 Good afternoon everyone Garfield will be joined today by three discussants well introduce in turn first discussant To my left is Gloria Brown Marshall who's a professor of law and police science here at John Jay College She's a former civil rights attorney who litigated cases for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama The end a NAACP legal defense fund and she is a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States Professor Brown Marshall is the author of many articles and several books including race law and American society 1607 to prison Which includes a chapter on voting rights and race and is now on its second printing Her forthcoming book is titled black women and the law Salem witch trials to civil rights activists She's also an award-winning playwright of seven produced plays and most recently the play diversity which examines marriage choices To my right is Barbara Katz Rothman She is a professor of sociology public health and disability studies and women's studies here at CUNY At the Graduate Center and Baruch where she runs the food studies concentration Her books include in labor the tentative pregnancy recreating motherhood the book of life weaving a family untangling race and adoption Laboring on and the forthcoming bun in the oven crafting an artisanal midwifery movement She's past president of sociologists for women in society the society for the study of social problems and the current president of the Eastern sociological society Which just had its national conference here in New York last weekend She's the proud recipient of an award from midwifing the movement from the midwives Alliance of North America Also to my left is Lynn Roberts who is an assistant professor in the community health education program In the CUNY School of Public Health and serves on the policy committee of the women and gender studies program at Hunter College She earned her BS in human development from Howard University and a PhD in human services studies from Cornell Prior to teaching at Hunter Dr. Roberts oversaw the Development implementation and evaluation of several programs for women and youth in New York City Including the visiting nurse services first steps program a Harlem based comprehensive program for substance using mothers and their families Dr. Roberts current activism and scholarship examines the intersection of race Class and gender in adolescent dating relationships juvenile justice and reproductive health policies as well as the impact of models of collaborative inquiry and teaching on civic and political engagement and Finally our author for today Gail Garfield is a professor here in our Department of Sociology As an activist and scholar Gail has blended her dual professional interest of advocating for social justice with scholarship Her areas in the areas of child welfare public housing drug treatment poverty Violence against women and race and race relations She has worked as a senior policy analyst with the community services society and the Manhattan borough president's office of New York City As the executive director of the Institute on violence She administered the program areas of research policy advocacy technical support and outreach and education targeted toward the African-American community Here at John Jay. She's conducted original research that's reflected in three noteworthy books through our eyes African-American women's experiences of violence and violation from 2005 Through our eyes African-American men's experiences of race gender and violence in 2010 and The current tightrope a racial journey to the age of Obama, which is our subject for today Turn the microphone over to Gail The first thing I want I would like to do is thank the office for the advancement of research and Professor Carpy and also Dan Stageman in particular for helping to organize this book talk and I would also like to welcome and thank you the John Jay community. I see a lot of faces that I recognize Several of you are my students. My students have to give verification that they attend an event So I am now verifying that I see you So Tightrope interesting title Today as a nation it appears that we are exhausted And we want to get as far away as we can From our very ugly history of race and race relations In our attempt to distance ourselves from that racial history It's legacy and it's contemporary vestiges We want to see ourselves as a colorblind Multicultural and importantly a post-race society But there is no group more exhausted by the ongoing tensions dilemmas and contradiction of our racial past than African Americans Many readily point to our first African American president as a clear Indication that race no longer matters. It is simply no longer an important consideration Especially when it comes to the inclusion of African Americans into our former structures of our social democracy and our social institutions So we must ask ourselves if this is truly the case Why then do black disparities and grievances persist in this age of Obama? Tightrope a racial journey to the age of Obama is about the balancing act that we As a nation have engaged in over the past 50 years and much longer in dealing with the issue of race and race relations In our steps on this racial role We have wavered and continued to waver between progressive and regressive politics Tightrope focuses on the question How have we as a nation arrived at this new historical moment in race relations where African Americans? 50 years ago with a quintessential other the outcast in Americans democracy and now We are seen at least begrudgingly Included into the form formalities of our democracy and the institutions that support it In our steps upon this racial role there have been many important shifts that have occurred But within those shifts are deeply embedded racial contradictions for many African Americans the continuing question is How to make real the promises of America's social democracy Promises based on the notion of equality and justice again as a nation we continue to waver on this racial tightrope Today is in the past issues of race and race relations Continue to be a major juggernaut That are powerful enough to crush the very foundation of America's democracy and the ideas upon which it is founded and the social institutions that maintain it as a nation built upon a system of black slavery Jim Crow segregation and today black mass incarceration our laws legislations and policies and The behavior of individuals whether wittingly or unwittingly continue to exclude and deny African American African Americans opportunity to assert their full humanity and Their potential to flourish the African American experience lie at the heart of this racial jug juggernaut and continues to reveal Glaring contradictions in America's social democracy and institutions African Americans experiences are the gauge upon which the viability of our democracy and Social institutions hinge. We are the embodiment of what Lonnie Grineer calls the miners canary Black Lives Matter and the historical struggles of African Americans to assert their human worth Amiss the salt to their dignities as human being Lie at the heart of our wavering steps upon the racial tightrope It is through the black struggle and sacrifices the pushback against racial oppression the pushback against racial inequality and injustices that pushes us forward as a nation on the tightrope However, racial contradictions continue to dog each step we take on this road Let me be clear all of us not just African Americans in our own particular ways to take steps In our own particular ways take steps upon the racial tightrope whether we acknowledge our rebalancing act or not As long as racial inequality and injustice persists our steps upon the racial rope are unavoidable tightrope traces some of the Important steps that we as a nation have traveled thus far tightly woven into this narrative of how we as a nation have arrived at this new historical period in dealing with race and race relations are my own Delicate and precarious steps upon this racial role Race and race relations have played a critical role in shaping my life experience They have shaped my absolute and unabashed for love of African American culture that I embrace and embody and Race and race relations have shaped the seemingly relentless Questioning of my worth and the value and contributions I have to offer so race and race relations validate me While simultaneously Invalidate me in other words my life is steeped in the contradiction of race and race relations I knew that I could not reflect upon America's racial history in the absence of being honest about my own history On this racial rope Growing up in the Jim Crow South Coming of age in liberal Minnesota and maturing in the fanciful facade of multicultural and post Racialism of New York City Tightrope trace my steps and the lessons I have learned along the way as we enter what appears to be an ambiguous new age Where we have the first African American president enjoying the pinnacle of political power and prestige alongside the bullet-riddle body of Michael Brown Ferguson Missouri and according to the just release report today. I encourage you to read it By the Department of Justice the systematic racist attack there against blacks What sense are we to make of this blatant contradiction in this new age of race relations where rhetoric of color blindness and cultural diversity increasingly mass Marginalize and exclude rather than allow for greater inclusion of African Americans into our social democracy and Institution in my attempts to make sense of the election of the first African American president of these United States Upon reflection, I realized that the election of Obama had more to do with the historical experiences of African American in this country and how our experience created this particular moment in our nation's history So I began to think deeply about my personal journey to this new age that we now find ourselves in the age of Obama Large socio-political moments do not just happen instead They involve they evolve from small moments in history from individual moments that occur over time Tightrope chronicles some of those larger historical moments that have shaped that have shaped legal Legislative and political shifts in race and race relations that we as a nation have engaged in Have engaged in in our attempts to balance on the racial tightrope Large historical moments however cut across our small lives So much so that we may fail to even recognize them or when we do uncritically treat them as commonplace in Our larger political balancing act upon the racial tightrope are my own Wavering steps through my personal narrative. I Provide a context that gives meaning to the shifts that have occurred in race and race relations over the past 50 years and In so doing tightrope opens up a space for us to think more critically about the meaning of racial inclusion in our current racial reality But importantly, it is my hope that tightrope opens up a space for us to think more broadly To move beyond the discourse of inclusion to a discourse of belonging a discourse that provides an alternative to the current racial status quo and give meaning to the vision of educating for justice The struggle for racial justice is not easy and that struggle embody us all Tightrope a racial journey to the age of Obama is the outcome of my thinking on race race relations And the social political landscape that has created a delicate balancing act for our nation Drawing upon their particular expertise to help me position tightrope I have asked professor Barbara Katz Roffman Lynn Roberts and Gloria Brown Marshall to participate in our discussion. I welcome their thoughtful comments Okay, I'm gonna Gonna respond as the token sociologist here I'm gonna place this as What in treat one piece of it that intrigues me some I'm not gonna so much go into the substance right now but just talk a bit about gales methodological rigor Her innovation the way that this grows from her earlier work and just kind of what this means in sociology This is a book that is in the tradition of what's sometimes called auto ethnography where the researcher is The researcher and the writer, but also the researched So you you have this incredible situation where you're trying to look at your own work and this is not easy to do I've got colleagues who are you know struggling with how to create a methodology for auto ethnography that can be useful and True and real and truly rise above well, I shouldn't say that I mean to defend people rise above autobiography By which you mean become something more sociological little prejudice there about How you rank things sorry? Anyway gales earlier work was also really interestingly innovative methodologically In that she did qualitative you heard the titles of the two books that she did qualitative interviews so I've seen people do qualitative interviews which mean you have Yes, no, maybe or you want to tell me a little about that. Okay, and they first and talks for half a sentence and thank you Okay, that's one version. There's another version where you sit down for like a half an hour an hour two hours With the tape recorder running and you learn a lot then there's gale 12 hours you just go back you talk you plumb a depth That sociology very rarely has touched so she did that Then Then she did that twice. Okay, and then she turned it on herself So this is somebody who is not just tossing off an autobiography and connecting it a little bit to the politics But this is a deeply sociological Rabbit out of the hat. I mean this is really an impressive thing to be able to do and That is one thing that I really want us to think about that this is a Real contribution methodologically and theoretically as to sociology as well as its contribution to American thinking in our lives now What she is doing is the basic what C. Wright Mills called the sociological imagination What the feminist the personalist political you collect connect the individual experience to the structural You connect Biography to history that everybody's biography is unfolding at a moment in history We know that in theory, you know that in practice most of us don't realize that we've got our own life to live our Own things going on and yes, I'm sure there's some great big history happening But right now my backyard my my moment my thing. What should I major in? There's a big thing going on like, you know majors are tripling in one area and going down in another but nobody is Making their personal decisions in that you can't in a way So going back and saying oh look, this is what was happening at this historic moment This is what's happening individually. This was happening politically. This is a deeply sociological Concern one of the things that that we also talk about in the sociological imagination In the work of Mills is moving things in a society Moving from something being a personal trouble You have a baby, but it's born two months premature and it suffers for a month or so and then dies or Has long-lasting suffering in response to something that happened Okay, that is sad. That is a personal trouble you your kid gets in trouble and Is arrested and oh, yeah, yeah, you know off we go. Okay, that scene maybe gets shot on the street Maybe my caught maybe just gets arrested and spends three years in jail and Maybe you can get started again, but maybe ends up in jail again. Okay, that is trouble in your life Your grandma who isn't that old suddenly has a stroke and she's blood pressures off the roof and whatever Okay, these things happen. They're trouble in your life What we do as sociologists is we say well, wait, there's a structural thing happening here Why do the women who have melanin at high levels have babies that go into neonatal intensive care units? Okay, is this melanin poisoning we're looking at Something is going on that is structural Whose kids are getting arrested? It's not every time we try to control for who shoplifted or who use drugs or whatever That doesn't actually seem to have much to do with it Some kind of melanin poisoning seems to be happening again You know who has high blood pressure who has early strokes, whatever you hear what I'm saying Connecting it at that level is what sociologists do What happens in a society is every so often we have a moment which we could call a moment of social movement Where we say you know what I understand that connection not because I'm a sociologist But I understand that connection because we're seeing this around us. We are starting to think this is not just your trouble This is the social issue. Why are so many black kids being born too early? Why are so many black kids getting arrested? Why do so many black people have high blood pressure hold the phone here? This isn't only my grandma my kid my son whatever something is happening structurally. So that's the basic sociological problem what Gail has done is Make you see it move back and forth in a way where the reader has to see it There's a tendency in Maybe everywhere, I don't know But I know this is very much a thing we do in the US is to look at our history and say that was then and This is now When my brother was a little kid He was helping to clear the table and he ran and he dropped something and you know was a big mess and a couple weeks later He was starting to run and my sister said Jeff You know slow down you're gonna break things and he said I will not and she did that last week And he said I was whittled and I'm big now Is it I sometimes they feel like that's what we're saying, you know, we were little then but we're big now we're grown up We you know black Obama. Oh, we're grown up now. Whatever we were doing last week. That was last week We were little then the immediacy of the last week in this week the history and biography connection The shortness of historical time is something that one gets powerfully out of Gail's book This is not the first book on this book There was one there have been a couple but there was one at the Eastern Sociological Society meetings last this past weekend and I was sitting in the audience thinking oh, I have to do this next but anyway sitting there watching this panel and Bill Cornbloom asked this interesting question about family names That her family has two different names that sound almost the same in their family spear and spearman and how do you get? two different family names just sort of talking about it and Of course, it's a it's the story of the there was a farm and It broke up and when the father died and the sons had a fight and they went off in different directions separated the property Family with spear one of them called himself spearman the other one called himself spear the property that got separated included her family right because that was property and and Suddenly that ancient history of that was then is actually how you get your name How you how your mother gets her name and it suddenly becomes now So I think that's what this book does that it forces you to have some kind of a sociological imagination some seeing the connections to see the connecting narratives between Biography and history and that to me is the real accomplishment and great accomplishment to this book Good afternoon As was pointed out in introduction, my name is a professor Gloria Brown Marshall my area is law constitutional law race and the law gender studies and evidence and The reason why I feel is necessary to add evidence is because if it involves law You should be able to find it for yourself You should be able to look it up and one great thing that happened with law was that even in the 1600s and in my book and and I'm so glad to have some of my race law and politics 313 students presently and Former students here is because we begin our discussion of race in the law With 1607 with the founding of the Jamestown colony and going forward in different areas the book tightrope intertwines law and human progression and The reason why I find that so necessary is because people often believe law falls out of the sky from the most high and Then all of a sudden there is law Without thinking that law is something that human beings do primarily white male human beings But human beings do from a point of self-interest Law is a way of living codified with criminal punishments for those who choose not to live that way Law is something with long-term consequences to family and friends and strangers and in this book you get to see how law Weaves throughout a human beings life generationally so law Be it legislation from a very small town in Georgia, Florida Minnesota or anywhere else gales traveled in New York and She brought law with her she she decided that she's going to show how law has affected her brother who was incarcerated Her sister who had a drug addiction, but now is doing very very well Or was at that time? She shows you through her life her view and she's a non-lawyer How law affects one's life in her desegregation? Section of the book where she speaks of the cases that led to the desegregation of her public school growing up Now my background is as a civil rights attorney Coincidentally in my work in the south I litigated desegregation cases for public schools and When I was growing up My school was desegregated. I Was one of those people and desegregation came very late to my public school. They fought it and I grew up in the Midwest They fought it tooth and nail for a generation and a half and Finally, they gave us the privilege and the pleasure of waking up at five o'clock in the morning Getting on three buses to go across town to the white school where they promptly made you feel you did not belong there But being the person I am someone's very curious and Also someone who you know can talk to just about anybody even people don't like her I brought with me something that they I don't think had a field for and this something that gail pointed out I like being African-American. I Like African-American culture. I think African-American is a great people. I always like to say That doesn't mean I like everybody in the group And when we move on to the ever after you can stay on your side of heaven and I'll stay on mine But in the meantime, I really enjoy being African-American and I've had people actually say well You must be overcompensating for something and I think of myself in my mind you are too bad manners and poor parenting but What I'd like to have people understand in reading a book in which there are troubles Yeah, there are troubles there are problems within the community and So often those problems are intersected with law Without someone actually seeing that before there was the problem There was something that the law did that affected the outcome But we don't look at it. The legal fingerprints are rarely there and so to see one's life through gail's book and to see the legal fingerprints of Desegregating the schools now what the black people wanted the parents was to be able to choose the school for their black children What they received was what the educational system wanted to give them So the control that they could have had over the education of their children was taken away We're going to give you what we want you to have and we're going to do this based on law and Then let you know that whatever you get you should be grateful for And if you rise up unappreciative We'll make sure that you are then deemed someone who has been given more than they're able to actually handle And if you take that scenario you apply it in politics You apply it in an every aspect of life lived outside of segregation What you see is this ongoing Tension between what people of ever can descend in America feel they have a right to what people want to give them and That tension of gratitude You're not grateful enough if as in Ferguson you decide to rise up and say you want full Constitutional rights as opposed to what we want to give you at any particular time. I don't think it's that Coincidental that we would get a report from the Department of Justice today on Ferguson finding a pattern in practice of criminal justice abuses by police departments in Ferguson and in the general area And set out case after case of those abuses yet when people in that community rose up and said we are being abused They were told that they were almost domestic terrorists In the type of police equipment used to quail the violence looked like something out of some type of protest in another country When I read gales focus on how The aspects of desegregation of her young life Then would go into her evolution as a college student moving from the Deep South into Minnesota and Being part of the student body But not feeling she belonged in the student body And there's a difference between being tolerated and actually feeling you're a part of the community So as we transition and watch what happens to our president and I said even earlier today to Someone I hope that he ends his second term alive That is a reality of Violence in America in the tensions the racial tensions we're living with every day And if we're honest with ourselves will say that I'm probably not the only one who feels that way There are concerns about this first black president safety and the safety of his family There may be arguments about his policies, but we also have to see in walking the tightrope how often Americans have fallen off and Usually when they fall off that tightrope The consequences have been most negatively affected and felt in the black community so This book touches on not just those people Within the legal communities those people who have been touched by the legal communities and the areas Education voting rights and criminal justice But it's seen from the human standpoint and to bring humanity to law I think is a crucial thing that many people don't do they see laws this robotic thing out there in the world And they don't understand that all of us are Subjected to some part of the legal system as we sit right here in this room It's everywhere the Supreme Court is is adjudicating now and voting rights case is going to affect us all Laws all around us and the other part I like is the fact that she showed the the racial tensions not just in the south but also in the north To understand that we want to focus and kind of beat up on the south as though the south is with where all the racial problems lie And it's not true The last point I like to make is because I work in and in my work I write about law and I try to write about it in a way and that Regular people can understand because I so desperately want people to understand the the role of law The rule of law and how it affects their day-to-day lives So I write articles and the journalism I think is an important aspect of understanding what's going on in the country and Gales book tightrope Again and again touches on what was being written in the local paper And I think it's so important because those local papers papers you'll never hear about But they play an important role because they're giving the information to the communities There's something called the black press you may or may not know about the black press But there used to be a time with segregation when everything was segregated that the black newspapers were actually the only way For the black community to see their stories written in a way that was fair Sometimes written at all and so in having those local black papers and seeing the difference Between the story in New York Times and Amsterdam news Could mean everything in the world to people who are trying to find out where they fit into the world at large So I appreciate this book on so many different levels for making law human For being able to follow your experiences through reading this book And also because it touched on so many aspects of law that are important to everyone in this room and Doing so in a way that not only was enlightening, but I thought it was a great read Thank you So yet another desa discipline to introduce here. I'm in public health For those who aren't familiar. It's a very multidisciplinary field and as was mentioned in my introduction I Studied human development before that so also another interdisciplinary multidisciplinary I like to think of transdisciplinary that I I study from multiple perspectives to bring to bear on on human problems and I Want to share several themes that? You know struck me as I read this this really powerful book The first one was the storytelling itself It was this this interweaving of the person who's political as as Barbara mentioned And the telling of gale's story her family and community story and our nation's story And if you literally envision this rope comprised of these multiple threads that you know were so intricately woven together but also unraveling and sometimes frayed and tattered several points along the way and and Speaking of the family and community story and I hold those together because for the black family was never allowed to be nuclear It was always connected to a community of other black families also struggling to survive to be recognized as human beings and to be held together by a love born of tribulations of Cruelty of deep hurt But also resilience and An incredible forgiveness and in terms of the nation's story Gale reminds us that the stories that belong to black people in America belong to all of America There is not a black person in America who can tell their story without telling the story of America in Contrast when the stories of far too many white Americans are told their story relies on the erasure of black stories another theme For me was the recognition So much of tightrope resonates with my own family story and for me both personally and professionally Although we are about a decade apart in age I believed if I if I did the math correctly and I grew up in a predominantly white town in Pennsylvania that resembled Minnesota far more than Thomasville, Georgia Gale's story is also my story because just as she learned in the hard-won African-American Studies Department Department at University of Minnesota or the you And I quote the lives of black women are at the center of their story tellings their hopes Dreams triumphs were all on display along with the worries miseries and sadnesses and all the joy and cruelty that life has to offer Another resonating moment was reading about Gale's time at the University of Minnesota It's 1974 and it was just five years after the Morris Hall on that campus was taken over by black students to demand that they have a Department that recognizes them African-American Studies Department Similarly I enrolled as a graduate student ten years later in 1984 at Cornell Where students had previously engaged in an arm takeover of Willard Straight Hall if you're not familiar with that history in April of 1969 so just months apart those two stories were connected and I only learned of that history of Cornell because it wasn't in their brochures I Had only learned of the story of black activism at this elite institution From my black professors there The chair of my graduate faculty was my graduate committee was the first tenured black female professor at Cornell University Josephine Allen And a book that was referenced earlier By Lanny Guinear. No might you might be familiar. She had quite a trajectory To become a tenured law professor at Harvard Left went to another institution. There was a you know boycott by Derek Bell in Defense of of their lack of recognition. So just to put that in a context Gail and I also ended up in New York around the same time She worked for the community service society Here in New York for for a moment and I had received a small grant from them when I first came here To complete my dissertation as I transitioned to New York from Cornell and I used it to believe it or not to purchase my first personal computer but Aside from that on a on a more personal level on a more troubling level You know Gail sister battled addiction to crack cocaine during the epidemic that hit New York City in the 1980s And at that same time or shortly there after I directed a you know What I considered an innovative comprehensive program for substance using women. It was radical concept that instead of punishing women For what in public health? We consider something that is to be treated and not punished that we would provide services We provide drug treatment to the mothers Not only the mother but her entire family so imagine having the privilege of providing services that included Everything that you would think someone deserves if they were being treated for Some other type of physical illness, you know, what what have you cancer, you know name something that you know we consider acceptable and not punishable and Unfortunately that didn't last for very long for many of the reasons that Gail described in her book the racially charged environment of New York City Under the Dinkins administration and what that meant so a woman who was her boss Also for a moment borough president Ruth messenger was also an advocate to save the funding for my program and we've never met Okay, our stories are tightly interwoven And that's not incidental It is structured The other theme was the unresolved tensions of integration The slowness of all deliberate speed Which was the language of Brown versus Board of Ed that this was to happen with all deliberate speed well 1954 Was a long way to the 60s and 70s and even up to 2015 because we have very segregated schools in America and As Gail describes This black presence to pierce white social space and what that means To live in these gray zones of neither black nor white and to struggle with what that means I come from a family of firsts We were the first black family to integrate a suburban neighborhood in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 1964 my mother was the first black teacher in that same school district in that same year But she wasn't the first one to apply for a job My father was named young black man of the year by the local JC's if you don't familiar the junior chamber of commerce My older sister three years older was the first black student from that town to attend Lehigh University in 1976 and So forth coming from a family of firsts or being the first black present president is no picnic and Gail's book shares the intimate details of what it meant to be the first to be Allowed permitted what it really felt to pierce that white social space Sometimes the opportunities being thrust upon us Affirmatively or not and in this book in her masterful story telling even her digressions are meaningful So telling the story of her lived life as if we're sitting it with one another at our kitchen table Through her sharing of a seemingly mundane series of outings with her niece Gail reveals ever so slightly the gray zones of an education system that aims to educate and train While stifling our children's natural curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and then there are these gendered gray zones, too In 2015 black women are still holding conversations and having to explain to far too many white women Let alone men, and I'm not only speaking of Patricia Arquette And especially those who identify as feminists that we are black and we are women and we have been brave for a very long time Like Gail I identify as a scholar activist and I am specifically committed to reproductive justice a Concept that first emerged at a black women's caucus in 1994 The reproductive justice framework is the right to have children Not to have children and to parent the children we have in safe and healthy environments And it's based on the human right to make personal decisions about one's life and the obligation of government and our Society to ensure that the conditions are suitable for implementing one's decisions The are the reproductive RJ movement has been led by women of color organizations and coalitions And this RJ framework represents a shift for women advocating for control of their bodies From a narrow focus on legal access and individual choice to a broader analysis of racial economic cultural and structural constraints on our power and The last theme I want to touch upon is that of transformational leadership Like Gail, I believe in exercising my hard-earned right to vote I'm ten years old. I campaigned and voted for in my fifth grade classroom George McGovern Like Gail my parents revered Hubert Humphrey and I later admired Paul Wellstone and two men from Minnesota if you're not familiar But I've always been a registered independent Because I've seldom been able to pull a lever without some doubts about the candidate's ability to stay true to progressive principles and I have also wondered can a black or even a progressive white person be a transformational leader while holding public office as Gail informs remind us or and Some of us informs and some of us. She's reminding us and I quote Change in the racial status quo does not emanate from above and then trickle downward Regardless of who is in power it flows upward from the demands of those who are at the bottom and her book Sites several examples of that. I Recall during one of the presidential debates in 2008 when candidate Barack Hussein Obama Responded to the question if Dr. Martin Luther King were alive today. Do you think he would endorse your candidacy? Or something to that effect. It's not a direct quote, but I do remember the gist of it To which he responded and I also paraphrase no But I think he would be out there organizing with others to hold me accountable while in office And that was how he earned my vote I'll tell you the longer story of how he did but that alone that recognition Don't expect Someone elected to public office to be our leader to do this work for us Black Lives Matter is the ages old answer to the question posed by Langston Hughes. What happens to a dream deferred? Black Lives Matter is the American dream and it's time to wake up and realize it Black Lives Matter is a demand. It's a clarion call And it is rising from the bottom and it is not directed at the black man who occupies the White House But at all of us who have the audacity to call this country the land of the free and the home of the brave so I am going to turn the microphone over to the audience for audience questions, but first I am going to take the organizers privilege to ask one question of my own and I've seen ambiguity really arise as a theme both in Professor Garfield's book and in the conversation Here today. I think ambiguity is a big feature of our supposed post-racial American Contacts our American discourse Every now and again that ambiguity seems to be pierced by events like the Ferguson report that came out today Events that seem to help us talk about disadvantage that seem to help us talk about about contemporary events in the sort of Language that we might have talked once about Jim Crow segregation and its effects on the African-American community Just turning that around You know, we're in a That ambiguity is something that has helped fuel a Phenomenon where we have a white electorate that and I'm paraphrasing numbers here It's something like two-thirds of the white electorate does not acknowledge that there is any advantage Whether it's economic whether it's social cultural political to being white It's not something that's acknowledged and while I think in some sense We are getting better if not better than Disadvantages becoming more part of the discourse in in terms of the Black Lives Matter movement I'm wondering how we talk about that advantage. How do we talk about privilege in a post a supposed post-racial context? How do we make privilege seen and does it matter? I think you're right. I think that whatever wherever you got your numbers from in terms of The majority of whites not acknowledging that they are privileged In reality, the majority of whites are not privileged In terms of economic privilege, we're talking about You know five percent only the majority of the wealth in this country So there are many hardships But one of the things that I would like to make a distinction between is Individual privilege and group privilege. I think that as a group whites are indeed privileged in terms of Their access to resources and their access to power But there are a lot of individual whites who Don't have access but but the irony here is that for those who don't have access They they don't see ourself themselves In the same struggle that African Americans and Latinos and Asians are in In the struggle for social and economic and racial justice So it there's not a simple answer There's privilege And there's not privilege, but it's how you look at it. I mean one of the things Sabane on example, but you know What was that about three weeks ago at the Academy Award and the picture of the Academy Award class And you said well, besides Oprah. Where are the other black folks? But Oprah was there You know, but you really had to look for Oprah, but she was there And then there's this denial that that things are really okay But things aren't okay and Ferguson reminds us that things really are not okay So I throw it open to other panelists Any comment? maybe just maybe just to piggyback a little bit of what Gail said about the privileging of the group and since we've already kind of mentioned the experience of black Women in relation to addiction to Cocaine in a particular form of cocaine There is a current epidemic of heroin in this country But I don't think we have to worry about whether or not it's going to be cast as a threat that will lead to harsher punishment for heroin users because those who are most affected by this current heroin epidemic are white and suburban So you're seeing, you know storytelling around that, but it's a different story similar issues of Of you know why that might happen in different issues as to why this epidemic is happening but the Telling the narrative tied to it will be fundamentally different because of the different privilege of groups Thank you I'd like to add something that's on the kind of like the flip side and that is the black elite and The privilege of blacks and how for example We've had black communities like the Tulsa community that was doing better than the white communities Around it and how that that community was destroyed Based on a false rumor of rape of a white girl by a black male That allowed them to come in and completely destroy this black community that was referred to as the black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma About the communities that in in Florida for example Rosewood same thing destroyed about the progress that was made after slavery where you had Howard University and Spelman College in these different places we talk about that exist today that were part of the Trajectory of black progress economically socially educationally and then we have the backlash of Jim Crow We have the backlash of the Ku Klux Klan and of terrorism and these other things So every time we get to a point of black privilege of The black elite of black progress We have this sense of no if there's going to be privilege Even if it's going to be among the majority of whites who are not on the top of the tier that that color privilege is going to remain and The discomfort that this country has with black progress that we have to put you back in your place or as I call it the socio-racial hierarchy Where certain people are supposed to be the top the middle and then the rest of people are fighting for crumbs at the bottom rung And every time you get out of your place something happens President Barack Obama to many people is out of his place If little white kids are told all their life one day you could be president United States And they look up and see a black man as president United States And it's like well, what's up my whole world is turned upside down When he was elected one of the things that I said was he was running I should say one of the things I said I believe he's going to win, but will they allow him to govern? Because there are far too many regular white people working in jobs where they can't stand having a supervisor of color And if you can't stand having a supervisor of color at the gap What do you want to do if that supervisor of color is a black man in East president United States and this Tussling back and forth and having you know, um, that's not who come and speak and Disrespect the president in such a way the disrespect you lie You know from the floor during the State of the Union address again and again to say we're not going to allow you to have the full Privilege of the office because that is something that white privilege is supposed to have a loan So we're not even going to accept that black privilege exists Well, I just to to close and then maybe we can get some questions from the audience With the election of Barack Hussein Obama, I like saying his name Barack Hussein Obama There were a lot of interesting and the shift there is And we are all a part of it. There's an important Demographic shift that's occurring in our society. I don't know if you know that There will not be for the very first time in our country's history There will not be a white president in our Elected to the highest office of this land Based solely on the strength of the white vote Okay There's a there's an enormous Demographic shift where as the census says Minorities racial minorities are now becoming the majority as a group and because of that There there will not be another President elected in our country Based solely on the voting strengths of whites That's extremely Extremely significant audience questions. I think we have time for one or two I wanted to say just speaking to what the organizer had said About how do we make white privilege seen? I think it helps like when I go to rallies and I see white people holding up signs that say black lives matter, you know having white people who do believe that White privilege is a real thing that does exist, you know having them speak out and organize I think maybe that might have some effects, you know on their counterparts and other people who who need to be swayed Other questions. I'd like to thank the panel for the very lively and interesting discussion Given that our institution is an institution that is heavily focused over what we use up for privilege in terms of the social sciences I'm fascinated to hear the a lot of the similar kind of second-wave feminism type the person was a political and The relations between the structural and the biographical and this that I'm curious to know I always enjoy hearing a social scientist explain this Could you please give me a sense of the difference between the personal and the political or the difference between the autobiographical and the legal or the political or the economic or the structural things. It's it's The level at which you're looking at something. It's not the difference because obviously there's a difference between one life and a society but the level at which you look at it and what this work has done is to In a really artful way Connect the two levels But I don't think it's a question of difference or trumping But you know, of course I can show you somebody with a perfectly healthy wonderful magnificent strapping Full-term baby. That's black and I can show you a preterm dying baby. That's white. Of course individual Everything's individual. On the other hand, I can talk about the rates Okay, rates very systematically and Looking at that at the rate of something rather than looking at the individual experience of it is looking at it socially Being able to flip back and forth between the two is what the Tyro That this book maneuvers are the responses to that question just for me I think it's that it has a lot to do with context and Without the full context and understanding that the auto Biographical auto ethnographic approach brings to it is that it it does complete The whole story in a way that statistics can't do, you know, I work in public health where epidemiology is very quantitative and more Narrative or textual methods aren't as highly regarded in my in my discipline of public health where I happen to teach But not in which I'm trained and I also will just add and it's and I again I so admire gales Skill at pulling this off because I don't know and I I Barbara has you know really articulated how How challenging it is to have it come across read well be so chock full of of Information of history as as Gloria said Marshall said in terms of the legal History, you're not going to get that from reading a legal case You're not going to get that from reading a peer review You know epidemiological article or a sociological Exposition so I think you know, it's really important to Consider who do you want to have this? you know to make it accessible to a broad range of of folks along a continuum of background and discipline and Scholarly orientation we are all scholars We are all our independent investigators of truth And if we can find something that is going to give us what we need to stir us to fill the gaps of our miseducation and To be able to you know really Have that full that full story told I think that that is the difference for me One last burning question out there in the audience Going once going twice. We have a of course a Majority of students we have some professors in the audience We have a majority of students and perhaps something that you could take back the going back to what was stated here before I Was one of those people who watched young people with signs of black lives matter and the diversity Of those protesters around Ferguson and and the other to mirror rice and the other shootings that have taken place I know in this audience we have those people who are thinking about going in policing to go to law school You have your futures open and that's the greatness is the diversity of John Jay College But the type of transition we need as a country doesn't fall out of the sky It takes work and it takes knowing history and what type rope does is show the Journey of one individual as life is happening around her The good the bad everything is happening and she's able to tell the story as it's happening to her Life is happening to you as well young people How are you going to tell your story years from now? How are you going to deal with the ins and outs of privilege? Discrimination when you get into your jobs when you're moving forward when you get to a certain age And you look back over the road you've taken People who are holding the signs up today. Is it going to be meaningful five years from now? Are you going to take the road of least resistance? How in this country where race is intertwined in everything are you going to walk your journey up, right on a crooked road? That's something you have to think about and as you go back when you're grown and looking back over your life as Gail Garfield has What will be your story when it comes to your time here in this country and how race has affected the way you see the world I? Think that's a wonderful note to end on Can we have a round of applause please for Gail Garfield? and our commenters Barbara Katz Rothman Gloria Brown Marshall and Lynn Roberts and And just a quick plug Our book talk series continues March 25th with Adam Berlin of our own English department and his novel His novel the number of missing his 9-11 novel the number of missing and concludes May 6th with Dr. Khalil Jabran Muhammad of the Schaumburg Center for the study of black culture And he will be presenting from his book the condemnation of blackness, so come along for those as well Thanks