Captioning performed by vitac the second conversation is indicative of the way some black americans are dealing with post modernity, the election of a black president , immigration of millions of nonwhites and advent of a Global Economy has offered Many American born blacks alternative ways to selfidentify, many ways to be black. While they dont reject their blackness, they nevertheless are expressing the desire to not be sir couple described by a Group Definition of blackness. They understand their race as one of many variables that define them. Im going to talk a little bit to this morning about what i found at the 1990s mass marches, the million man and woman march, to demonstrate the similarities and differences between black modernity and post modernity. In doing so, i hope to begin to answer the question that was before us this morning, who is black america. So if we start with the early the early conversation, at the turn of the century, africanamericans understood that to be part of the modern world and to take part in what we call modernity, they had to overcome the systems of oppression that tie them to futile systems and to establish their property rights, including the rights to their own bodies and personhood and establish the rights to the fruits of their labor and to be able to move and they needed the taxes that they paid to government to underwrite their civil educational and housing rights. The attend ees of the 1909 National Negro conference took the idea that blacks were citizens entitled to human rights and demanded that blacks be given social and Political Rights as well. They denounced the persecution of organized workers, the system of share cropping and convict labor system and they demanded that blacks be given a free and complete education not restricted to just industrial education. They insisted that every civil right accorded under the 14th amendment be given to black people. At other times they demanded that blacks have the right to intermarry, not because black people were dying to nmarry whites but marriage is a civil right and to deny them the right to marry who they married was the denial of the basic right of american citizenship. They were also mindful of the fact that the laws against intermarriage left black women open to Sexual Exploitation by white men. Most black americans therefore wanted black people to be interval to this american society. Though there have always been people who followed the preceps of Bishop Turner and envisioned blacks going back to africa, the predominant vision was not one where blacks lived separately within the country or inmigrated back to africa, the members of the Niagara Movement said in 1905, quote, any discrimination based simply on race or color is barbarrist, we care not how hollowed it be, discrimination based simply and solely on physical peculiarities and color or skin, all relics of that unreasoning human savagery of which the world is and ought to be thoroughly ashamed. Most black organizations therefore worked tirelessly to rid america of that barbarist discrimination. They worked for equality. For the most part when africanamericans accepted segregation at all, it was accepted as a measure of selfdefense, that was necessary to fight oppression and build a Community Strong enough to withstand the insult and injure of jim crow and the lynching that went along with it. Black people involved what my colleague calls parallel institutions as a measure of selfdefense. Black sororities and fraternities, black colleges, the black church, black professional organizations were founded because we were excluded from white organizations that were part of the modernity project. Segregation proved to be the achilles heel of white supremacy. It provided blacks the chance indeed the imperative to develop a range of distinct institutions that they controlled. It allowed blacks to defy whites and be modern in spite of white americans desire to confine africanamericans to a primitive premodern existence. Black unity was essential to black modernity because black people realized that Group Strength was stronger than individual strength. Group accomplishments went further than individual ak flish plishmentes. It was our exclusion that created our quote unquote country, our black unity, our black community. At the center of the book black is a country is the notion of black people not as an imagined community as Benedict Anderson would have it but as a people who having been cordoned off, separated from whites were willing in the 50s and 60s to take their case before the United Nations and plead for their rights as other nations had done and were doing. Steven hahn traces this black nation back to the days before freedom, a nation under our feet is the title of his magnum opus, we see a son ready to embrace black modernity, equipped with a song, lift every voice and sing which became the black National Anthem and equipped with the courage that he recently taken on he was ready to take on the world as a new negro, new black man. Because of one dropped law past during the colonial civilization, made a heritage black and numbers went from 1 to 20,000 between 1850 and 1900 and numbers increased to 140,000 between 1899 and 1937. Along with him were blacks of all social and economic classes because jim crow laws and systemic terror made blacks second class citizens, forced to live and play together and forge a meaningful existence because what is called the veil, all blacks developed their own institutions in neighborhoods and culture and own style and aesthetic and food their ways of knowing. Lets fast forward to the second conversation, where he doesnt want to be limited or confined by any conceived notion of blackness and the son wants to express his individuality. If we look at the 1995 million man march and the 1997 million woman march for answers to the question of who is black america, we find the tradition of selfhelp and selfdefense was by the 1990s disintegrating. This is ironic and paradox cal since the identity variables that drew the people to these marches were black identity. And yet, the black consciousness, the consensus over who is black that had served to energize africanamericans for most of the 20th century was disappearing. Let me give you just an example of what i mean. The calls for unity at both marches, if we were so united if we were so united, then why was there a need to call for unity . It says to me that unity was some short supply. Similarly, if black men and women were so together, why were there two separate marches and two separate National Malls . Why did black homosexuals have to petition and fight to be part of both marches . I argue that black america is not what this used to be and this issue of post modernity and post blackness is something that people like to array and philosopher charles s. Johnson have talked about give me one more minute. Charles s. Johnson, in 2008, he gave a Martin Luther king talk and he called it the end of the black american narrative. In this essay he argues that africanamerican narrative of slavery, jim crow lynching that has dominated everything is tired. This unique black american narrative which emphasizes the experience of victimization is quietly in the background of every conversation we have about black people. Even when its not fully articulated or expressed, its our starting point, our agreed upon premise and most important presupposition for dialogues about black america. What johnson argues is that africanamericans need to bury this narrative. Because black people today are too complex and multifacetted to be so easily character iizechar. Number of caribbeans and number of africans and by racials we begin to see just what hes talking about. Id like to end with another not so imagery conversation. Elected mere of a big american city, he and his bisexual black wife who traces her roots back to her grandmother from barbados have a heart felt talk with their biracial son. They explain to him what they call the drill. It is the selfimposed procedure learned by most people of color upon being stopped by the police. Quote, move slowly, keep your hands where the police can see them. Explain all of your hand procedures so the cops will not what youre doing. If you are in a car, turn on the lights if it is at night. If its at night, put your hands on the Steering Wheel and make no sudden moves. The biracial son with caribbean roots is startled by the candor but nods his head in the affirmative as he stares ats them in disbelief. Some of you will recognize that last conversation as that between mayor de blasio of new york city and his son. [ applause ] im give the panel one more shot of trying to deal with the question of narrative of status within communities of inher itance, of experience and circumstance, the things that make black life what our president called a mongrul people, indeed American People bringing so many parts so many parts together and then well open it up our discussion to the open our discussion to the audience. All right. The panel has conceded to the audience. This is not what Martin Luther king suggested by authority. Once you have it, youre not supposed to not supposed to surrender it. But we have microphones over there and microphones up there and if anybody wants a question or make a short statement, a short statement, they can go over to the microphone. Please say who you are and yes, my name is bill dogget, this is an awesome panel and i missed a little bit coming arlingt arlington. The narrative informs the political conversation at the bedrock of the 2016 election, what is more fundamental to the Trump Campaign than this narrative of africanamericans being this or that or the other. I wont go farther but you know where im going. Its an interesting and important dialogue, ive done work very much around the voices, idea of double consciousness and we today in 2016 still have to deal with this concept where its a part of our essence, this idea of double consciousness. Thank you. Im marvin jones closer to the mic. Im marvin jones from a mixed Race Community in North Carolina 270 years old and always been mistaken as white. Ive also been mistaken as black. Sometimes by myself. But i grew up in my community, we always look different but always part of the africanamerican community. Thats one thing ive learned. We help set up black institutions, even though we almost look near white or near indian. It was always living on the edge of what was white and what was africanamerican or indian. But it was i learned that being black is part of a community sometimes and not always even having the gene from africa, a post colonial gene from africa. And i now yield my time to this person and my neighbor from the neighboring county, alton smallwood. Thank you very much for yielding your time. Cornell university, basically i have a question for professor penninggroff, as i understood your presentation, youre looking at the black church and the experience gained through use of the law and legal instruments. My question to you is where would you place fraternal orders such as the elks, masons and knights of pitheus and so forth since dare use of the law preceded that of the church and im trying to remember the name of the socioology at harvard thank you so much, i was having a brain freeze it happens more frequently than id like these days. Anyway, she really looks at the development of the legal experience through these fraternal organizations. I wonder where do you place them in your story . Thank you for that question. Ill answer very quickly that the fraternal orders, they are a part of my book. They should be a bigger part of my book. Right now the church is occupying more space than the fraternal orders. I dont its hard for me to date on the fly, i would say they used law in the late 1700s and i do know the scotch poll work and also scholar named liazos. One of the things they talk about is this battle that develops intense fifies over th use of insignia and rituals and thats what the Court Battles are on sentencibleably about. And i would emphasize this more. The battle was probably just as much over the Insurance Business, that is to say that they are both competing for customers and the battle intensifies later when Companies Like prudential tried to get into the business. In he essence the black fraternal orders get out of the Insurance Business which was their life blood before the civil war. Thats worth telling. Thank you for that question. Arwin smallwidth from North Carolina university. The question is directed to professor miles and in general as marvin jones just mentioned particularly in North Carolina, southeastern virginia and south carolina, you have large numbers of mixed race people who are native an century and goes back to the enslavement. And i believe that that is really that first 200 years of history, late 1500s through 1600s, before the revolution, is it really the formation of what we consider africanamericans. How do we get the next generation of Young Scholars to fully develop and examine that . We talked about civil rights and these other things but we have not fully examined the relationship between native americans and blacks in the first 200 years of colonial settlement. Thank you for that question. I think one of the things we face thats a challenge is that you have to go back centuries as your comments there just indicated. I find that it can really take some encouragement and enticement to get students to want to look at the 1700s. Part of what our job is i suppose is to really unveil nuances and complexities and really interesting nature of this material in the colonial period. Students can say, i can study sexuality there and migration in those same movements. Just to jump in and underscore, ive taught both halves of the africanamerican History Survey and my enrollments are always double for the second half. Its hard to get students to come with you to the earlier period. Hi, im a student at the College William and mary yet, university of maryland. Im one of those people that actually do like to look into earlier things. So here i am, guys. No, really, i have a question for ms. Miles and ms. Debra about identity and talking about caveats in the africanamerican community. I know that a lot of people dont like to use the term afro in front of a lot of things, afrolatino or something else. With that context, how do we talk about these interactions between different races and different people and different generations of people while grappling with this identity question of putting it in front or not. Some people feel it takes away their americanness or something else. You passed on that one pretty quickly. Thank you for that question. Im comfortable with afro, i use afronative in part because another term black indian that i use sometimes because its known but not as comfortable with. Black indian is a general term that collapses various identities. I feel afronative is a little more open. Bit all of these terms end up trapping us in cul de sacs. One thing i wish i could do better and encourage you to do, try to invent new language to really capture the complexities of the populations that were talking about. The question i would answer that by saying that were in a moment where i think this whole biracial structure of american identity is in a flux. So that its predominant its mostly because we have had such a large influx of hispanics or latinos who either will identify as black or white or mostly will identify as hispanic regardless of what their color is. I think that with the immigration of so many nonwhites, the notion of being either black or white, whether its what you want to check with on the census, now that you can check more than one or two, i think a lot of people see this as a way of just asserting so much greater asserting so many more of the variables that make up identity and to be quite honest, i dont think that a lot of americans want to be pigeonholed anymore into being one or the other and i think when they use afro, which i dont have a problem or african, thats what exactly youre doing, youre privileging one aspect of identity over another and i think that that is what particularly millennials and more Younger Generation are trying to get away from. Good morning, i live and work in newark, new jersey. I have a couple of comments, mostly spurred by my sister new jersey and debra gray white. Professor white mentioned the magic word census and id like to say a little bit about that looking forward along the lines that you mentioned. And that is of increasing black ethnicity, when i say i live in new jersey, thats pertinent because we have a lot of people not only from the caribbean but voluntary immigrants from the nations of africa. So some of them identify selfstraight forwardly as africanamerican and others have very distinct more of an immigrant sense of superiority over local black people and so forth. There are a lot of different ways of being african africanamerican and thats going to become more salient in the future. The other comment i make as an expert on white people, and that has to do with the beauty, i think the protectiveness of the community the black community i always tell my students, who is the black community . But we have a sense of a community identity. And i think that has been in some ways part of our persistence, our ability to survive. And i think what you see on the other side is that individualism has probably hurt white people in the sense of falling rates of longevity, of drug abuse and so forth. Much talk now about white people dying off or poor white people dying off. And i have not seen a comment about individuality as a factor in morbidity. Just two comments. Thank you. My name is moses massenberg and i represent the association for the africanamerican life and history. 100 year old organization. I havent heard the name of the association in the east basis but i want to say that. I have two questions about antiblackness from two particular groups with regard to so