning from the war, they got the g. I. Bill. I think they also got money for a mortgage. I understood while African American<\/a>s also received the g. I. Bill, they could not find a bank that would give them a loan or a school that would take them. How does that compare to the disparity in asset accumulation versus what you just laid out . Richard i have been writing about this for a number of years and i got an email from somebody who told me her family story, so i talked to various members of her family and told the story in the book. An African American<\/a> veteran of world war ii, very ambitious and talented, he bought a truck, a surplus army trucks and recondition them to be able to haul sheet rock and other construction materials. He got a contract with levitt. He was veteran and got a contract with levitt but was not permitted to buy a home there. He was better off financially than many of the people who purchased homes in levittown, the white people, they are workingclass men returning from the war. So the g. I. Bill was available, in theory, to African American<\/a>s, but if the subdivisions the federal government was creating would not sell homes to them, the availability of the g. I. Bill did not do much good. Thank you. I love your book. I bought so many copies. I live locally. I live in this neighborhood and i grew up in washington. On Dupont Circle<\/a>. One side of the circle was mixed and the other side of the circle was mixed. By the time i graduated from college, that had changed and all of Dupont Circle<\/a> had gentrified. So i couldnt afford it as a College Student<\/a> to live there. My current question is what is the impact of zoning . I live in this neighborhood, i have a perfectly acceptable ground floor flat that i could afford to rent to a family, they could go to merge school or they could live downstairs in a one bedroom with a big living room dining room, kitchen, beautiful garden, but i cannot do it because of zoning. I would like to do that. I would like to encourage my neighbors to do that instead of building these god awful pardon my french, homeless shelter with cubicles for people to live in with no axis to fresh air, no access to jobs. They have to schlep their kids from here all the way across town and the amount of money they are spending the amount of money they could buy and help people in this neighborhood and other neighborhoods to redo their basements, to provide inclusive housing, and get people on the right track to independence instead of continuing slavery by putting people in boxes in the Police Parking<\/a> lot. Richard all right let me talk about zoning more generally. The term i will use is exclusionary zoning. Its zoning that prohibits i dont know the particulars of your neighborhood and im not going to try to find out in the next two seconds, but many, many white neighborhoods, white suburbs have exclusionary Zoning Ordinance<\/a>s that prohibits. Im not talking about poor people, they prohibit the construction of singlefamily homes on normal lot sizes or prohibit the construction of townhouses or attractive apartment units. Those Zoning Ordinance<\/a>s and this goes to your question im finished with your neighborhood and talking generally about zoning, those Zoning Ordinance<\/a>s date back to the prenew deal era and they were specifically racially motivated, which is something another part of the history we have forgotten. 1917, the Supreme Court<\/a> ruled cities could not establish racial zones. They couldnt say African American<\/a>s can live here, whites can live here or there. The way in which these ordinances were written, the Supreme Court<\/a> prohibited in 1917 indicated how integrated the neighborhoods in urban areas were because the typical ordinances prohibited africanamericans from moving on to a block that were majority white. It was an integrated block, but if it was majority white africanamericans could not move , onto it and the city of baltimore is the first to do this they had a difficulty enforcing it because they ran into problems, there is one block where there was an africanamerican church, may be the reverse an africanamerican church and the minister moved out of the parsonage to have some repairs done and could not move back in because of the majority white nature of the lock made it block made it illegal for him to live in his own church personages. The Supreme Court<\/a> ruled that unconstitutional, not because the Supreme Court<\/a> was integrationist, but for those of you who know, some American History<\/a> in that time from the beginning of the 20th century through the mid1930s, the Supreme Court<\/a> thought its main role in life was to protect Property Rights<\/a>. Zoning ordinances interfered with the Property Rights<\/a> of a homeowner to sell to whomever he wanted. That was the basis of the Supreme Court<\/a> decision. City leaders, who wanted to set a great who wanted to segregate their communities were panicked by this decision because how are they going to do it without these ordinances . In 1920, Warren Harding<\/a> was elected president. His secretary of commerce was a fellow named herbert hoover. Herbert hoover established the committee on zoning. It was made up of prominent segregationists, planners who in the cities they came from, had designed racially designated zones, but the Supreme Court<\/a> but understanding that the Supreme Court<\/a> prohibited it came , up with the idea of Economic Zones<\/a> as a way of keeping out africanamericans. They published a pamphlet on zoning that was distributed to every suburb in the country telling them how to zone to exclude low income families. They didnt say they wanted to exclude African American<\/a>s. They were also concerned about the irish and italian immigrants. It was an economic zoning thing. We had a recent discussion in this country about President Trump<\/a>s muslim ban where the courts said the ban may on its face seem nondiscriminatory that but President Trump<\/a> and his campaign made so many discriminatory statements that we understand what this is really about. The same thing was true of these zoning pamphlets and the zoning laws were adopted. In 1926, the Supreme Court<\/a> upheld the right of cities and suburbs to impose this kind of zoning. It was the only time in 40 years, 35 years of the Supreme Court<\/a> in the 20 that they upheld a policy that interfered with Property Rights<\/a>. It interfered with the rights of a homeowner to do what you are talking about or the right of a developer to build a singlefamily home. The only time was when they upheld the right of cities to zone out low income families. The lower court judge said its obvious this is designed to exclude colored and immigrant families. That is unconstitutional according to the 1917 decision, but the Supreme Court<\/a> ignored the lower courts finding and upheld zoning. Since then, we have had this economic zoning. Racially motivated, im not saying every suburb that adopted a Zoning Ordinance<\/a> is was not economically elitist rather than racially discriminatory, but theres a of racial motivation behind these zoning laws and has contributed a great deal to maintaining the segregation we have in this country in suburbs around the country. Back to your thoughts about remedies. I know philadelphia has a policy and im not sure if it is still active today where they are tearing down those big Public Housing<\/a> units and then the Public Housing<\/a> authority is buying Dilapidated Properties<\/a> and building duplexes or singlefamily homes in the heart and core of the cities and then, i guess its a lease to buy program where low income families can buy those homes the Public Housing<\/a> authority has built. Do you think thats a valid replicatable model for other cities . Richard me again . When do you get the chance . [laughter] these policies going on around the country, typically what happens is some families to get do get to participate in own programs, but the vast majority of families they misplaced do not because the density is much lower. So they wind up going somewhere else. Where did they go . They go to the only places that will accept them and these are new, segregated communities in the suburbs. When we first started being aware of this as a country again after Michael Brown<\/a> was killed by a policeman in ferguson, missouri, how did a suburb like ferguson become majority black . I thought black communities were in cities not suburbs. ,it happened not because of that rent to own program and a lot of programs like that where neighborhoods get gentrified, in the case of st. Louis, they demolish large swaths of the Africanamerican Community<\/a> that had been created by the policies i describe before, so they demolished these areas and built the gateway arch. Its like half of a mcdonalds on the mississippi river. Sign they demolish these and where were the people going to go. Instead of Public Housing<\/a>, they got vouchers. Typically known as section eight vouchers. The section eight Voucher Program<\/a> is one in which the Housing Authority<\/a> with federal money gives family a subsidy so they can spend no more than 30 of their income on a market rental at the average rent in the community. Thats a fine system except there is a curious exception to the fair housing act. Landlords are permitted to discriminate against section eight housing vouchers. And not accept them. In st. Louis, they use this example when all of these africanamerican neighborhoods in downtown st. Louis were demolished, sometimes for housing, middleclass housing or lower middle class housing, sometimes for universities, sometimes for big highway exchanges, africanamericans had to go to the only places where there vouchers were accepted and it turned out st. Louis, the town of ferguson, jennings, a couple of towns that would accept these vouchers and these became new segregated communities on the inner ring and this is happening everywhere in the country. We get gentrification and historically, we got urban renewal, which in the 60s was characterized as negro removal. Everywhere we got these kinds of programs, it displaced the minority populations to segregated communities in suburbs. Lots of people talk about gentrification because it creates diverse communities. Its only transitional diversity. Transitional integration because gradually, those communities become unaffordable to the people who used to live there. They cant pay property taxes anymore. So they are forced to move to these new segregated communities. The program is fine except is not part of the plan of integration. It helps a few people who get those rent to own homes, but its not part of a broader plan to desegregate metropolitan areas which is required if we are going to deal with this problem successfully. Im really impressed with your article, brown at 60. But what struck me when i read it is that blackness creates whiteness. Discrimination against black people is required for white people to have White Privilege<\/a>. Democrats did so much with desegregation and affirmative action has made it impossible for poor whites to have a white home and a white school at their low income which means they definitely need donald trump. That is what they were voting for. Am i wrong . Is there some hope for this country, im assuming in 10 other than, right now im assuming that in 10 years hispanics will be white because white people are not fooled. Is it true that its essential black people be the negative out party so that there is white consistency in this country . Richard it is certainly two sides of the same coin. You cannot have superiority without inferiority and vice versa. So White Privilege<\/a> does depend on black subjugation. The reality is, as you alluded to, poor whites are much more likely to be integrated into middleclass White Communities<\/a> then poor blacks are integrated into any community. We have lots of poor whites in this country and in metropolitan areas. But we dont have white ghettos. They are mixed in with the broader population. So yes, i agree with you. Tanehisi i think its important to disabuse you of the notion that donald trump was elected by poor white voters. Believean income i during the republican primary of the average trump voter was 72,000 that would be a that is way above any sort of income. That would be a relatively high income for a middleclass person, so its important we not dump this at the feet of poor white people. Donald trump swept white people regardless of demographic across the board. Gender, class, etc. He just won. I agree with the premise that the law has pushed us to Government Programs<\/a> to segregated neighborhoods. How does that then reinforce our de facto segregation the , choices we make, and as a democracy, our laws are based on our personal choices, our de facto choices, that we want things to be a certain way. We engage our senators, engage the government to make the laws we have. An example of this is the Seattle Public Schools<\/a> taste in case in 2007 in which a seattle resident, the Public School<\/a> board decided they wanted to integrate their schools voluntarily. They had a program in which they were going to place students based on race to achieve racial balance as an expression of how they wanted the laws to be stop to be. The de facto preferences of a group of parents is who wanted segregation to remain sued and the Supreme Court<\/a> issued a statement saying it was unconstitutional. How does this cycle of de facto racism perp perpetrate itself and how do we stop it . Richard that case you are talking about, the Supreme Court<\/a> decision was based on exactly this myth. Its one of the things that set me on this book. When i read that decision, i was shocked, i wasnt surprised that chief Justice Robert<\/a> wrote the plurality opinion saying schools in seattle were segregated de facto and therefore theres nothing you could do about it. I was surprised Stephen Breyer<\/a> wrote the dissenting opinion, in which he accepted this myth of de facto segregation and his argument was if you have de facto segregation, you should be permitted to integrate even though you cant be compelled to. That was the basis of his dissent. I was pretty upset when i read breyers dissent. I wasnt surprised by robertsopinion. For example i remember reading , about a case in 1955 when in louisville, kentucky, one of the cities involved in this, a black family bought a home, not poor people, these are middleclass people, a black veteran, a navy war veteran bought a home in a white suburb and in the state of kentucky prosecuted, convicted, and jailed the white seller for sedition. That did not seem to me like de facto segregation. That kind of thing that sent me off on this and i know for example, in seattle, william and bertha boeing, who also own an airplane company, were developers of suburbs all around the city of seattle that were racially exclusive using these fha guarantees. That did not seem to me like de facto segregation. That decision is a good example. Unless we disabuse ourselves of this myth of de facto segregation, we cant make the most nominal progress that the School District<\/a> was trying to make. Challenging this myth is the first step we need to take and you need to do it as well. Every one of you lives in a School District<\/a> that is using textbooks that are lying about this history and everyone of you can do something about that. [applause] tanehisi this is why it is so important to support richard s work and why it is so significant. The Supreme Court<\/a> justices are the products of some of the finest educational systems in the world and yet they literally do not understand in this case, just literally do not understand a significant portion of portion of American History<\/a>. If thats true at the Supreme Court<\/a> level, god knows what is true when you start going down the ladder to people who have not had access to those institutions. The myth is deep. The parallel i think about is when john roberts i cant remember if it was this or another case, the way to stop discriminating on the basis of to stop screwing it on the basis of race. Discriminating on the basis of race. [laughter] its never required any sort of accurate representation any more than a hate crime committed in the wake of 9 11 requires an actual muslim. People perpetrate those against sikhs or whoever. Its the ideology. We dont understand this was a created being. Thing. Thats the idea in this notion of de facto these people wandering around doing stuff, therefore government cant address it, but government created it. We have a responsibility. Until you get to that myth, solutions and actions are way behind that. We still live in a world where we have a Government Agency<\/a> i was going to ask if you were ben carson come what you would do. If i was the president and put you in charge of hud, what would you do . Richard i hate to sound like a broken record, but if i was in charge of hud, i would appoint a secretary who would go around the country making speeches about the history of residential segregation. Thats what i would do because nothing else will fly. Nothing else would fly. In 1968, Richard Nixon<\/a> was elected president and ive written about this. He appointed as secretary of housing and urban development a fellow by the name of George Romney<\/a>, father of somebody you may be familiar with. This history was once well known. Nothing ive talked about today was a secret. Weve forgotten about it because, as i said before, its too hard to deal with it. George romney knew it. He was appointed secretary of housing and urban development said the federal government has created a white noose around urban centers where African American<\/a>s live, so its the federal governments obligation to untie that noose. That is what George Romney<\/a> said. He began a program he called open communities, in which the federal government withheld federal funds from suburbs, that things all jurisdictions get like green space, sidewalks sewers, all of the things the , federal government gives money out for. It withheld money if they wouldnt desegregate. Repeal exclusionary Zoning Ordinance<\/a>s, except a fair share of the metropolitan areas moderate income housing, he withheld funds from three suburbs. One of them was Baltimore County<\/a>. He was supported in this action by spiro agnew, who is the who had been county executive in Baltimore County<\/a> and fought segregationists in an attempt to solve some of the problems of baltimore because he said spiro agnew said this the problems of baltimore are not created in baltimore, they are created in the suburbs. He was supported by spiro agnew. Withheld funds from baltimore, warren michigan, where he had a , background himself in fighting local officials, and he withheld funds from an area in ohio. There was a political reaction, we call it backlash, and president nixon rein him in, made him cancel the open communities project, forced him out of housing and urban development, and we have had nothing as decent since. But thats because George Romney<\/a> was able to say things we have all forgotten. So it is a forgotten history. Im not saying if a new republican secretary of housing and urban development said that things George Romney<\/a> said would get away with it because theres much less understanding of these problems and how they arose then there was then. When ben carson before he was appointed secretary, the Obama Administration<\/a> had adopted a rule which was a bare shadow of what George Romney<\/a> tried to do, but it was a shadow. Ben carson said, he wrote an article in which he said this is social engineering, trying to integrate the suburbs. Social engineering always has negative consequences, unintended consequences. But the reality integration is an attempt to undo social engineering. The social engineering was the creation of the segregated landscape across the country. If we dont like social engineering, we should undo it. [applause] i am from winstonsalem, North Carolina<\/a>. I am from houston, texas. School foro to the ethics and Global Leadership<\/a> here in washington, d. C. , which is a semester program. I know even as a 17yearold the reality of racial segregation in the neighborhoods of my city, winstonsalem. Has ate, North Carolina<\/a>, long history of Racial Discrimination<\/a> through neighborhoods and especially through voter laws. Thinkwondering what you the role of state governments, inecially North Carolina<\/a>, restricting the Voting Rights<\/a> of africanamericans has in the problems with neighborhood segregation. Naomi has in addition to that. How would you describe the Current Issues<\/a> of white flight into suburbia, and what role do white families play in the continuation of segregated suburbia . I thought we would do this together. [laughter] life flight is a white flight is a typical excuse for segregation, a private action. White flight was possible because there were white places to flee to. If we had not imposed residential segregation in suburbs, there could not have been white flight because every neighborhood would have had a diverse population. A lot of these things that we think of as being purely private rest on government policy. Let me take a minute to go into one other, if i may, example of this. Deis a big explanation for real estateation, families to the same race neighborhood. I would never suggest that just because someone is licensed by a state, they would be a state actor. If that were the case, everybody in the country would be a state actor. It would completely implode the distinction between public and private. The Real Estate Agents<\/a> are a different kind of state involvement. Since 19 24, the National Association<\/a> of real estate boards has a code of ethics, which stated explicitly that Real Estate Agents<\/a> cannot sell a home in a white neighborhood to an africanamerican. This is not a rogue Real Estate Agent<\/a> happening to steer people. Ofs is the official policy every real estate board, every Real Estate Broker<\/a> and their agents. Agencies wereg fully aware of this. I am not suggesting they should have been monitoring individual Real Estate Agents<\/a>, but it was a violation of the 14th amendment to license a Real Estate Agent<\/a> to belong to an organization whose official policy was you deniede expelled and services and no longer able to follow your profession if you sold home to an africanamerican in a white neighborhood. That is state action and a violation of the 14th amendment. In a city in michigan, there was a point system. If they were going to sell a home to someone, they had to have so many points. Jews had a couple, italians not many more, irish not many more. This became known in 1960. The michigan Real Estate Commission<\/a> said they had to end that system because it was discriminatory. The state legislature in michigan then passed a law overruling the Real Estate Commission<\/a>s policy. The governor of michigan then vetoed the state legislatures overruling of the Real Estate Commission<\/a>. Then the Supreme Court<\/a>, the state Supreme Court<\/a> of michigan, got into the act and it said the Real Estate Commission<\/a> had no authority over racial scrum and a. Over Racial Discrimination<\/a>. The Supreme Court<\/a> of michigan said Racial Discrimination<\/a> was not unethical and the commission had no jurisdiction over it. That is not de facto segregation. That is not private activity. This was a whole industry structured by government. Taken wasld have lifting licenses. That would have been enough to prevent this from happening. This notion that we had de facto privateion, that it was Real Estate Agents<\/a> acting outside of the government to steer people to different neighborhoods, was nonsense. Voting . Oh. Voting. One of the things that has probably come out of the literature and dialogue around the Civil Rights Movement<\/a> is voting as a kind of symbolic act, a kind of pretty thing you do, you vote to honor your ancestors who died. I think what is disguised by that is voting is how you have a say in how your tax dollars are actually spent. Voting is an expression of power. Sinceis a long history, the civil war and even before in the north, of depriving o black people in the right to vote. So, obviously if you cannot vote or cannot exercise that at the same level that other groups can, you cannot hope to have any sort of influence over policy. The two things are tied together. Ird, i think his point would not say exonerating the south, but pointing out this was not just the south when we Start Talking<\/a> about housing policy. I would expand that to new deal policy period. Social security, unemployment, etc. Nevertheless, it remained true that the inability of africanamericans to vote during tot period made it easy exclude africanamericans from broad swaths of new deal programs. This is particularly true in North Carolina<\/a> where there is a large demographic change happening now, people coming from the north moving in. And they are attempting to hold onto the old order. It is not a mistake that you are seeing the easter coni and anting laws these draconi voting laws. That is really important. It is inextricably tied, so i think you are on the right path. You couldnt gerrymander if everything was integrated. True. Most black people are aware ourhis history because grandparents who were still alive endured it. I wanted to ask a question. The policy of nefarious, intentional, segregated housing. You pointed out that housing is a gateway to all other sorts of disenfranchisement. The question i have is about what that you said that one of the ways we resolve this is textbooks and having people acknowledge what the history is, but i think the question i have is how do you get to that acknowledgment when the effort was intentional because it upholds so many other myths . So if black people are not poor because they are just not working hard enough, they maybe they are working as hard as everybody else, and you, the other, you are not rich because you are so much smarter than everybody else, you are wealthy because of these policies. How do you start i mean, you have to undo a whole bunch of myths that take down a whole bunch of structures and the in the structures even minds of good and liberal and honest white people in this country that i dont know if folks are ready to do that. So i am curious about how we start having this conversation. It is not about blame at all. It is about acknowledgment so that we can grow into the country we intended to be, not just pretending to be that country. [applause] that is a beautiful question. I think it gets right at the heart of things. I think there is a kind of hope, not, moist all hope, but a kind of week, moist hope, that why cant we just everybody and it will be ok . But then why do we keep forgetting . Why are we 150 years removed from the civil war and still having to deal with that . A terroristtake attack to get a confederate and you get to the point that these lies, these myths, are not branches. They are central to the american idea. Into acknowledge them, assault in a profound way the narrative that a lot of americans have, how can you have these theories of american exceptionalism when you understand that all that exceptionalism was built on the torture and the plunder and the destruction of human beings . How do you maintain that . I do not know that you do. But here is what i know about africanamerican progress in this country. It has never come through sheer moral appeal. 1861 not like suddenly in people realized that enslavement was wrong. At that point, africanamericans had been making the case since they got here in 1690, over 200 years at that point. It is not as though they were that much more dynamic i mean no disrespect to them. I mean to honor all the people that came before them. What you have in these cases is some sort of exterior interest. In the case of enslavement, the country was literally threatened with destruction. The country allowed the south to knows if the country allows the south to leave, then who knows who can leave next . It became true that in order to save the union, you had to destroy slavery. Civil rights, the same thing. The exterior threat of the cold war. I do not know if you could have had the Civil Rights Movement<\/a> without the cold war. What that means is that it is the responsibility of those who who, those who push, those want this country to move away from this to actual history not to sit at home and say, it will never happen. You have to be there pushing when that exterior event happens so that you can push through that window. The window is not always open, but if nobody is pushing, then once the window opens there will be no chance to go through. That is a bit disconcerting because it means it is not totally all up to us. That is really the state of being a minority in the country like this. That is the situation we are in. I think what that allows for is action, actually doing something, but at the same time a kind of realistic action. What sometimes happens is that people get into this place of weak hope, things dont go the way they think. Gets elected, i am moving to canada. Donald trump is nothing compared to the long history of things in this country africanamericans have had to endure and keep in during. So i think you need to have some sort of longterm vision, to struggle even when it looks like there is no solution on the horizon. The expectation has to be beyond your lifetime. Are you not going to answer, richard . [laughter] i feel strongly about this. We are all in this together. You have no idea the number of audiences i have spoken to where africanamericans did not understand this history and were shocked by it. Africanamericans certainly know that they are secondclass citizens in this country. They do not understand the history i have been describing any more than whites do. The other thing ta both. Says, is its victories might not have happened without the cold war, but the cold war would not have ended without the Civil Rights Movement<\/a>. We cannot forget that we have had some progress. We have made racial progress in many areas. So i hold out hope that it is possible for more progress. Being something of a scholar, i happen to believe that knowledge is power. Thisnk understanding history does give us in additional weapon we can use, but i agree it is not the only weapon. It is simply if we understand this history of things are not going to just fall to place. Thank you. [applause] you are watching American History<\/a> tv, 48 hours of programming on American History<\/a> every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter cspanhistory. Up next, on the presidency, Ronald Reagan<\/a> gives his First Press Conference<\/a> nine days after taking the oath of office on january 20, 1981. Questions about the recently resolved iranian hostage crisis and its aftermath dominated the discussion that ranged from domestic affairs, to the new administrations Foreign Policy<\/a> priorities. President reagan met with the press in the Old Executive Office<\/a> building next door to the white house. This video is courtesy of the Ronald Reagan<\/a> president ial library in simi valley, california. Pres. 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