Writer Nikole Hannah jones. Focusing on the post obama center. [applause] good evening. As you might guess, im kyle coldwater, im not the renowned thinker that was previously introduced. Im proud to be your moderator forking this conversation. Two important caveats. One is that our speakers have come to talk about a wide variety of views and you can imagine they may not be the same views. Thats the whole point of the conversation. Were going to host a conversation between our two guests today, and then we will do q a in the audience and there will be cards available for you to have time to write down your questions. I dent quote gleve a lot but his best quote is the instruction to the audience in rooms like this where you make a point to say please form your statement in the form of a question. Or if you have a question, please be its brilliant. As you think about the questions, meese be concise and that will allow for more dialogue. This is a room of friends and we are midwest nice if nothing else so i know the conversations will the soft and polite as we go through this very important conversation. We have two important guests. Both new yorkers who have come to visit us. Nikole hannah jones is an awardwinning Investigative Reporter covering racial and justice in the New York Times magazine where she has spent five years investigating the way racial selling degree gages and housing and schools is maintained through official actions and policies. Won several national awards, including the peabody award, the ward for Public Service and a finalist for a the National Magazine award. She has been named journalist of the year for the National Association of black journalis and a route 100. A 2017 new america fellow, and she is the author of living apart how government betray the civil rights law. She has been a guest on face the nation, this American Life and many others. She has received and earned a bachelors going in history from the university of notre dame go irish and has a master degree from university of North Carolina chapel hill and the school of journalism and mast communication. Jason riley is a senior fellow the manhattan institute. A member of the wall street Journal Editorial Board and opens on texas news for more than a decade. Started in high school. After join thing journal in 1994 he was named the a member of the Editorial Board in 2005. In published he authored let them in and his second book please stop helping us about the track record of government to help black and underclass, and he joined the man had tap institution in 2015. Mr. Reilly earned a bachelor degree in inning lynn from the State University of buffalo. Join me in welcoming our two speakers. [applause] so, i just want to start out our conversation to try orbittent us and our orient us and our participants in the audience how you came to this work and your experience and how did your work in journalism you both are storytellers who find issues and bring them to life in print. Hough did you come to work and how did racereligiouses become Race Relations become a core body of your work. I im also from the midwest and i can be midwest nice girl. Like jason, i have loved news from a young age. Read my newspaper. I started subscribes Time Magazine as a middle School Student and was facinated by the news and history and curious to understand the world i saw. Grew up in waterloo, iowa, on the east side of time where black people lived, early on noticed the way people lived on our side of town and our white neighbors left on the other side of town. Read everything that i could. I talked to my parents, and starting in second grade i was bussed in a School Desegregation program to white schools on the other side of town, and when i went to highly started taking my first black studies course it opened my eyes and i complained to my teacher one day that our student paper never wrote about kids like in the, kids who wrote on the bulls every day and came from the other site of town, black kid. And said if i didnt like it i need to join the newspaper or shut up and not complain. So i joined the paper, and i had a column which was called from the african privilege. One of my early columns is whether jesus is black or not. Didnt reach a conclusion on that one. But very really felt at that point the power of being able to tell stories of kids like myself and my community, and ever since that moment i was hooked. Jason, how did you come do journalism . Early on and what were the foundations that formed the way you think about journalism . Well, thank you all for inviting me today. I appreciate the invitation. Im a journalist because i have no other marketable skills. Thats the bottom line. I wanted to study economics in college, and perhaps become an academic of some kind. I got to second year cal plus in college and realized calculus in college and realize it it wouldnt happen. I went to school at a place that had the emphasis on math and the economics curriculum, and so i did what a lot of kids i imagine still do which is i my grated to a discipline that was much easier, and that was writing. And had a similar story in that although it happened in college rather than high school dish read something in the College Paper and went town to complain and was invited to join the person, join the paper and did. Between my sophomore junior and senior year in college i got an internship with usa today, on the sports page. That was a big deal. That was the reason you read usa today back then. So i took that and by the end of the summer i was convinced i wanted to be a journalist, which made the senior year of college very long. I did not initially see myself writing about race primarily. I had things to say about race but i didnt imagine it would be the focus of my journalism. I had developed more conservative views in college, discovered certain writer that had a human impact on me, and when i had something to say about race i would write about it in the paper. But i thought as a professional journalist this was all covered already and at the time there were a number of black thinkers. They werent necessarily conservatives but this was the late 80s, early 9ss 0 and were challenging the old civil rights or to the orthodoxy. You had oldtimer booze were economists and also had people like glen lowrey and Shelby Steele and willson and patterson, and steven carter, con class stick writer. Ran kennedy, a law professor at harvardment some became intellectuals. Such as kennedy who was left of center. My thinking was this ground is covered. Very hard for me to distinguish myself here. Im going to write about other things. I went away and that was pretty much my hattitude for the first 15 hat toitude for my first 15 years as a journalist mitchell first book was about immigration which happened to be a topic i covered for the wall street journal editorial page and decided to put it into a book. I didnt have a dog in the fight, wasnt immigrant or a child of immigrants but i found it fascinating and decided to write a become write a book about it. And then a lot of these guys i had admired in terms of their thoughts and views on racial issues were getting up there in age, and i didnt see a Younger Generation of people coming along to replace them. And it disturbed me because i thought that a lot of what they were saying was still true. It still needed to be part of the debate. And i was a little dismayed that there wasnt a crop of younger writers willing to take on the arguments, and thats when i decided to write the second book. And the second book is what led me to devote myself almost fulltime to writing on these issues. So, it was not as direct a route in terms of writing about race. So, we understand that how you both sort of come to this work more generally. The conversation we have asked you to be part of here is race and the American Dream, and how complicated these issues have become increasely more complicated. There is a heightened sense of this issue right knew in the post Obama Presidency and coming into the trump presidency, but more intimately here, we have a Community Interested in a conversation about race and the American Dream. How do you characterize race and the American Dream . How too you impaler im implore people to think about this. Want me to go first . Yes, please. Hmm. For most of our country, i think race and the American Dream have been oppositional forces. The black presence in this country has been theirs theres a lie to this motion was america was an exceptional place. So i think if you look at my twitter handle, i write about race from 1619 because that is when the first africans were brought to this country to be enslaved, which is long before we become a country and already decided to designate certain people in the bottom of the caste in this country. So theres no point where the race does not shadow over the democracy, and we have moments where we move forward, and we have moments where we move backward, and i think many people feel were in one of those backward motions when it comes to race. So, im not really sure how to answer the question. When i think about what is the American Dream and what has that meant for block americans, i think for black americans its simply meant being treated equally in a country of your birth, and i think for white americans it probably means something very differently. How about you . The question of race i think that American Dream is alive and well for blacks in particular in the country. Think tremendous progress has been made. A black as president is a tremendous progress thanks in part to the man who is birthday we honored yesterday, Martin Luther king, jr. The Voting Rights act of 1965 in particular, i think, was a hugely important piece of legislation enfranchising millions of americans, making us a more perfect union. There are pair years that re barriers that remain in place, racial or otherwise . Certainly. But i think a tremendous amount of progress has been made, and i think today, Going Forward, the real focus should be on in terms of black americans, read using themselves to take advantage of the opportunities now out there because of the work of civil rights pioneers like Martin Luther king. Thats the real challenge Going Forward, but i think many, if not most of the important battles in terms terms of civils were fought and won a long time ago. Could i interject on that . I assume thats why you have us here. Thats a dialogue. Its something that you bring up the Voting Rights act because we know that the key provision of the act was struck down by the supreme court. We know that it has been a flurry of Voter Suppression laws that are being and have been challenged in the courts. We know that in terms of how house segregation in many of the northern cities it has not budged 1968 and black americans are the most segregated group of people in the country by race and by class and regardless of income. Black children are in majority black schools in rate wes havent seen since 1972. So parts there there has been progress but i think say that progress for black folks is enough when were nowhere mere equality. Employment raid, ballot americans have twice the Unemployment Rate that white americans. At every measure, black americans are still the bottom so i never argue we dont have progressment my far was bon o. A share cropping farm in mississippi in apartheid. But can use at for black americans looks similar to when i was a child. We live in the same country, and we have had now two descriptions, yours and nikole of the same country. Are both pictures true . Do we have great optimism . Great opportunity and great challenges as we think of race in america . I said in my remarks, many challenges remain but the problem is whether progress has been made, and with respect to the American Dream, whether or not its alive and well in this country, and i maintain it is. Again, i think that the real challenge for blacks Going Forward in terms of closing Racial Disparity that we would all like to see chelseaed is to take advantage of the opportunities that exist. But i dont these are different challenges from what dr. King was facing, i believe. A fundamentally unjustice society, legal discrimination, jim crow, and also virulent racist attitudes among his fellow americans. That, too has changed and has moved in the right direction. In addition to striking down the legal barriers that existed, thanks to efforts of king and Thurgood Marshall and others. I the characterization of whether i i assume vote ever suppression laws or voter i. D. Laws, is that what you refer to when you say voter supression . Yes. In 2012 a higher percentage of blacks in america vote than whites. Even in states with the strict voter i. D. Laws. If voter i. D. Laws is the cause of Voter Suppression, where is the evidence . Polls have sewn that a majority of blacks favor voter i. D. Laws, along with the majority of white and majority of liberals and majorie of conservatives and democrats and republicans. But if you want to characterize it as Voter Suppression, i think some people might disagree with that, with that characterization. Again, there are barriers that remain in place. Im not sure i would identify the same barriers as my colleague. I think you mentioned segregation in schools. Which often comes up. Segregation in school. An abiding belief that my children need to be sitting next to white kids in order to learn in school. I reject that. Its long been majority black schools in this country. Since reconstruction, that it tide an excellent job of teaching black kids and they remain today. Some of the best Public Schools in this country are entirely black and brown. Some of them exist in the city where we both live, new york. In harlem. Or the south bronx. Or brooklyn. Majority black schools, outperforming the liliest white suburbs in new york city. This idea that the focus should be on the racial makeup of the school and not whether anyone is learning, i reject. I am not obsessed with the racial makeup of the schools. Im obsessed the performance of the schools, and i think our policymakers would do better to focus on that. Nikole, you have written on educational opportunities. So, give me the framework you would have us think about with regard to access to education or race in america and how education is an overlay to this conversation. So, heres what we know. Yes, there are exceptional schools just like there are exceptional people, but pointing out that the handful, the literal handful in my community of majority black schools that can sustained compete with white schools dozens in new york city alone. The hard. He success attempt network has dozens of schools thategularly outperform Neighborhood Schools. Right. Me question is is that the exception or the rule hapful. Just named a dozen its that the exception or the rule . This is the to go. The rule in new york city. Heres what we knoy know. They regularly outperform Neighborhood Schools. Ive been covering School Segregation for ten years. Ive poured through data compiled by the u. S. Department of education. The more heavily black and latino school, the less likely that school ties have qualified teachers to offer college rem curriculum, up to technology. In any school in the constant. There are exceptions but you would be dishonest to say thats the rule. When you are separating kids not only by race and class, that creates a toxic learning environment. Dot not mean, of court, that any child, black child, has to sit next to a white child to be smart. My own child is in an all blacker school and i live in an allblack neighborhood. So i clearly never say a black childing not be smart if theyre not in a class with a white student, but we do know, though, from the founding of public education, resources follow white children. We have not on scale ever provided the same education to black children as segregated schools that we have provide evidence to white children thats just a fact. Theres 60 years of facts to i have gone back to the funding of the country the founding of the country want to make the. Argument on the resources following white children. Thats long been made has not been a serious issue since the 760s. Hough has it not been a serious issue sin the 60s. Because of title i funding and to the point where today if you go to majority black schools like newark, washington, dc, and many others, you will see poor people spending way above not only state average but the national average, so the children in our inner cities are not suffering because money is not being spent on their education. They suffering because they tend to be in poor quality schools. Theyre in poor quality schools not because dont know how to educate them. We do, because there are high performing all black schools all over the country. Those schools have problems scaling up because of political pressure, which comes from teacher unions who dont want schools to open where they cannot organize. So in new york city you have 40 something thousand kids on wait list fort Charter School and the mayor wont budge but a the mayor takes a lot of money from the teacher unions and is doing their bidding, not they parents on the wait list. Its not a fung issue but political fund