 Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us this afternoon for a critical conversation on race and polarization in America. I'm Yvette Alexander, Director of Learning and Impact at the Knight Foundation, and we want to welcome your participation in the dialogue today. If you have a question, feel free to post it in the Q&A box and we will try to address them towards the end of the panel. This springboard for today's panel conversation are two recent studies on the state of polarization in America, one by more in common and the other by the American Enterprise Institute's Survey Center on American Life. Both surveys show Americans have vastly different perceptions when it comes to race and discrimination in our country. And the conversation that these findings should spark both in the webinar today and beyond it is the main reason why we are here today. After a brief presentation of the findings, we'll turn to our panel of leading thinkers on race and community and explore how to address these divisions across America. So let me introduce the two researchers with us today. First, we have Stephen Hawkins. He is Director of Research at More in Common. More in Common is an international organization with a mission to understand the forces driving us apart to find common ground and to help bring people together to tackle our shared challenges. Welcome, Stephen. We now have Dan Cox who joins us from the American Enterprise Institute, where he is the Director of the Survey Center on American Life. AEI is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to understanding the way cultural, political and technological changes are shaping the lives of ordinary Americans. Finally, I'd like to introduce our lead panelists, Ted Johnson. Welcome, Ted. He is Senior Fellow and Director of the Fellows Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. And in this role, he explores the intersection of race, politics and public policy outcomes as they relate to the systems of democracy and justice. Ted is also retired Navy Commander, former White House fellow and the author of the forthcoming book, When the Stars Begin to Fall, Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America. Here he is to introduce the rest of our panel today. Welcome, Ted. Thank you so much for having me and for that introduction. So I want to quickly introduce the panelists who will react to the research that we're going to see in a few minutes. So I'd ask as I say their names that they sort of show up on video and then after I turn it back over to the researcher will go quiet and let Dan do his thing. You can look at the invite or the flyer brochure for the event to get the full bios of each of the panelists there. They're really accomplished folks. I'm just going to introduce them by their name and position title and affiliation for now so that we can get into the conversation. First I'd like to introduce and Theo Butler, who is the chair of religious studies and associate professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. We've got Emily Ekins, who's a research fellow and director of polling at the Cato Institute. Ravi Perry, who is the chair and the political science department at Howard University, and of course a professor there as well. So welcome to Ravi, Emily and and the what I'll do now is turn it over to Dan to walk through his presentation, followed by Stephen Hawkins, and then me and Emily and we'll rejoin you and kick off the conversation. Dan. Great. Thank you. It's great to be here. I'm going to share my screen. Okay. It's great to be here to run through these recent findings. I want to thank the Knight Foundation for its support of this work. When we conduct surveys as pollsters, we often make a great big deal about the differences between Americans and how they vote and the issues they care about based on their personal characteristics who they are and embedded in this thinking is how about how we act and what we think are primarily functions of these ascribed and achieve attributes are age, race, gender, religion education level. But we know that so much of human behavior and knowledge are socially constrained, meaning that what we know and what we think and how we act are shaped by those around us, often in ways that we're not even aware of and our goal with this project was really to understand more clearly the set of social constraints and incentives in our immediate social environment and what this means for our politics and our public life. So I know no one likes to hear about methodology, but I've got to talk about it real real quick. Before getting into the results. This was a survey of 4000 adults conducted over the summer. It was self administered by an ORC at the University of Chicago. That's all really we need to know here, but I want to talk a little bit about how we measured social networks in the survey. You'll hear me use that phrase a lot social networks and it's important for me to define the term before we move any further. So when I talk about social networks what I actually mean is core social networks. These are the people who are closest to us. The survey does not provide a measure of the overall complex web of social relationships that each one of us has. In fact, there what we did is we used an approach that relies on respondents identifying the people closest to them defined as in this survey, you person you have talked to within the last six months about in person or important matter or concern and this is regardless of the relationship you have with that person, where that person might live or even how often you talk to them. So the response could provide up to seven people and they would provide their first name and initials. And once they did we asked them an extensive battery of questions about their age their gender their race their religion and political preference just to name a few. And from this we could construct a really clear picture of their immediate social environment. All right, a quick look at the results. So here we're looking at the composition of our core social networks and it's really hard to deny the fact that we are incredibly socially segregated along lines of race and ethnicity. And what we see here is the results showing the percentage of networks that are white, black, Hispanic Asian multi race or some other race, and it's strongly correlated with our racial ethnic background. So here we see clear evidence of self sorting based on race and ethnicity, and it's not constant between groups. So white Americans are the most socially segregated 92% of white American networks are white for black Americans it's 77% for Hispanics it's 53, and for Asian Americans it's 63. So again, we see strong evidence of social sorting, but again not evenly distributed across the country and across these different groups. Another way to look at this is to look at the percentage of Americans who social networks include only members of their own racial or ethnic group. And again, there are considerable differences between different racial groups with whites being having the most homogeneous networks and Hispanic Americans having leased. So here we see roughly three quarters of Americans and majority of black Americans have social networks that are that include only members of their own race. And for Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans, they're far less likely to have these types of uniform racial networks. It's also really notable that the degree of social sorting that we see among the public does not vary all that much, regardless of differences in background of personal experience so looking among whites. Black Americans are somewhat more likely than older Americans to have diverse racial networks, but still 70% of young white adults have networks that include only other whites, compared to 85% of white seniors. There are only massive differences by education level. The largest difference is actually that we see here is by region so whites living in the western United States are far more likely than whites in any other part of the country to have diverse racial networks. And lastly for this section. It's notable that the political context also differs significantly between people with different racial and ethnic backgrounds. So black Americans are far more likely to be embedded in democratic social networks that that meaning that they have only Democrats in their networks. And this matters a lot because independent of political ideology or identity Americans that have uniform political networks are have much greater partisan affinity they behave more tribally. And they have more consistency in their voting than those who have a mix of Democratic and Republican people in their network. And when we try to understand a strong commitment of black Americans to the Democratic Party, you know we really shouldn't ignore the role that this unique political context plays. Looking at social network segregation and perspectives on discrimination. When it comes to perceptions of discrimination Republicans and Democrats see the world quite differently. The overwhelming number of Democrats believe that racial and religious minorities gay and lesbian people and transgender people faced a lot of discrimination in the US while Republicans are far less likely to agree. Conversely, Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats to say white people and Christians experience a lot of discrimination in the US. And it's notable that the perception gap between Democrats and Republicans is actually largest in views over whether black Americans face a lot of discrimination. And this is really important. But what we found is that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is not simply the result of having more or less diversity in their immediate social network. When we look at both white Democrats and white Republicans, their social networks when it comes to race are largely similar very few have members of other networks who are black. And this suggests that greater racial diversity may not actually be a driver of changing attitudes or perceptions when it comes to race. And what we found is that for whites actually having a Biden supporter in your network, at least one matters a whole heck of a lot more than having someone who's black or person of color. And so white Americans with at least a Biden one Biden supporter network are far more likely to believe that black Americans experience discrimination than those who do not have any. So and right here and say that this is this goes much further than just perceptions of discrimination when we talk about racial diversity among our networks. Americans with more racially diverse networks are also more likely to believe that discrimination is a serious concern and those who do not. And there's a link between racial network diversity and racial policies overall. So here we looked at white Americans and views of support from the action and white Americans with racially diverse networks are more supportive of affirmative action than those whose networks, including people who are also white. So that was a really, really short synopsis I'd encourage you if people are interested in this check out this work at American Survey Center.org. I'm super excited about our panel but before we do. I'm going to hand it over to Steven at more in common. Yeah, man. All right, I'm going to share my screen and do a whirlwind tour of our study. Okay. So thank you tonight foundation and to all of the fellow panelists for joining us today. What I'm going to speak to is our American fabric findings which are forthcoming will publish this study. This is the American fabric project is designed to explore how our shared American identity can be broadened and can serve as a resource to help us come together and solve problems. This study is reporting on 4000 nationally representative interviews which we conducted with you go. I'm just going to make three points today there's a lot of slides and a lot of data, but all of them just service three major points. And the first is that belonging in America is an experience heavily shaped by race. And so for much of the presentation will focus on the experience specifically of black Americans. We are here with looking at experiences of non white Americans, relative to white Americans, and we see that perceptions of belonging and discrimination really vary according to whether you're white in the way that people self report their experience. So when we look at questions such as whether people feel more judged than others, whether they feel that they're considered American enough. We see that there is a commonality across black, Hispanic and Asian Americans reporting that they often feel that way, particularly in feeling American enough we see 73% of Asian Americans report that. And then we see that on other questions related to belonging and experience we see there's more commonality for instance between white and Asian Americans and their experience of whether they have an easier path through life or whether they feel that they get better treatment from law enforcement. But specifically on this point of whether people feel more judged than others, we see that really whether you're white or non white has a very definitive factor in how you feel on this question. So what we have here is our categorization that more in common uses that we introduced through our hidden tribe study, which is our political typology where we have progressive activists on the far left all the way to devoted conservatives on the far right. And you can see that really independently of where someone falls along that political typology spectrum. We do find that the experience of non white Americans is one where people perceive that they are more judged. So the second point I want to make here is that the disagreements about racism, its extent, its nature are really deeper by ideology than by race, and this is a counterintuitive point and so I'm going to make it in three different ways by looking at three very different types of data. So when we just asked the overall question of whether people think that racism is a significant problem in the country today, we find that 70% of Americans almost across the board, say that it is and similarly if we're asked when we ask whether Americans believe that we're close to achieving Dr. Martin Luther King's dream, we see that less than half think that we're close. And you see that there are some differences here you can see that white Americans are less concerned the black Americans by a margin of 15 or 20% here, but it's not an enormous gap. And by contrast, I want to show these exact same questions so the extent of racism and its significance today, and how close we are to achieving Dr. Martin Luther King's dream by our political typology. And here you can see that we don't see differences of opinion here of 15 or 20%, but more like of 70% of 75%. And it's worth noting here that the progressive activist group is not overwhelmingly people of color in fact it's 80% white and our devoted conservatives group are 88% white. And so what we see here is very intense disagreements about racism among white political Americans, and more commonality and perspective across racial groups. And we're looking at this same phenomena so here we ask people to say how warmly or coldly they felt towards each of a large set of groups from racial groups to immigrants lesbian gay people, etc. And you can see here that when looking at these data across racial groups you see that there are some differences, but they're not too striking. So when you look at this by our devoted conservatives versus progressive activist group, these are our far left and far right groups within our political typology, see those differences are far more pronounced, indicating a much deeper difference in perspective, in terms of how they view groups within the country. So this slide has quite a lot of data, but I'll do my best to summarize it quickly. We asked specifically about types of racism that black Americans face today so you can see across the bottom there seven different ways that black Americans might face discrimination from the criminal justice system to the way they have opportunities to housing to the legacy of slavery. And here we're reporting on how frequently people of different Americans of different races perceive these to be things that face black Americans and again you see that there is a gap, particularly between black Americans and Hispanic Americans of about 15 or 20% on each of these points where black Americans are more likely, typically around 70% to say that this is a particular way of experiencing racism that black Americans still face. Now I want to show the same questions again, but here we have our political spectrum, and you can see that the progressive activists overwhelmingly, and in some cases almost universally seeing each of these types of racism as things that black Americans are facing, while there are traditional conservatives in the teal and purple circles on the bottom there, overwhelmingly reject or don't perceive those to be relevant. And so again what we're seeing here is that the mismatch in perceptions of what's happening in the country racially what's happening in the country with regards to racism really varies most starkly by political ideology, and much less so according to which race people belong to. Finally, I just want to talk a bit about experiences of being American and how those vary. Our this project American fabric is very much interested in how connected we feel to each other across races generations political identities, and whether that superordinate identity of being American is one that can serve as this encompassing umbrella that can bring us together. So here we see when we ask questions about for instance whether we're proud to be American whether we're grateful to be American, how important being American is to our identities. We see that most Americans have a pretty high degree of gratitude and place a high degree of importance on that identity about three and four or four out of five Americans say that they're proud to be American for instance. We see a sharp divide by ideology with a minority of progressive activists, for instance, saying that they're proud to be American, and 100% 100% of devoted conservatives saying that they are proud to be American, and these divisions by generation are also quite stark. And so we see here the oldest oldest generations here on the left hand side, those who are the silent generation of before boomers 90% plus saying that they're proud and grateful to be American and then the generation Z and millennials falling just around half in some cases saying that they're proud to be American and that is part an important part of their identity. And interestingly, this is just not as divisive a question when you look across genders or when you look across races. And here you can see that whether it's white black Hispanic or male or female, we're really seeing very comparable levels of attitudes in general towards how people feel towards their American identity. And so in summary, we see a lot of challenges towards constructing a stronger, more inclusive superordinate American identity where everyone feels that they belong. And those really vary between the experiences of belonging that face, or lack of experience of belonging that faces a lot of non white Americans, people of color, all the way to deep, deep divisions in the perceptions of the extent of the problems of racism that we're facing, which are more better described by ideology, and then some meaningful differences along generational lines as well, with regards to how attached we are to feeling part of America. And so with that, I'll turn it over to Ted Johnson. Very good. When I'll tell you, I could talk forever about some of the findings here. But we've got about 30 minutes to have a rich conversation about what's going on. So I'd like to invite back Emily, Ravi and, and on the to talk through it. And I want to give a couple of things that stood out to me. Again, lots of insights here, but I'll start off and then I'll turn it over to my fellow panelists to react to some of the data we've just seen. The first thing to me is, it does seem like we're having that elusive national conversation on race. The problem is we're talking about it with people who look just like us. And so white Americans are having a conversation about what race with other white Americans and black Americans are having a conversation with other black folks and Hispanic folks are having it in their circles. And, you know, usually in well functioning, well ordered societies, you bring those views to the public square. And as they bump up against one another, they shape some consensus or some common understanding of what the issues are and where people stand. And that's not happening, at least my view of this data, it doesn't seem like that's happening in our social circles. What's happening is our views are becoming crystallized and hardened in our racial groups. And then by the time we show up into broader society into the public square to talk about race, we are dug in on our positions that have now become racialized in their construction and in their shaping. And it's really hard to try to find any kind of common ground when you're in the public square to defend a position, instead of there to learn or engage other folks who are like you. And the other part of this is that lack of interaction. There's like a compassion element that disappears, I think, and a willingness to sort of understand your fellow Americans who may not look like you so that's one. And the other part of this is, is, I'm sort of, I want to say that racism has seems like it's become more partisan, based on some of the charts we saw, but racism, I think has always been partisan to some extent certainly after the Civil War once black folks the electorate in larger numbers. But the thing that stands out to me is that I, it seems like the depending on what demographic you belong to, you have a different way of being patriotic, a different way of expressing your American Americanism. And I think a lot of the misunderstandings are that when black folks that I mean you saw in the charts there were pretty much across race, everyone's pretty proud to be an American pretty grateful to be an American. The parties differ, but the race is not so much. But when you look at lived experiences black Americans say, I'm kind of focused on where we're falling short, you know I know who we say we are I knew, I know how we've been behaving. There's a gap there, and we need to do something to address this gap. And it seems more like white Americans are more focused on, look at the progress, a look at how far we've come from where we were. So let's focus on the good, and not where we're falling short. And neither one of those are less patriotic than the other. It's the focus on, it's where they place the focus on America, that creates a gap there. And because we don't talk to one another in our social circles, that gap begins to feel like one person doesn't live in the same America that we do or rather doesn't see America the same as we do or loves America less, which can contribute to a bunch of deeper problems. So what I want to do now is turn it over, I feel like rambling for another 10 minutes on this, but let me give it to and the to get her reaction to some of the slides there. My thoughts are great. I think these are very interesting surveys. My question is twofold well I have a comment first. My first comment is is that the old adage of white people saying I only have one black friend is probably true right. I hate to say it but it really does. I kept thinking about that all when I saw this whole, both of these surveys so that's one. But the second one is is I'm wondering and maybe this is a question to both of our posters here. How much does this has this been affected by the racial polarization that has happened over the summer. I heard that one of these was taken over the summer. And so I'm wondering what that might look like. But overall I would say this because a couple of things one is is that I think for black Americans. It is the sense in which black Americans have to always sort of reach out to other communities or we have to understand other communities in order to be accepted. In the job situation or whatever there is. So we have anecdotal stories about that and I'm not sure how the polls account for that so that would be the first thing. The second thing I would say is that I find it very interesting about the disparity in between black Americans and Hispanic Americans in terms of thinking about how things are, you know Jim Crow or anything else affected black Americans lives and I really want to dig into that one because I think that points to a lot of what we see, particularly on the west coast, particularly in the southwestern states like Texas and others where these polarization issues between African Americans and Hispanics or Latinos are really very deep and I think this pull this tracks into voting as well so that's what I would say about this to begin with. Thank you. Excellent very good so let me go to Emily and then Ravi and then I'll give Steven a chance to respond to the question about the timing of the polling and how that may explain some of the findings there. Sure. It's wonderful to be with you this afternoon. Thank you to Steven and to Dan. This is fascinating survey data and to Ted and and the I completely agree with your comments. It's hard I feel like to add more substantive to what you said. I think the chart that really stood out to me was one of the more in common charts that showed the percentage of people who feel that people like me are not seen as being American enough, or I feel that people like me get judged more than others and there are significant racial differences there in those perceptions and I think that this really speaks to Dan's presentations about social networks and polarization because I think that there is a very severe kind of lack of knowledge and awareness of the experiences of people outside our social networks and it really shows the importance the vital importance of having more diverse social networks so that we truly understand and hear from people within within those trusted social networks about their own personal experiences I mean data is very important but we can't underestimate the power of personal experience from people that we love and that we trust. I've worked in some polling areas that I've tried to focus on trying to highlight these different experiences because no polling isn't about telling stories as much as it should be sometimes. But some of the polling that I've done on criminal justice reform and policing reform, I'm asked people about their personal experiences with the police. This is just one example, and we found that that black Americans were significantly more likely to say that the police had used a cuss word or a swear word in their interactions with them. And the reason I really wanted to hone in on that is that that is something that you can't really disagree about, you know, tone or kind of dismiss me it's either it's kind of the person said the cuss word or they didn't say the cuss word and you can't really dismiss that. And that kind of data analysis is something that I've that I find really interesting but ultimately it's the power of those social networks to really be able to for each of us to hear those stories. And an example that I that I think of myself and that we're talking about the power of stories is that my mom's former boss is also member we're all we're members of the same church. You know, so we're kind of family friends, and he's African American when he moved to a suburb a wealthy suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. He had some really interesting experiences that he shared with us and that he also over the summer shared with on Facebook, given everything that was going on. He shared stories about so the neighborhood that he lives in that he described he said he said about 1% African American, and he says he's going jogging in the morning on a Saturday, Saturday morning, beautiful sky taking pictures of the beautiful sky. And as he's jogging he sees some of his neighbors kind of looking over their shoulder at him, kind of confused they don't know him it's a big enough neighborhood that they don't know him personally and they want to know who he is and then all of a sudden, maybe 15 minutes later a police car starts following him as he's jogging in the neighborhood. That story is a very powerful story because you feel the emotion that he feels you feel the fear that went through his mind as he's as he's jogging it's not the same as being him, but it's more powerful I think when people have friendships where they can hear these stories. And unfortunately, because of the segregation and the United States and the social networks. There aren't enough people aren't able to hear these stories within their personal networks enough. And so I really appreciate how Dan and Steven have highlighted this, because I think it really gives us a lot to talk about and to think kind of the power of using our social networks to get a greater understanding of the truth, and to show more empathy and have more empathy for one another as Americans. Absolutely well done, Ravi. I really appreciate everyone for your comments and I certainly echo what everyone has said relative to the series of surveys and I can't wait till they come out I think this is great to add to what was just referenced by Emily as someone who has been both a trainer of police in terms of diversity inclusion efforts across the country various departments and who has been racially profiled by police. I certainly would argue as another anecdotal example that those personal testimonies that I've given does seem to have a lot of headway for people that I've been engaged with as relates to these discussions in ways that unfortunately perhaps data may not always be effective in that regard. I will add a few other points to both of these presentations which are just stellar and I can't wait to dive into them some more a few things that stuck out to me one that Democrats are Republicans and their differences as relates to racial attitudes, you know isn't really seemingly defined by the kind of the density of the diversity around them and that that is I think an interesting finding for me as an urbanist who studies the cities primarily and how race operates in those locations and what we and what what we can see is that if people in the residential patterns associate their racial beliefs with how they live that as data suggests right that may not may not be the reason why they have the polarizing views that they do. Another point that I found very interesting from the survey. The first one reference was the point here that for whites, one Biden supporter right mattered more than blacks in your own social network, which is very interesting that seems to some well confirm some work of conservative political scientists from the mid 90s that in some instances as it relates to achieving racial policy outcomes for minority communities that the party ID of the elected official matters perhaps more than their race and of course in this case, the context is different but the concept is the same. And that certainly may suggest that the attitudes that that folks have as relates to race in America, and them discussing it within their social networks is in fact perhaps more accepted. If there is not a black person among their networks which is interesting. In other words, if you're a white person and you have a Biden supporter, you're more likely to perhaps believe that race is a salient problem in America. Then if you were to have a black person who's in your network who's telling you that it is based on their own experience. And so that so that's an interesting finding I found as well and then another finding that I found interesting from the survey on belonging. I was just curious for the posters on how we define belonging there that is the below belonging more of a synonym for inclusion is belonging more of a synonym for perhaps incorporation, or the just kind of like a feeling comfortable. And I've been really interested to see what the kind of inside your data suggests in terms of what you think respondents thought they were responding to, as it relates to this concept of belonging. And then finally, I was, I will add that this notion of sorting, which is interesting we seem to want to call itself sorting when it's people of color, who are choosing to live in racially homogenous locations. When it's whites we call it segregation. And I think I think that the nomenclature matters there, and that, regardless of your racial group it seems as though majority do still seem to self segregate as relates to their social networks and perhaps their residential locations as well. And one point that I found out into this very interesting was in the graph about seven ways that African American space racism. So I found most striking there was the closeness between blacks and Hispanics and whites etc, along the lines of sorting as related to one of those seven data points on living in neighborhoods with fewer resources, meaning that if you were black. You had a closer relationship with whites, Hispanics, Asians and others on that item of the seven than on any other, which seems to suggest going back to the first surveys point about how even 70% of young people awful also today still self sort as it relates to their social networks. And it seems as though those of who may be living in neighborhoods and own homes are also self sorting and that racial groups, despite their differences seem to agree most closely on that measure of the seven ways in which black space racism so I found that to be very interesting because it seems to suggest that self sorting occurs, both among social networks and among residential populations across all groups of color. Yeah. So there's a few questions coming in. And I want to use one of them to sort of kick into the this next round of discussion. And it's the question asked is it necessary to think of American identity as superordinate. The thing here in the question is that the term American has been racialized and sort of, you know, the, it's, it's perceived to be someone who's white and Christian and sort of. That's what the, the, the prototypical American is. And so as the nation has become more inclusive of other people over the course of its history. The groups that have been welcomed into the, you know, more to assessing more of the rights and privileges of citizenship rejected the American label, because of all of the history that has been done under that label. And the sort of the exclusive nature of the term, how has that caused people maybe to reject notions of patriotism which sort of bleeds into another question that's popped up, you know, have conservatives taken ownership of patriotism and the symbols of the American flag, in a way that progressives, or racial minorities may reject those not because they don't believe in those principles, but because those symbols, communicate an allegiance to a particular political ideology or party, and it's a rejection of the party of that ideology, or the symbols as opposed to a rejection of those symbols, or, or the principles for which they stand so I'm curious your thoughts on on how the term American, and the term patriotic have been racialized, and then what that means for a nation that needs to come together and our only common thing I think our share values or the is the American idea. And I want to take this one because I think it points back to one of the charts that happened I want to cross has just when we talk about American or Americanism, or, you know, these kinds of terms, they get not just nationalized but they also get Christianized in a certain way. So the chart that showed the ideology between how conservatives felt at the end about evangelical Christians and how progressives felt about evangelical Christians which was really low like about 16. And that's what it tells us a tale about that, because essentially what it means is that this construction of what it means to be American is usually white Anglo Saxon Protestant right, and everybody else who's not that ends up being on the outside of that and so I think the kinds of things that we see with these terms Americanism. If you even think about how conservatives construct that it's basically that you, you know you have a flag, you believe in your Christian, you are. The way in which people posit this, that's sort of as I like to call it back to the 1950s, and to mythical time that we that never really existed actually. So these kinds of ideals about what America is are really structured in whiteness. And if we're going to talk about this we cannot help but to say that if you don't feel American, it's because you don't feel a certain kind of whiteness that is proposed that is supposed to be part of what being American is so that if you are a person of you're being asked to take on a certain kind of identity with Americanism. That means that you leave behind who you are, and take on this kind of whiteness that ends up being what Americanism is constructed by this homogeneous group. I wonder if, if, can this, can it be reclaimed though I mean if there's nothing that should be racialized about terms like equality or liberty or freedom. And I wonder if there's a kind of Americanism that we can all subscribe to attach to those principles and leave behind or at least work to shed the race and religious components of it. I would add that I mean as the former president association for ethnic studies. I mean if we are requiring right that all people who are in public education throughout the country, for example, have to learn these histories of everybody who is who has become American that is something that I think we will be able to actually accomplish the fact that we have you know and I love how in theater just took us to church here, you know, the fact that we have this current problem that is persistent where people don't feel American, even though they are American, where the whole nomenclature being black versus black American versus African American versus a black immigrant just as one example that all that it's also about how people feel they do not feel nationalized as part of this American experiment but what makes America unique right is that unlike as we talk about in in our liberalism theories and as a political scientist I also teach American political thought and and one of the things that we discussed in that class is what does it mean to be an American, and we have to separate people's nationalist identity with the kind of formation of that which is this democratic experiment that makes America, the unique country that it is and that our identities are not based on, at least not supposed to be right based on our race or our religion, or our family heritage or our class, that's literally why this country was founded. And so, as you know, people fleeing from religious persecution and other kinds of isms and phobias. And yet, what we find here is that that is a central contention in this country from the beginning, the boys talked about our course 1903 problem is the problem of the color line and citizenship is the core issue we just had someone in terms of the Supreme Court right who has documented going on record, indicating that she finds can has concerns about the validity of the 14th Amendment, right which gave African American citizenship, which gave them for the first time a sense of being American and if that is something that is now yet again being questioned, then I fear that we're going to continue to have to have this conversation for years to come. Emily, any thoughts on the sort of the American being racialized that term and sort of how we recapture the broader, more inclusive version of America from the history of how that term has been used to exclude. Like, I'm muting myself. Well, like all the panelists, I agree that it's extremely pernicious for something like a symbol like the American flag or the idea of being American or patriotic to become racialized or about a particular religion because that's kind of an antithetical to the American idea. And I would argue, antithetical to the reason why America has been successful. And so I think that I think that we're part of a project going forward about how to think about what it means to be an American by focusing on those things that we all have in common. And really focusing on ensuring that we talk about what it means to be an American what it means to be a patriotic American that that idea is one that is big enough for everyone to fit in. And the, and the fact that it hasn't been like that for so long is extremely troubling and unfortunately something that not every like many people are unaware of. Honestly, I think this summer has been kind of a wake up call for many people to realize that many people did not feel like it was inclusive of them. And so I think that we're part of that project going forward right now and building that up together. I mean just like that we're at 1245 really have like five more minutes before we need to start wrapping up. And so I think that the last question I'll leave. I'll ask of the three of you is so what now we are it's it's hard to see through the present moment because everything we're in the middle of a really contentious election partisanship and political polarization seem to be at maybe not all time highs but certainly in a bad place now. And so no matter what the outcome of the election is, is there a path in 2021 that doesn't have us creating further apart from one another further segregated by by race and in our social circles. Is this a matter of good leadership or are there policy things that can can force us to reengage one another in constructive ways, so that we have a more responsive democracy and feel more united as a people. And I'll add this one last bit. And, and all of these things happening that does not require a catastrophe that do we where we don't need to be attacked in Pearl Harbor or on 911 to feel united or feel you know together or the pride again. Is there a way to manufacture that, you know, in the wake of Coronavirus in the wake of George Floyd and, you know, can we can we make it happen ourselves. Going forward and it's kind of a big question so I'll let you sort of poke and prod at what feels right to you but what what now if folks are wondering what can be done to close the divide. Or or is there nothing. Is this just something we have to endure and hope that we come out the other end stronger. You know I hate to be the voice of doom but we already are in the catastrophe and it's called Coronavirus. And so I think that you know the kinds of divisions that have that these charts in these polls have shown us this these studies are are excavated by the fact that look at where we are right now we're not in front of each other. We're on screens. And so I think there has to be a very concerted effort, whatever happens in this election cycle that we figure out ways to get closer to each other. And maybe it is the catastrophe of Coronavirus that will bring us together we've already had over what 230,000 deaths in America. So we have to change how we have to think about things and the fact that we have not grieved the fact that we have not, you know, dealt with this as a nation, and bringing people together the fact that people of color are the ones who are dying and at a faster rate, more than white Americans. These are issues that are going to continue to have us as ethnic communities pushed back against these kinds of divisions, because we need the help. And I think that the waves in which we see this happen is, is frankly with governmental change, because it can't be it's individuals can do different things to reach out I could become friends with Emily tomorrow if I called her up and say hey let me girl this talk right, you know, I have white friends I don't have to worry about this, but I think it's it's a more of a of a deeper issue that we need to deal with as a nation. And I'll close with this the reason why African Americans are always pushing this nation is because we know that we, it has to be better. We are always calling for these things whether that's Martin Luther King Malcolm X, all kinds of other leaders. They have always called for America to be true to the message of democracy that has not been lived up to you. Yeah, so I will add that there are a few things we can do. One, we have to make sure that we do not limit whatever our activisms are to the new cycle. Those of us who are people of color who are marginalized who have been other to have been left out in this country for decades ever since 79 or earlier. We have to remember that we have to fight whatever those activisms are year round on political scientists I have to say it frustrates me when you know you see such a bevy of activity and excitement and interest of usually around three months in and around a general election. And of course, you know, it's just a struggle to find that same energy and that same excitement, like you're talking about Ted in terms of catastrophe what we call them political science is a crystallizing event right that there is something that motivates us in order to get us to action and wait for that, then all the people whose lives have died in coronavirus. In the meantime, all the people who have been disenfranchised and been victims of their suppression in the meantime all the people that have had, you know, a loss as a result of having limited health access. Those are kind of the folks that we have to remember in between those events that do not get the news that do not make crystallizing stories, because while we may know, you know, Trayvon Martin and we may know Nikon Nettles, we may know so many others Sandra Bland, we may know Rakiah Boyd, those are the ones that got on TV right and there are thousands of others who live in our communities every day that we have to lift them up. Who don't make the news and so, first thing we can do do not limit our activism to new cycle. Secondly, don't be victims of misinformation misinformation is the thing. It's happening it's been targeting African Americans in particular we have a bipartisan and television report during the Trump era that has documented this so we know this is a thing. And so that means we have to be diligent and and pay attention to that which we share that which comes across our news feeds, both digitally and in reality. And as relates to our social networks make sure that our social networks, as we learn from the survey data today are not just being are typically diverse, but genuinely have the kinds of diversities that that create the kinds of dialogue that really moves us forward and finally I will say, I do think we can look forward to the future. Four years ago, folks who did not vote in that election have now been surpassed by over 500% just by early votes alone and we still have five six days left until the actual election day. That suggests that we do learn from past behavior, we do understand that crystallizing events are effective, and that we do galvanize as a result and so the hope is that that we will be able to continue to do this as a population. And that is being responsive to things that come across our, our, our news feeds, our interests, our issues, and then go out and change we have the chance to do it and this time that change happens to be on Tuesday. Emily final word before we go back to with that. Well, I don't have a whole lot to add other than I spend more time I spent a lot of time thinking about cultural trends. I think there's, there's definitely stuff that can be done in the political realm but thinking in the cultural realm I really think that that part. We need to be part of fomenting kind of a cultural shift a cultural shift that's focused on empathy diligence and sincerity. And that with that it's about changing hearts and minds, not just trying to say the right thing, or you know trying to look good but truly trying to change our hearts. And I think that really only comes through a cultural change. And I think that we do that by each of us kind of taking our kind of taking it upon ourselves to really try to expand our social networks, try to understand the perspectives and experience experiences with others suspending our judgment at first to just truly understand sincerely how other people, what they're experiencing and what they're feeling to truly try to understand each other and I think that's the only way to heal these divisions and polarization that's not the only thing but I think that that is a key ingredient. As we move forward. Excellent thank you all I'll give it to you event to sort of take us home here. And while that was a really amazing discussion and exploration on what it really means to be an American and who feels like they belong to the Democratic experiment that is the United States and how we might be more true in our hearts and in our networks to the message of democracy. When it comes to race and our communities. Just in closing and on behalf of my foundation I want to thank both the panelists and the researchers for your contributions not only to this conversation today. But for the work you do every day to address these issues in our country. And thank you to all the attendees for tuning in. We hope this research and the dialogue today has been helpful as we continue to wrestle with issues of race and polarization in our work and in our communities for more insights from night funded research please visit kf.org and have a wonderful rest of your day.