Transcripts For CSPAN2 BOOK TV 20161023 : vimarsana.com

Books and authors every weekend. Book tv, television for serious readers. Now joining us here in the lobby of the Convention Center on our set is author andutan professor, king good yamahtta taylor. Heres her book from black lives matter to black liberation. And. I want to hope from your book, its no exaggeration to sigh that the men and women in blue patrolling the streets of the United States have been given a license to kill. Guest i think it is no exaggeration. For anyone who has been watching the news, for the last week, let alone the last two years, sincet the emergence of black lives matter, its difficult to draw a different conclusion. Just in the last week, we know about terrence crutcher. We know about the situation in north carolina. Theyre happening in such quick succession that we have already forgotten that in columbus a couple of weeks ago, 13yearold tyree king, 411, 95pounds, child, shot in the back three times. So this is a situation that has been going on for quite some time, and its only been a result of the movement in the last couple of years its beenmo brought to much broader o attention but i think if you mention that, in any black community, across the United States, thats a common sense understanding of how police teno to operate in most communities. Host another quote from your book. While it may be surprising a black protest movement has emerged during the obama presidency, the reluctance of his administration to addresss any of the substantive issues facing black communities has meant that suffering has worsened in those communities. Guest absolutely. I think that to me the comment that most exemplifies that is when obama was running in 2012,d and seemed to be reminding white voters and black voters that he was, quote, not the president of black america. He was the president of the United States of america. And i think that obamas reluctant to engage with issues of race, in some sense, understandably because of the hostility of the u. S. Congress during the duration of his tenure but nonetheless, has meant at a time of economic crisis, that had disproportionately horrible effects in black communities, from 2008 onward, that the kind of specific attention that was needed in black communities to attend to that crisis never developed. Never manage fested itself. I think were still seeing the consequences of that. Host could he have been elected president without taking that tone in 2012 . Guest i think that he probably could not have been elected president. However, i think its important to remember that in 2008, candidate obama ran his campaign to basically give the impression that his campaign was the fruition of a social movement, that in some ways you could consider his campaign an aspect of a social movement. I know i for one had never heard a mainstream president ial candidate talk about a campaign as part of an abolitionist movement, of the sitdown strikes of the 1930s, of the civil rights movement, and the social movements of the 1960s. In fact, i think obama went out of hills way to cultivate thehe idea that if he were to be elected, this in fact would be the fruition of the civil righte movement, and so there was a concerted effort to connect the campaign to a sense of social organizing, social justice, and so its somewhat disingeneral us, opposite you get elected, that people have expectations of you to then say, well, actually, im not the candidate of black america, even though that is kind of how i ran my campaign in 2008. So, i think obama helped to elevate peoples expectations in such a way that his inability to deliver on that created an enormous amount of disillusionment, frustration,ty that i think helped to lay the groundwork for movements like occupy in 2011 and black lives matter in 2014. Host our guest is Princeton University professor and author of from black lives matter to black liberation, keengaup yamahtta taylor. The numbers are on the screen. You can also contact our guest with textmessage. Include your name and city. Yo the number is 2028386251. Professor taylor, when you hear the term all lives matter, whats your reaction . Guest well, i think that the problem with the phrase all lives matter is that in many ways its an assumption that many of us begin with. The point of saying black lives matter is to really highlight the extent to which black lives have not mattered in the United States. Most recently, concerning the issue with police abuse and violence. And i think the reluctance to embrace that really shows the depth of the lack of understanding about what the conditions of africanamericans in this country actually is, and to some extent i think we can understand that. We live in a deply segregated country where white peel have no idea what black peoples livers are like in this country, and its not the same necessarily for africanamericans who see the lives of white people on television all the time. But that does speak to an additional problem which is that theres a more general issue with the absence of seeing for white people and ordinary white people, and theres a whole number of ways our lives are distorted in this country, and talking about black lives matter is really about bringing attention to the conditions of black people, which i think for most americans are shrouded and they have absolutely no understanding of. Host where were you raised . Guest agree up in texas. Im from dallas. I spent i was there for most of the early part of my life and then lived in upstate new york, new york city for a while, and then in chicago. And in new york and chicago, i became very involved invo political organizing, which really compelled me to go to graduate school and to find out more about the conditions of deprivation that i was organizing against, primarily in chicago. Most interested in the issue of residential segregation and how chicago came to be one of to the most segregated cities in the United States, and that is why i went to graduate school and thats why im here today. Host why do you think whats going on in chicago today is going on . Guest i mean, chicago you know, there is such an attempt to intellectualize and overcomplicate an whackwhite issue. Chicago has one of the highest black poverty rates in the United States. One of the highest black Unemployment Rate inside the United States. You have a mayor whoa has embraced Public Policy agenda of destroying the public sector, of privatizing any and everything he can get his hands on, and so you have a situation of growing inequality and poverty in the city of chicago, and a sense of growing hopelessness, and weref really seeing the fruits of that bear out. Host keengaya matta taylor, want to read one more quote before we go to calls. Wasnt sure where this was going so i want you to explain it. Black elected officials roll as interlocutors when blooder black population and then general t American Public makes them indispensable in american politics. Then you go on to write it was the black insurgency that created the conditions that aloud black elected officials to become viable politically but the more the movement on the streets waned the greater the distance between ordinary black people and elected officials claiming to represent them. Guest what im trying to describe there is how do we go from a situation where you have in the 1960s, white political machines are controlling mostly black areas. So how do we go from that to the development of black elected officials and black mayors in many of the most populated cities of the United States. And so the main argument is that its the black movement that makes that possible, because for a mostly white political establishment, it becomes clear that having black people in charge will tabling take some of the edge of the kinds of budget cuts and approach to governance that was necessary in 1970s and the 1980s. A prime example of that historically, if you look at the mayoralship of wilson good, the black mayor of philadelphia. He was actually able to authorize the dropping of a bomb in major metropolitan city, philadelphia in 1985, on a black Court Culture group, the move organizations and was elected two years later reelected two years later. Theres no situation any of us can imagine a white mayor dropping ablom on a black Political Organization in a city with a black electoral majority and being reelected. So, black elected officials were essentially brought in to do the work that white elected officials could no longer do. They were no longer their inability too do that any longer was shown by the rebound bellons and upridings that happenedon throughout the middle part of the 1960s. Host lets take some calls. Steve in new york. Youre on with king go ahea goodyamahtta taylor. Go ahead. Caller good afternoon. Professor taylor, would you agree, disagree, with the proposition that the problem of racism is really an economic issue . Host steve, before we hear from her, whats your answer . Caller of course. Of course it is. Its strictly an economic issue. I mean, if black people made white people rich you think thered be racism . Against black people . Do you . Host lets hear from the professor. Guest well, i think that its both economic and its also racial. What i think that we have seen with the issues of Police Violence and abuse is that it primarily affects working class and poor africanamericans but also can affect middle class black people as well, and so probably the most famous recent example of this was not a necessarily a case of Police Violence but remember professor skip gates in harvard, who was stopped and interrogated because it was believed he was breaking into his own home. E. And so that is just something that white people of any demographic, of any income level, never have to deal with. So, i think that we have to understand racism in the United States as both a product of class inequality, because black people are overrepresented among the ranks of the poor, and working class, but its also it extends beyond that as well. Beyoost angela from washington, dc, text into you, professor how would you advise or what would you say to middle class africanamericans who dont see the black lives Matter Initiative as something that matters to them . Guest i think that we all have a stake in supporting this movement. To some of the reasons why i just said, which is that thehe issues of policing can reach can be very pervasive and reach beyond the ranks working class and poor africanamericans. But i also think that its not a necessarily required for the movement to be successful. If anything, i think that there are more perhaps fruitful coalitions that can be organized in terms of the ability of the o movement to connect with the undocumented movement, the ability of the movement to connect with those who suffersu from Police Violence and abuse and islamophobia. The inability to connect with white people, 20 million of whom exits in the United States. And so i think that we also have to have a much broader conception of how it is that wear going to achieve justice around this issue, that it cant narrowly just narrowly be cop fined to the issue of policing but Police Brutality brings into