 Good evening. I'm Mark Uptegrove, the president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation and welcome to the second episode of our six-part series, The Path to Racial Equity. A year ago, I had the great good fortune of meeting Leslie Wingow, the president and CEO of Sanders Wingow. Well, now honored to call my friend and colleague. Our friendship began as we talked about the issue of race. Those conversations developed into further discussions around ways that we could engage the community working toward creating positive change toward racial equity. We asked ourselves what practical, simple steps can we all take toward greater racial understanding and equality. The injustice we saw last summer made our quest all the more urgent, but we certainly didn't have all the answers we knew experts and organizations that we knew could help. That led to the creation of The Path to Racial Equity, an unprecedented partnership of over 20 nonprofit organizations exploring different aspects of racial equity. Leslie and I are grateful to our partners for coming together to make this happen. Tonight we'll ask how did we get here, in which Leslie will explore the subject with our friend, Dr. Peniel Joseph. Leslie will give Peniel a proper introduction in a moment, but I will tell you that Peniel's latest book has practically won every award under the sun. And I would just ask my friend Peniel, if you could just save certain literary awards for other writers, I would be deeply grateful. Let's get started. It is my great honor to introduce my friends Leslie Wingo and Dr. Peniel Joseph. Good evening. Peniel, it's so good to see you but for the audience and for those people who have not met, who have not had the honor of meeting you yet, I just wanted to share a little bit about you. Mr. I'm sorry, Dr. Peniel Joseph is the Barbara Jordan chair and ethics and political values at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Professor of History and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin. As Mark alluded to in his introduction, he has written several books on African American history, including Stokely, A Life. His most recent book, The Sword in the Shield, The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., is a time magazine 100 must read books of 2020. Best Book of the Year list in The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, Pen American Biography Award Long List. I've been so excited about this conversation. You would have thought my mom is excited for this conversation. We're all very excited to talk to you and welcome you to the series, Dr. Joseph. Thank you Leslie. It's such a pleasure to talk with you, who I consider a great friend and colleague. Thank you. Before we get started, I just wanted to take a few minutes to revisit the historic moments we've all recently experienced and seen. For me, I've been captivated by social media and the images of inauguration, but more specifically how everything has changed in the matter of four years from COVID, the obvious heavy policing at the administration and to the past administration doing away with traditions associated with a peaceful transfer of power. So I'm curious for you as a human being and also an historian, how are you reflecting on the recent events? I'm writing Leslie. I'm writing now as we speak. So I have hopefully a book that will be out in 2022 about this, not just this past year, but really I've been saying on radio and television in these events that we've organized at the university of race and democracy and other places that we're really experiencing America's third reconstruction. And I don't say that hyperbolically. I really do believe that this period from around the election of Barack Obama in 2008, all the way up until not just the last election that we saw this year at the Capitol, but really the extraordinary watershed election of Raphael Warnock to the Georgia Senate, John Assoff to the Georgia Senate, the work of Stacey Abrams, Longhorn Hookham, Stacey Abrams, and black women and black lives matter. And of course the three Wednesdays of insurrection, impeachment and inauguration, hugely, hugely important. And when we think about reconstruction, reconstruction is that period in American history that in a lot of ways encapsulates our origin story that period from 1865 to 1896 where there was this real and figurative reconstruction of American democracy. So we're thinking about the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, voting rights, at least for black men but black women organizing alongside of them, thinking about Ida B. Wells, Francis Harper organizing church groups, creating schools, creating civic and religious and political infrastructures. But then paralleling that is this resurgence of white supremacy. It's the rise of not just the Klan, but but physical violence and racial terror in places like Texas, Memphis, New Orleans, racial pogroms happened between 1865 and the end of the century. Now we know about Tulsa and Atlanta and the early 20th century, white riots. But we never talked about 1898 and Wilmington, North Carolina, and how an interracial government was actually murderously displaced by a mob that had talked about fraudulence and said this wasn't fair that you had these black people and these white people who were in political power. So in a lot of ways this period encapsulates both that first reconstruction, where you saw voting rights side by side with a convict lease system. You saw black people create businesses side by side with sharecropping and PNH. So you saw the best of times and the worst of times in one period. And of course the second reconstruction we sometimes call it the civil rights movement. But in fact, that period of 19, between 1954 and the Supreme Court Brown desegregation decision and 1968 Dr. King's assassination, we think of it as the heroic period of the civil rights movement. But it's really a part of America's second reconstruction, which starts ironically in the context of the Great Depression and the Second World War. So there's really about a 25-30 year period where there's these debates and these efforts to get anti-lynching legislation. And you've got black women like Mary McLeod Bethune, who's part of Roosevelt's black cabinet, FDR's black cabinet. You've got Eleanor Roosevelt, who's really one of the most extraordinary figures of the 20th century, who's an anti-racist who's trying to push FDR. You've got, even before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker and Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois and Claudia Jones and these black women and men who are bleeding for democracy, both overseas and domestically in the United States. Sometimes we call it the long civil rights movement. And so when we think about this period, this period from Barack Obama all the way up until the age of Trump and the proud boys and black lives matter. And Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Stacey Abrams and Andrea Gorman and all these different people, this is America's third reconstruction. And so we're not used to striking juxtapositions because we don't think historically, but reconstruction is filled with striking juxtapositions. You can look at certain aspects of both the first, second and this current reconstruction and say, we're fine. Racial progress has been achieved. Look at these firsts, these incredible victories. But then you can look at the reaction and the response. Sometimes we boil this down to one word, backlash. We can see this racial, political, economic, cultural backlash against the very idea of black dignity and citizenship. So we're experiencing all of that at once. And I think that's why so many of us have whiplash over the events of the last four years and really just the events of the last several weeks. So let me ask you another question. When I look back on the summer protests of 2020 and then the riot that happened January 6, both groups impassioned about the relief. Some would even say both groups are outraged, but it's been argued that law enforcement prepared differently for the protests summer 2020 than they did just a couple of weeks ago. So my question from you and from your view is, why was everything so different and how did race play a role in some of the decisions that were made? Well, law enforcement absolutely did prepare differently for the MAGA marchers and what became this white insurrection, this white riot, really this white supremacist assault on the US Capitol. This goes back to reconstruction as well, because when we think about reconstruction and really the period of antebellum slavery, we don't really have formal police departments in the United States nationally until after the end of racial slavery. And really, one of the first ways we use law enforcement in the United States was in the context of looking at black people, human beings as contraband as this species of property that needed to be brought back to their rightful owners. And so when we think about after the Civil War, black people should be citizens on equal footing with whites, no more, but no less than their white counterparts. And what you see is a convict lease system created. We actually create after the Civil War, the first quality of life crimes in the United States where you can be arrested and fined and incarcerated for lacking employment, for loathing, for being considered just not doing much of anything, right? And that's going to be targeted to black people. And at the same time, we make virtually any white American citizen can actually do a citizen's arrest of a black person, but the reverse is not true. So there's a really long history with the way in which law enforcement has been organized to look at black people as dangerous, as criminals, as something that needs to be contained and incarcerated punished. So by the time you have black lives matter activists coming out there, even though when we think about this summer we saw millions of white Americans on the side of BLM, law enforcement is going to look upon that as a threat that they just don't look at MAGA marchers as that threat. And I think what was extraordinary about the President, President Biden's inaugural address is he talked about white supremacy. He talked about domestic terrorism and white supremacist as domestic terrorists. So the FBI law enforcement has very much been hesitant to look at white supremacist and white hate groups as a threat to democracy. But I think January 6 of this year has forever changed that. What are your thoughts and takeaways from the incredible moments in history? No, I thought President Biden delivered an extraordinary inaugural address. I thought it was the best inaugural speech since John F. Kennedy's new frontier speech in January of 1961. I have some some words here in terms of what he said that I thought was really important. He talked about the winter of peril and possibility. He said much to repair much to restore much to heal much to build and much to gain. So interesting he says a cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us the dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer. And now rise in political extremism white supremacy domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat. So I thought that this was an extraordinary speech is first time a US president has utilized the term white supremacy in his inaugural address. It's really the first time that we see a president centering racial justice as being really the beating heart of American democracy. And so I think that when we think about this president who quoted from Lincoln 1863 talked about my whole soul is in it. In terms of restoration he said at the start of his inaugural address that this is a day for democracy his election was a victory for democracy. The violence in the shadow of the capital the desecration of the Citadel of American democracy on January 6 2020. 21 so it's really an extraordinary speech is an extraordinary speech I think that it's a speech that called us to national unity, but it called us to national unity through provocation. And the provocation is really this idea of molding consensus that's what true leaders do Dr Martin Luther King Jr famously said that vanity asks, is it popular, but conscience asks, is it right. And when we think about Joe Biden that was a speech President Biden, that really was based in his conscience he talked about Kamala Harris the first female and black and South Asian vice president in American history. He used her as part of the striking juxtapositions that we've seen this year and this last several years during this this American reconstruction this third reconstruction. He used Kamala Harris really as a point of optimism to say that things can change, but at the same time he talked about a cry for racial justice 400 years in the making. So what I thought was extraordinary about President Biden speech was just the very fact that to mold consensus, he was telling the nation what it needed to hear, not what it wanted to hear, and that's what true leadership is. It's telling Americans of all backgrounds, all ideological stripes, what we need to hear, not what we want to hear. So we can get to the real deep work of democracy that needs to be done. And I thought he did such an amazing job wrapping that all together and so what I want to what I like for us to talk about during this session today is, how did we get to this moment, you know, you've talked about the third American reconstruction. So those both multicultural and multiracial and we've talked about looking at this through three different channels, education organization and agitation so for our audience will you tell us about the third American reconstruction, the origin of its name. Can you tell us how we got to this moment because it didn't happen overnight. And in this, the society that we are in now the sugar rush and what things quickly. I think it would be great if we could just kind of unpack that a little bit. Certainly what I mean by the third American reconstruction is really this period between the election of Barack Obama. And now we're really experiencing it and what what that period echoes is the period of the first reconstruction after racial slavery, where we saw the end of slavery with the 13th amendment birthright citizenship with the 14th amendment, the 15th amendment provided political suffrage for black men, even though white and black women vociferously argued that they be included but they were defeated white women were defeated for another 50 years, and black women were defeated until the passage of the voting rights on August 6 1965 under the Linda Johnson administration. So when we think about this period of the first reconstruction, you see voting and political rights for African American communities the rise of historically black colleges and universities, the rise of a whole new political class of Friedman's Bureau health care churches, a whole civic and political structure being set up. The historian Stephen Hahn is called a nation under our feet, you see it rising up during reconstruction, paralleling that is going to be white anti black violence, this political backlash. So in a lot of ways, the first reconstruction sets the template for the second reconstruction in our current reconstruction, the second reconstruction of this is the civil rights movement, but really the civil rights movement starting in the 1940s, all the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And you see these striking juxtapositions, political and civil rights at times for African Americans, all kinds of racial first, Thurgood Marshall becoming the first supreme black Supreme Court justice, but you also see urban rebellions and riots you see civil disorder you see political assassinations, you see a new rise in white political backlash when we think about the rise of George Wallace 13 million popular votes running as a segregationist. So it's really these extraordinary juxtapositions where on one hand, we feel as a nation. Wow, we've made these breakthroughs, whether it's Mary and Anderson, we see this person Oprah Winfrey, we see Cheryl and I for we see all these different people doing extraordinary things. But then we see alongside of that backlash and we think about the third reconstruction. Barack Obama is incredible starting point for us because Obama becoming the first president of the United States, who's black, Michelle Obama being this extraordinarily brilliant first lady. You look at that and you think to yourself, we are post racial we've made it we've overcome, people were in tears and then it's followed up by tea party, a birther movement that really pre is the is the pre sages Q anon the birther movement saying that the president of the United States was not born in Hawaii but was born in Kenya, and he's a fraud and we we otherized him. And then the person who popularized that fraud Donald Trump becomes the next president and defeats Hillary Clinton, right. And alongside that you saw the rise of Black Lives Matter 1.0 2013 2014 after the deaths of Trayvon Martin, after the deaths of Michael Brown and Sandra Blaine and and these these radical black women black feminist queer black feminist arguing for intersectional justice. So you've got the rise of Obama, the rise of a political backlash against Obama, you've got the rise of racism. And then in 2020, all these forces come together with Black Lives Matter 2.0, the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial disparities there in the most politically and racially divisive presidential election in American history. And actually, the rise of this anti racist majority, 81 million Americans who come out from all backgrounds, from all different ideological perspectives from all geographical perspectives, and they vote for Biden and Harris and they vote for hope. And that's sort of the punctuation of that on January 5, 2021, with Reverend Raphael Warnock and Reverend Warnock becoming the first black senator from Georgia is extraordinary. He reside he presides over the pulpit Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where the young Martin Luther junior applied his trade. So we would not have the first black senator from Georgia, without Dr. King, and Warnock's campaign helped lift the 33 year old Jewish American, John Ossoff into the Senate as well. And those two victories have given the Democratic Party this slim majority in the Senate. So really extraordinary times. And then the day after that you get the you the insurrection from the US Capitol. So these striking juxtapositions are really part of this historical pattern that we have. Whenever we're trying to focus on black citizenship and dignity. We make at once, both simultaneous simultaneously almost it seems great strides, and we have this huge backlash, right. And that's what we're trying to figure out this time that this this vision and version of reconstruction is not over yet. And what we're trying to achieve for the first time in American history is black citizenship and dignity and if that happens. That means the defeat of the racial caste system and that's going to reverberate to every single American of all colors of all genders of all backgrounds. From where I sit it feels like that there's this tenor in these conversations about how do we heal and reconciliation how do we move forward. However, also bundled in this conversation is its expectation from some folks to have very quick solution to very complex problems. So what we want to make sure we get the audience something we want to give them just key takeaways of how they can engage in this valuable work and not do the thing that drives a lot of this crazy that diversity box, you know, check the box for solutions, and she talks so how do we get folks in action around this idea and expectation and education. Yeah, you know, I wrote something calling for a national racial truth justice and healing commission at the executive level. And really what I want to discuss is how we can make that happen just even at the local level and I think when you think about truth you're talking about education. You're talking about justice. You're talking about organizing and policy. When you think about healing. I think healing is connected to agitation actually I think that you to heal, you still need to agitate you have to agitate both the body politic but networks and communities. So I'd say the first thing we need to do is educate ourselves and I think this has been the last year. Because of the COVID pandemic because of the George Floyd protests. We've seen a lot of discussion about anti racism. We've seen a lot of discussion about the roots of our, our divisions in the United States. We've seen a lot of discussions about Juneteenth and how did we get here. I think we all need to educate ourselves on the basics of American history. I think we need to, you know, African American history is American history, we need to educate ourselves on the basics of that history in a panoramic way we need to understand what happened in the United States and how that continues to impact us today we need to understand it, not just vis-a-vis lynching, but vis-a-vis voting rights and voter suppression vis-a-vis sexism and violence that continues up until this day, even when we think about poor maternal health outcomes for black women, including right here in Austin. We need to think about this history, this deep history vis-a-vis the criminal justice system and why the criminal justice system continues to meet out unequal justice towards the African American community. The, the, the latest incident is not just police violence against people like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, but the disparate treatment of black lives matter protesters in contrast to violent white insurrectionists at the US Capitol, who were virtually all allowed to go home. And those who were initially arrested were only arrested for violating a curfew and not for destroying the nation's capital, right? So we need a deep history and I think once we're armed with that history and we're on the same page and this is the debates between the 1619 project versus the 1776 commission. Telling the truth about American history doesn't mean we don't love America. Telling the truth about American history means that we do love America. Dr. King loved America enough so that he could criticize the country, right? So this idea that patriotism means lying about the nation's origins in racial slavery. That means lying about how we've treated women or immigrants or Japanese internment camps or lying about the deep-seated nature of racism, anti-Semitism in this country. That's not patriotism. The real call for all of us is to say we are a country that has been flawed, that has been unequal, that aspires towards racial justice, and if we can make those aspirations turn those words, those lofty words into deeds, we are going to finally achieve the country we've all wanted. So education is a big, big key and I would say this, Leslie, with that education, we can leverage that education in the networks that we have just locally, right here in Austin. Every single person who is listening to our conversation can leverage that in their school districts. They can leverage it in their churches, their synagogues, their mosques. Yes, you can push City Hall. Yes, you can push University of Texas at Austin, but wherever you are at, you can leverage that story and if people aren't talking about racial justice, you say, well, why aren't you talking about it? And here are some resources I can give you, whether you're interested in environmental justice, women's rights, issues of food justice, issues of housing affordability. All of it is centered around racial inequality here in our United States. So that's the first part. The second part in terms of organizing is what can we do, all these nonprofits here in Austin. How can we communicate better, consolidate what we're doing so we can share information and help each other, lend our expertise to each other, right? Instead of reinventing the wheel, if we all come together and we share in trying to get more resources and get more policies and resources for the anti-racism and the social justice politics that we all have, we're going to be much better off. And then finally, that healing part is usually important. We need to speak to each other. Boston is one of the most segregated cities in the country. Texas is a segregated state. The United States is still wounded by racial segregation in public schools and in all of our neighborhoods. We have to, have to come together as one nation. And part of that is that education, the organizing, but then the healing and the racial rapprochement is going to say, we're going to move beyond ourselves, empathize with people who don't look like us, empathize with people who don't have the same background as us. And that's what Dr. King asked us to do. He asked us to enlarge in our moral circle. So let me, let me ask you this. So last week we kicked off our series with the CEO of courageous conversation, your friend Glenn Singleton. And during that conversation, Glenn said something that was profound to me and he said, sometimes mistakes are part of the victory. And for me, I define mistakes as something that is big and just lofty, something you may just screw up, but at least you tried it, right? And maybe you missed the mark, but that's okay. And as you look through the history of the American, of the United States, and, and I also ask you to be a moment in this moment just for a little bit of futurist. What, what mistakes should we make to be victorious as we move through the, as we move through these things and you outlined some of them with organization and education, but what are some of these, these big lofty mistakes that we need to keep trying to make. Well, I think, I think we need to be innovative. And I think we need to do an above of all, all the above strategy. So I think that we need to understand that we can, we can do, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can, we can want rapprochement and healing, and we can organize for anti racist policies, and we can actually transform the narrative of racial justice in America simultaneously. Right. I think sometimes we say one has to proceed the other, but I think we have to right now move with speed with all, you know, with all deliberate speed in the most positive sense of that phrase towards racial justice and centering racial justice for all people. But I would say this, I think Dr King showed us that we could talk about the universal but King wanted us to talk about the universal through the particular struggle and lens of black people. So I will say that the organizing principle of the racial caste system right here in the United States is anti blackness, and we need to really push back and defeat that I think last year was extraordinary because you saw so many black people and black women at the forefront and people saying amplify the voices of black women women like yourself women like Dr Burnett at Houston Tillotson, who's the president of Houston Tillotson. There's so many different extraordinary black folks right here in Austin and Texas and nationally and we're seeing them get much more leverage and amplification in really important ways and I think we do have to lead with that I think we have to lead with saying black citizenship and dignity is going to reverberate out to Latin X and to Asian and South Asian and to indigenous Native American and through to poor whites and whites who are who are interested in human rights for all people and anti racism so I think we do have to lead there in a way, I'd say that the mistake in quotes where he says mistakes, sometimes people make an argument that so called. And I know Leslie you've heard this identity politics are a mistake right and one of my my intellectual heroes Barbara Ransby, who's a historian is a wonderful book of making a black lives matter and she's written a wonderful biography of Ella Baker. She really articulates how I so called identity politics radical black feminist talking about intersectional justice that phrase from Kimberly Crenshaw the black feminist legal theorist is actually the most universal notion of identity, because it's saying that people who are black and who are queer and people who are not able body, we need to look at the world through their lens that politics that race that class impacts all of us differently and we've seen that with the coven 19. pandemic. So what I've learned from black feminism as one of the critical lenses that I see the world through is this this idea that identity politics are not the narrow vision and lens that they're often accused of being they're actually very, very wide and capacious. The problem is, for too often, we've made the case that objectivity is actually what is what is white, what is male, what is patriarchal what is heteronormative cisgendered. We say that that is the objective lens right for the people who actually took and pulled the wool over the Wizard of Oz and said here's you know, here's how, how politics and race and gender really work have been in a lot of ways. Black radical activists black radical feminist activists, and I think we should push this idea of black citizenship and dignity, even if we get pushed back against it. So we have about two minutes left before we go into Q&A, but I want to ask you one last quick question and it's around agitation. And I know that you and I both have a love for Star Wars and Yoda, and that we could debate baby Yoda, Papa Yoda all day long but baby, I mean, big Yoda, old Yoda. He has this quote do do our do dot there is no try. So what is the one thing that we can do beyond do and go beyond to support initiatives. What actions truly make a difference for our audience. I think the biggest things everybody should do is put resources into local anti racist black led organizations wherever they are, and those resources should be a combination of financial, your own time, your own prestige, your own networks your own energy. All of us have a supply chain of power and privilege we're connected to, and some misery and grief right and we want to connect ourselves to our power power and prestige to this this anti racist struggle so everyone can do it so that's looking at nonprofits for profits boards. It's every it's from stem to root and if we do that, you're going to have made an a massive massive impact. Sometimes it's just lending your expertise you walk in there, you say I want to help you I've been a CEO. I've been a CFO. I've been a consultant. I, I, I understand how to use skills that I don't understand this topic, but I can use my skills to help you amplify your voice. You do that. Those are you know Bobby Kennedy talked about ripples of hope, the great Bobby Kennedy and if we can all be those ripples of hope. In addition to all the structured politics that of course we're going to be a part of. We're going to make big big headway in terms of building that beloved community. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. What we're going to do now is we're going to move into our q amp a portion and I have a question I was, I was talking to a group today. And one of the things that they have said is, let me start this differently. I've heard saying is people hate two things change in the way things are. And so that they want to know change in progress is hard to measure. How do we actually cost change and then how do we know how we measure it, how do we know that we've done something meaningful. Great question Leslie we're going to know through outcomes I am a big believer in President Lyndon Johnson's Howard University address and in that address in 1960 65 he in June of 1965 he addressed. He gave the commencement address at Howard University, which is of course the new vice president vice president Paris, her alma mater and she's an a k a part of the divine nine shout out to the divine nine. And he talked about in that speech he said you know, it's not just about equality of opportunity it's equality of outcomes he said you couldn't start a race between two runners and have one who'd been shackled for centuries, and then just say go ahead and and you guys, you or you people are now in a fair competition so we're going to know people have asked me this, how do you know you're making a difference well, we have the data and every, we're accumulating more data in Austin but every single city, as part of the racial truth justice and commission should be keeping racial data not just about covert 19, they should be keeping racial data about the tech center, racial data about wealth accumulation income inequality, residential and public school segregation racial data about who's on the list at the University of Texas. Every single institution for profit nonprofit that we have health outcomes criminal justice system, and we're going to know if the changes that we're doing are going to be effective when that data starts becoming positive where black people are not going to be disproportionately underrepresented in negative social economic indicators and disproportionately underrepresented in positive social economic indicators. So once we see that we know we're trending the right way. Right. And so we work racism is about outcomes, it's not just opportunity but about outcomes because if we think to ourselves and empathize with other people, and we don't think to ourselves there's one group of people by race, who's working harder than the other, or one group of people because of race who's smarter or just thrifty other, better in math and science, and this group is better in athletics right. If we get away from that eugenicism that scientific and cultural racism, then we're going to say every child has put to equal potential. And if we cultivate that potential, then we shouldn't see why disparities in terms of outcomes. So that's one will know. So someone we're getting a lot of questions coming in right now but one of the question is, what can we do to help the third reconstruction continue. I'm a I am a parent of an almost eight year old. So am I, and what can should I teach her and what can we do. You know that's a great question. What we have to do is be active citizens and that goes beyond just voting. We have to one in our own family environments yes teach our children, you should teach your children I've got a kindergarten or and you know we're we're we're discussing we discuss race we discuss civil rights we discuss the President of the United States the Constitution being an American being a global citizen, all the time so one educate all day every day right. Infuse your child with intellectual curiosity about everything, but most of all about justice about humanity about equality right to in terms of to keep the third reconstruction going. We have to talk about racial justice and achieving that beloved community that's free of racial injustice free of economic injustice that is based on intersectional justice all the time we cannot afford any kind of racial or social justice fatigue and say next year we're going to talk about something this is this is the center of our lives, and it's going to be a marathon this is not 100 yard dash this is a marathon. And if finally you know to keep this going. We have to work on ourselves internally. One of the things that Dr Martin Luther King Jr talked about was a revolution of values that revolution of values meant that all of us we're going to have to enlarge in our moral circle but what that means is this. We need to set up a world where if somebody's child is in ice detention, and they're a non citizen that that hurts us so much that we are called to action right. It's our moral circle can't be Dr King argued only as big as our own biological children, our own, our own can our own blood relations are even our own as big as our own chosen family can't be 20 or 30 or 40 special people. And after that you turn off and you're numb to violence, or oppression happening to those people, our moral circle has to be as big as this planet and include. It includes the animals it includes the environment, it includes the plants and of course human beings. So we have to work on ourselves and if we do that, this is going to be an ongoing reconstruction that doesn't just have a beginning a middle and an end that we continue. This really, really important task of reimagining American democracy and if we do that, we're going to reimagine how human beings relate to each other, and we're not going to see the kind of suffering normalize that we see in our everyday lives. Our next question is, can systematic racism be truly addressed without inclusion of voices of marginalized persons. What about LGBTQIA. Well, will there be recognition within the subcultures of marginalized groups who face significantly more discrimination. I'd say absolutely yes this is where I'm always very impressed with the Black Lives Matter movement I would encourage everyone to check out their, their policy agenda because it's a comprehensive policy agenda that really centers the rights of immigrants, including Spanish immigrants and black immigrants, LGBTQIA and those who are differently able differently able bodied and differently abled, not able bodied. It centers black women, it centers the cash for HIV positive. It centers queer folks. And it says that, you know, when we center these folks, we're setting up a paradigm a framework that's going to reverberate and impact all of us, you know it doesn't mean that by centering folks who are LGBTQIA that straight people are somehow going to be marginalized it's actually quite the opposite it's saying we're setting up and destroying structures and systems of domination, where we can all achieve our full human potential. So it's really really striking in that way and this is where I say about this idea of intersectional justice and identity politics saying that we all need to have the state recognize our particular and peculiar circumstances. And if that sounds too narrow, just think of the way in which we've been able to recognize as a society, the very particular and peculiar circumstances of the rich, it to the point that we have very specific tax breaks for the rich and the super wealthy look, you can get a tax break. If you make even a part of your home, a public art museum for one day a week, because you want a tax break on this $50 million worth of art you have. So we can, we can be very granular at a set of society, depending on who the target of that generosity is all I'm calling for I've got nothing against the rich, I'm calling for everyone to have that access. And we can, we can actually make the policies that show and recognize our own individual humanity in a way that that produces what equity and justice for all people. So we already have the blueprint, we just need to expand it to more people. We have time for probably two more questions but here's one. What role can Latinx people play in the fight against racism and anti blackness. They can make a big role. They can play a big role. It's really about one there's Afro Latinx folks who are part of the Black Lives Matter movement. They forcefully identify, they're from everywhere from Central America to Latin America to South America to Haiti and Dominican Puerto Rico so there's that. But those who are non African identifying Latinx. I think they have to push back against the own, their own anti black racism that they've been by from their culture, whether that's parts of Mexico and what Mexico does with anti blackness and black dolls and caricatures of black people, caricatures of indigenous people in Mexico as well. But but really Latin America, Central America, Europe when we think about Spain, there, there, there is a lot of there's a massive current of anti blackness so I would say it's about one identifying and finding out about that history, finding out about the history between Latinx folks and people who are black and histories of colonialism that are time shared shared histories. At times it's really more of a master slave dialectic with the Latinx folks being on top and the black people being on the bottom. So there's a lot of education there. And I would ask employer Latinx folks people to try to identify with social justice because if you identify with social justice and human rights, you're not going to fall prey to to the politics of white supremacy that having some people of color, as we've seen with some white hate groups, having folks who are Latinx and sort of proudly citing with with with these hate groups so that that's been unfortunate but I think it's a lack of education and knowledge and understanding of our history and the shared symmetry that that black and Latino Latinx folks have in common in terms of in terms of resisting oppression in the United States and globally. What are some go to resources for accurate US history, black history, other must read books, resources, and that you might recommend. Oh, there's, you know, there's, there's, there's a ton I mean, we're going to give you some some CSRD Center for the study of race and democracy links and things. Darlene Clark Hines, the African American Odyssey, it's two volumes. It's a great book to check out. That goes from really the 15th century and African kingdoms, all the way up to the present so it starts with with Africa before the transatlantic slave trade because it's important for us to understand that we were on the African continent before being in the United States before being in Brazil. There's also of course John Hope Franklin with Elizabeth Evelyn Brooks Higginbothams from slavery to freedom that has been updated. There's great work by Nell Irvin painter on African American history and connecting African American history with art as well. Certainly you could read Ibram, Kendi and Jason Reynolds stamped, which is a book about anti racism for young adults, and sort of a remix of Ibram Kendi's National Book Award winning stamp from the beginning. And that's a big, big book that I teach stamp from the beginning. So there's really extraordinary number of books on African American history, some of them are behind me right here. That I would recommend Frederick Douglass I'd recommend. Brittany Cooper's book on black feminism, Tracy McMillan Coddham's book. Paul thick and other essays which was a national book award finalist. So there's a number of different books I think we are in a renaissance of an age of African American history. So I would say that there's a lot to read and there's there's resources that will be providing as well. So here is our last question for you of the evening and this person writes as someone who has worked in public history. I know there. I know that there can be a lot of pushback when folks mostly white folks have the history that they've grown up with challenge. And when it's obviously wrong. When do we improve Americans understanding of history, when there is so much structural and individual resistance to it. That's where the federal government can really play a role because I think that the 1619 project New York Times Pulitzer prize winning project Nicole Hannah Jones is really one of the real geniuses of our of our age. That's a multimedia project that really looked at the supply chain of racial slavery power and privilege for right whites grief and misery for blacks from 1619 to the present. If you just look at the narrative from 1776 to the present. We are not teaching the way in which racial slavery helped build up us and global capitalism. There's great books spend Becker empire of cotton Craig Wilder ebony and Ivy. The price for their pound of flesh. There's so many great books on on racial slavery tackies rebellion. Vincent Brown stony the road. Henry Louis Gates Jr. But what's what we're not doing is saying black people built up Wall Street black people built up the railroad black people didn't just build up the plantation economy of the South, they build it they built up the, the North and the West Coast to because it relied on racial slavery, and the exploitation of black labor and even insurance policies on black bodies to make up this exchange rate of capital right it's part of these supply chains of power and privilege versus misery and grief, and telling our students and young people that story is not going to destroy the Republic it's not going to make people hate American America and American democracy, it's going to give us all a better understanding a shared understanding of where we're from and that story of course is going to include Latin X folks of course it's going to include indigenous folks of course it's going to include all of us right and so I think that a national racial truth justice and healing commission could go a long way towards providing at least carrots no sticks but carrots for school districts who want that history to be to be told because remember the extraordinary part about American education it's really left up to states and local districts with the federal government does starting with Lyndon Johnson 1965 elementary secondary education school act is provide billions of dollars in grants right for for local districts but there's a way we can again have an incentivized approach to say let's shit let's give us a bigger understanding of our history that the highest form of patriotism is understanding both the grandeur and the and the travails of American democracy that is the highest form of patriotism so we do have these shining moments and we saw it yesterday. Andrea Gorman, we do have Oprah Winfrey we have Michelle Obama Barack Obama, but, but we have to tell those stories alongside of Breonna Taylor, you know, it disrespect Breonna Taylor's legacy it we we we desecrate the legacy of the many thousands gone the millions gone who suffered and they didn't get to be first lady of the United States, they might have been qualified they might have been brilliant enough to be that but but but they didn't get the chance, because of our rougher history of racism and white supremacy in this country so I do think that there's a way for more of us to get on the same page, we will never all be on the same page, that's the beauty of democracy, that's the beauty of democracy, we have to understand, it's not group think, but what happens with democracy you know what you produce consensus, you mold consensus, but we mold consensus through peaceful nonviolent struggle in democracy sometimes there's been violence of course but when we think about Martin Luther King Jr. when we think about the women's movement when we think about LGBTQIA, a lot of it was molding consensus, really through through suffering through being incarcerated through being abused and oppressed, all the way up until you know I think of falls and all the way up until Selma all the way up until Stonewall and other places where we finally said you know what, these people are our people, instead of saying that they were these people, and that's what one day we're going to get to a point where instead of looking and looking at all these different things that happen to Native Americans that happen to women, instead of saying how could we do that to them, first of all instead of lying about it and acting like we didn't do anything right, but instead of even saying how could we do that to them, and thinking that empathy and empathetic, we're going to say how could we have done that to us, that's what we're going to say, how could we have done that to us, when we get to that point, there's no them or us, we're not going to do and engage in that kind of behavior ever again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're such a joy and a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So Dr. Joseph, thank you so much. Many thanks to each of you and our supporters, the incredible team at Sanders Wingo and the LBJ Foundation, and of course, Austin PDBS and Peniel, the way you structured how we got here through education, organization and agitation. Just brilliant. So, please. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mark, up the Grove LBJ Foundation Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, the LBJ School and Dean David Springer. Thank you everyone who helped make this happen. So exciting and I'm so happy and proud to be here in Austin, we're doing amazing things and I hope to be able to say we have modeled how to build the beloved community for other cities around the country and around the world. So with that, have a wonderful evening, stay safe, and we look forward to seeing you soon. Good night.