Im mark, president and im proud to be here with professor eddie. I am honored, as we say back home this is really great. We have some time to talk and you have written a new book and we sorely want to talk about, we also want to talk about how fascinating it is to viewers and certainly too many how you got from mississippi, a a Great Community down in the gulf coast, all the way to princeton university. Maybe we ought to start with you talking about yourself. Guest im a country boy who made it big, thats what i like to say. My dad was the second africanamerican postman hired at the post office. That was a big job. We were living in moss point at the time and he moved us from one side of time to the other side. Where the third africanamerican family that moved into the nice neighborhood on the hill. We went to a better school, much more disciplined. It didnt have as many distractions. We went to an integrated school because it was predominantly black. People worked in the shipyard, lisa called it the pokey plants. We had to but i had some wonderful teachers. My sister graduated valedictorian of the high school. I wanted to leave home because i have it contentious relationship with my dad. He was tough. Tough love. But but everything i had was because of him. She said i needed to come to more hot. So i went to summer science program. I lied on the application and said i wanted to be a dr. But to show you how beautiful these are. I went into the office of the dean of admissions at that time, dean thurman. I sat down and i said dean im going to convince you not to send me home. And for 3040 minutes i told him why he should admit me. I walked out of the office with a scholarship. My mother put me on a bus with a suitcase or from that moment on morehouse. Host when did you know that you wanted to be a scholar . When did the idea of teaching and being a scholar really grasp you and grab you . Did you get there after law one . Is it something you focus on all the while. Guest my mother tell me i was bored to push a pencil because i was lazy and didnt like manual labor. She said you not to get a job at the shipyard and embarrass me go get a job somewhere else. I realized i wanted to be a professor. I had a professor a professor by the name of doctor aaron parker. He was a theologian trained out of emory, he took an interest in me. I would Say Something and he would put his head on the table. Host the beauty of the relationship with a faculty member who became a mentor and im sure friend. Guest all a close friend. The thing that was beautiful about it was that i did not have to navigate or negotiate how i got there, whether not a should be there. I walked into the boys hall, i wanted to thurman hall, every it was just confirmed to i was. Even though though i was coming from a workingclass family. My mother clean toilets for a living. Had a first baby when she was in eighth grade. But my dad stuck in there and stuck with her and they made a life with their family. It was at morehouse that something was put in me. Even as i was struggling with morehouse and they try to kick me out three or four times. It was something about this race man, something about about the dedication to justice, something about Martin Luther king statue from over and king chapel, giving us a charge that changed my life. I will will always say that wherever i am i am supposed to be, morehouse educated me, princeton trained me. Im a morehouse a morehouse man wherever i go. It was transforming. Host you would say to those young men who are looking for a top College Experience to go to morehouse. Guest become a morehouse man. Look at the other schools look at hbc you play such a crucial role when i say this in the book. The challenge and you know this given your work, is that many of the institutions that were so central to our forcing, they were crucial for salvation to imagine herself many of those institutions are struggling to keep their doors open. Host lets talk a little about this. The truth is that our institution and those who may look at these institutions from the outside has some remark ability about how in fact in the days of reconstruction and during the days of segregation that led to civil rights and beyond, you had 100 plus institutions of Higher Education that were historically black. That to that you had dozens and dozens of voluntary association whether they be religious organization, civic organizations or professional organizations which gave africanamerican were excluded. And that was an opportunity to organize themselves for the betterment of the community. So someone say that in the age of post civil rights, these institutions have outlived their relevance and usefulness. Guest thats wrong and the reason i would say that is the presumption is that integration has happened in significant way. But you know and i know the places that i teach and navigate that integration is it really a reality and many of the sectors. More importantly, an admission i talk about something called the value. The value is something that i think is i think is fundamental. We have the achievement gap, that wealth gap, the empathy gap but underneath it all is that white People Matter more than others. Host who believes that . Guest i dont think its about individual i think its about the way in which the country has been built. What i meet by lets come back to the example of me moving from one side of town to the other. When we moved from the east side to the west side i remember when my dad was moving all the stuff in the house, i was eight years old. The police drove by my dad got the key and he said i own it and i was playing with my tonka truck outside. And i hear my neighbors stop playing with that. I grab my truck and i run inside. I tell my daddy, a vietnam vet, he worked hard, his eyes darkened and he runs outside. Now typically the story of american racism. Black family achieves the american dream, because on the hill and the child gets mean spirited comments. By eight years old i knew we are moving from the black set a town to the white side. Host i had an experience not exactly like that. My i went to school, my sister and i in the mid 60s, just as the schools were integrated. The school we went to was about three blocks past the dividing line. Between the black neighborhood where we lived in the predominantly white neighborhood one day when i believed i was in first or second grade a white kid invited several of us black kids to go play at the playground. It was about half a block away but it was the predominantly white playground. We began to plan after where there about 15 minutes a mother came up and ran us off. She ran us off by saying you know you should not be here. You do not belong here and if you cannot go home, you are going to be in trouble with your mother. The course at that age you interpreted as, i was doing something wrong, not understanding her knowing that she was basically saying, look black kids dont belong here on this playground. Even though it was post Civil Rights Act. Years later, you get the realization going that you are being run out of a place where you had every right to be. Those experiences are sometimes tough to get beyond. What what did that say to you . Did you harbor a sense of if you will, anger or how did you reconcile that experience . Guest when we moved into the neighborhood and you find out maybe the boy you are playing with is not such a nice person in fact he might be a racist. The thing that came out that my dad who was a really strong personality, he wasnt happy and he always made it clear to us that we were valued. That whatever these people said that nothing in his rage in response to it signaled to us that we should not abide it. I remember when we moved in and the neighbors in the backs shut the window out with a pellet gun. My dad responded with a 12 gauge shotgun and blew a limb off the tree and said dont you back here again. So that was the model. But when we think of racism with think about that moment of injury. What im thinking about is much broader. I already knew that something was different about me as a child by the environment that i grew up in before we moved. Every time did it rain our neighborhood flooded. So we moved to the west side. Our sidewalks were not paved, our baseball field because i had grass. This cool were good. The houses were smaller. So by being called that word when we moved over it was just the icing on the cake. I had already learned when were talking about where the value gap is who believes that . Its its built into the environment of our society. How does it manifests itself. So if you are absolutely right this is in fact, what and how does it benefits itself . The concept is institutional. If you challenge is hard for people to grasp because it can be in front of them and they dont see it but how does it manifests itself. Guest ill give you an example one is a story and one is a tragic reality. My son is at Brown University majoring in urban studies. Yet when he had to go to a rich neighborhood he goes and hes in this park and hes doing this and please screw drives by. And i tell the story in the book, this is a provenance. As a quick uturn pulls up on the sidewalk jumps out, looks in the seat and hits him in the eye and the flashlight says who are you and why are you here . My son says im a student brown and im doing an assignment. Police officers as well the park closes at 930. My son said yes but its oh 730. The. The other officer comes along with his hand on his weapon and they said the park closes at 930. My son my son puts his hands up and says we dont want any trouble any walks out. The other stories lit, michigan. We have a community that devastated by the industrialization and by the loss of manufacturing an automobile it industry. Now theyre dealing with the fact that their babies have been poisoned because a bad water, lead. What does what does that mean . Somebody made an economic decision not to upgrade the pipes. To get water out of the river as opposed to going from detroit. Made the decision because they knew these people who lived in that community were somehow less, somehow valued less. So from policing to who has access to opportunity, you know that social science status says that for everyone opportunity africanamericans get in the workplace, a white person will get four or five opportunities. We know in terms of social network. Host so when you talk about the value judgment talk about the book in the context and why you wrote the book. Because i read the book, what is the take away that you want a reader of this book . Guest the first thing i want is that we have experienced the extraordinary joy and symbolic significance of the first africanamerican president. As you know more than anyone, the reality is that africanamericans are checking out. You have these young folk who came of age with a black president are trying to figure out how theyre going to break away. Here we have this economic devastation that is happened not only of the last eight years but over the last two or three decades. So i wanted to write a book to say that we need to fundamentally reimagine our politics. The stakes are so high and we are in territory that we have never seen before because we are coming off of eight years of the first africanamerican president. We are going to have to speak to black suffering in a way that is radically different. The the book is really about dealing with the paradox of people talking about the great recovery in relation to the Great Recession. And the fact that our babies are being shut down in the street. Host with the first black president , i want to take you back. January 2009, there is a selfcongratulatory narrative being created that quote on quote the country, because of the election on a single day had somehow transformed itself into this quote post nation america. Guest it manifested itself because there are those that said that organizations can now close their doors, discontinue their work, are no longer relevant because your community has one of its own in the white house. At that point and at that time, what was your sense, what was your reaction to that thought process and that narrative . Guest i remember this very well. I remember watching cnn and i remember hearing on election night, no more excuses. When i said oh my god. We are going to have to be diligent, were going to have to be alert, we we are going to be more politically mature. At that point i remember saying to my wife even though we are experiencing the joy of watching president obama in chicago, i said we are in for some dark times. Because they are not going to only question and they have question any attempt to speak specifically to the suffering of black communities. What we witnessed over the last eight years and you have seen this through your work is how difficult it has been to give voice to the suffering that has taken place. Host at the time i immediately believed that the post racial was a spin move being perfected those false and overblown. Historically the advent of the first africanamerican in any institution whether it is Jackie Robinson in baseball, the first africanamerican to in the class that my father was and that became the first black to do certain things. It never meant that there is this immediacy of change. In fact, i think all of these advances are followed by backlash and in on rational fear by some that somehow things will go to hell in a handbag. So i thought it was not only false but i thought the objective for america should not be what i call post racial, it should be a multicultural democracy so that everyone with the vision is wrong but somehow you can get past some aspect of history without a real clear sense of what youre absolutely trying to create. So in that sense, you have to concede a couple of things, when the president took over in 2009, no matter who that would have been in 2009, they were facing 700,000 jobs being lost per month, a banking debacle at a financial crisis which was more extreme than any in American History. The decline in almost a mise of the american automobile industry, and in many respects black people were suffering. Black people were not the only people suffering but all people were suffering. Black black people may have been suffering more. In that context, with those facts, how would would you evaluate the president S Performance . In terms of, and i would start by saying what did you expect . If you could have given emmett january 2009 memo, what memo, what would it have said . Guest in some ways i wish let me try to answer because theres a lot in there. Let me tackle what did i expect. I did not expect much but i also was hopeful. Does that make sense . Theres something about the i was speech, there is something about seeing him in hyde park that maybe we have an opening here. At the same time i understood the forces that were afoot. I knew we green screened him and what i mean we made him everything we wanted him to be. The antiwar folks made him the antiwar candidate. The progressives who wanted a progressive a progressive savior made him up aggressive. The africanamericans who just wanted an africanamerican president , thats all we wanted. We didnt we didnt really look at what his policies were. When you see what he says, president obama is it Center Democrat. He is not a lefty, he is he is not one, from the greek, hes not on the left he is the Center Democrat in the vein of the clinton. Part of what i have been wanting if i were to write something in 2009. Do what you have to do to stop the bleeding of the economy but lets change the frame so that everyday ordinary working people could have a chance. They can have a chance to dream dreams but also make those dreams a reality. What would that mean . That would mean in some ways we would have to change the economics that we have seen since reagan and in some way since carter. Wed have to change the economics for the Democratic Party that has so many ways conceded to. How do we get these wages from being flat . How do we get Home Ownership to be such where folks are subject to predatory lending . How do we check the fight initialization of the economy . What is it says about the state of the union is he understands what the economy needs. He understands the level of inequality that happened. On his watch, white wealth is 13 times out of black wealth. On his watch, Child Poverty has increased 38 percent. For the first time in us keeping that data there more black poor children that there are poor white children and their three times as many white children in the country than black children. On his watch hbcus a prime desolate. Host also on his watch the black on employment has gone to 14 down to eight percent. On his watch, 70,000,000 people a Million People a significant portion be an africanamerican now have healthcare and health insurance. On his watch, and my, please my happy, satisfied with the status of the economy and the conditions of black joblessness, not at all. But i do think it is important to recognize that on his watch the black Unemployment Rate has come down. Guest i agree with that. Host and if you take the Affordable Care act by itself that has done more than any other single gesture to reduce Health Disparity in the last 50 years. Guest so i grant you this. Whats interesting when you talk about the unemployment, at the height of the great black depression which i call it in the book, it was a depression depression and it still is in so many ways. In some places it was at 15 or 16 , now we have to be wary of the january numbers. Macys already said theyre going to lay off folks. Its about 99. 5 before this recent reporting period whats interesting is that the height of the Great Recession on employment for the nation was at 9. 5 we had about 9. 6 or Something Like that and people were screaming, this is the greatest economic calamity in generations. So were not at 16 but were still at a level of crisis. We dont dont want to take that away from the president , we dont want to take the Affordable Care actually. I do know there are certain moments and i would like to get your reaction to this, when there is a way in which president obama narrates the story of black freedom struggle which narrows it to a combination us his election are the moments when there is a sense in which the more radical elements get read is a spin he responsible. Im thinking of the speech of the 50th anniversary