 Good afternoon, I'm going to go ahead and get it started. I know people are still getting settled, but by the time I finish my intros, hopefully everyone will have a seat. It's great to see such an excellent turnout this afternoon for this conversation. My name is Uwista Yub. I'm director of the Fellows Program here at New America. It's always an exciting opportunity for us to welcome back fellows once their books are published. And so we're delighted to welcome Thomas back and obviously to welcome two other speakers with you today. But first congratulations on the book coming out last week. I know you've had amazing reviews in the New York Times and on a really impressive publicity tour. So congratulations. And we're really excited that we can be one stop along your long and impressive tour. The most important stuff, yes. And I'll tell you why shortly when I read his bio. So this conversation is part of our 20th anniversary speaker series. For those who might not know, New America was founded 20 years ago as a radical and progressive think tank, really thinking of new ways to reach audiences outside the Beltway. And early on, we brought on fellows who published books. And what now is a pretty common sense idea for what we've done 20 years later at the time was not. And since that date, we've helped publish 116 books. Thomas's is number 116. It's also our ninth book this year. So it's an impressive number, I think, in any given year to have that many. And we look forward to next year, hopefully welcoming many new fellows or former fellows with their new books as well. We've also helped produce nine films. And so we've also branched out to different forms and won many awards. Many of our fellows have been shortlisted for awards, won awards. We've won our first Pulitzer this year too. So it's quite an amazing feat 20 years later to be able to kind of share those achievements. Today, we're here because of Thomas as he's published Self-Portrait in Black and White on Learning Race. And it's an opportunity for us to kind of pause, reflect, learn more about his work and really to engage in a really dynamic conversation with three excellent speakers that are joining us this afternoon. So for quickly, before I get into the introductions and turn the conversation over to Ted, a few housekeeping things. This is an on-the-record live event and conversation. We do have people watching via live stream. You all have mics around the room in front of you. And these are meant less so for the in-room audience than it is for the live audience watching online. So if you do ask a question, when we segue to that part, please just turn your microphone on. Keep it off otherwise, because people will hear you eating your lunch and not hear the speakers. But when we do shift to the conversation and the Q&A, please just keep that in mind. And most importantly, we have books on sale. So at the end of the event, if you want to purchase a book outside, our bookselling partner, Solid State Books is here, and we strongly encourage you to buy one because then Thomas will sign it for you. So with that, I will go ahead and introduce our three excellent speakers. Thomas Chattern Williams is a class of 2019 Eric and Wendy Schmitz fellow here at New America. And he's the author, as I said, of Self-Fortune in Black and White, his latest book, the second book that he's published today. He's a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributing editor at the American Scholar. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, Harper's and elsewhere, and he has been collected and has been collected in the American, the best American essay and the best American travel writing. He's received support from Yaddo McDowell and the American Academy in Berlin. Joining him today is Ted Johnson, who he is a 2017 Eric and Wendy Schmitz fellow as well. His book is coming out hopefully in 2021, but he did submit his manuscript just a few weeks ago. And his work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review and Political, among many other publications. He teaches law and public policy to masters and doctoral students and is currently working on his book about national solidarity and race relations, which hopefully you'll all be able to join us for that event in two years. But he is also a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. And lastly, joining them is David Srodlik. He's an assistant editor for the Washington Post Outlook section and a CNN political commentator. He was an associate editor and a longtime writer for The Root. Please join me in welcoming them and I will transition the conversation over to Ted from there. Excellent. Thank you all for being here. I think this is gonna be a conversation about race, unlike probably any that most of us have had in this room, not for a shortage of concern about race. All of the stats show that racial tensions are growing or people feel less comfortable with race. Books about race are coming out, but they're focusing mostly on experiences with racism or ways to combat it. And your approach is altogether different. Instead of combating racism at The Root, your book begins even before then and talking about just the categories of race itself. So could you walk us through your book, the premise, the big ideas behind it and the memoir pieces of it that sort of help us understand how you've come to the argument you're sharing. Hi and thank you all for coming in the middle of a day, in the middle of a Thursday. It's a pleasure to be here. I grew up the son of a black father from the segregated South who's old enough to be my grandfather. My father was born in 1937, grew up in the 40s and 50s and really lived into adulthood prior to civil rights. And my mother is a...