 Hi Dr. Candy. My name is Claudia Chiappa. I'm joined here by my colleague, Abu Kamara, we're both journalism graduate student at Boston University. As a person of color, existing while striving for racial equity can sometimes be exhausting, and particularly today when we think about the trial of Derek Chilvin and Minneapolis. In moments like this, how do you remain committed to doing the work of anti-racism? I think it's in moments like this that I really reach out to and really sort of hug not only people that I love, but even the rights that we all love, and I think that fuel sort of love allows me to really get through the difficult moments, the adversity, but also even outrage that even on a day like today where it's going to be pretty apparent that the Derek Chilvin's defense is going to be putting George Floyd on trial, that outrage even sort of pushes me through. Just as the people who watched can be murdered were outraged, you just can't stop. You can't even really think about yourself. You have to sort of be focused on bringing justice. I think if there is a guilty verdict, I suspect people aren't going to be surprised either on some level because it was obvious that this officer should be guilty, but then again I think people will be surprised. I think people will then take the next step and continue to fight to ensure that policies and practices are in place that never allow anybody to be killed at the hands of police and certainly in the way George Floyd was. As much as blaming the fact that this should have never been a case to be in with because George Floyd should be with his daughter right now. We started talking about this trial that is so important that we're all looking at and one year ago after the killing of George Floyd, you wrote an article in The Atlantic that we were living through a revolution that was the end of denial. But 30 years before that there was Rodney King and many hoped that that would be it and sadly it wasn't. What do you think it will take so that there isn't another name added to that list? So I really think it's going to take a complete reimagining of public safety in this country and what I mean by that is what we currently have right now is a situation in which people across political parties even across races believe that there are these extremely dangerous black neighborhoods with those dangerous black people who need to be controlled by these militarized police forces and massive sort of prisons and a suite of sort of laws that criminalize and keep these quote animals in check and then so that's the larger societal perspective and then police officers are then told to quote keep those so-called animals in check and they're given qualified immunity and they're allowed to be investigated by themselves right when they do wrong it is a conceptual or ideological system that connects black people to danger combined with all these policies that protect police officers when they act on that that just completely needs to be transformed. In your book you spend a lot of time defining terms like anti-racist biological anti-racist biological racism which words I previously had not heard of why did you feel so important to develop new language? A large part of our long-standing argument over racism and specifically whether racism exists and specifically who is being racist is over definitions and so to give an example I mean two years ago when you have for instance a president sort of calling a majority black Baltimore a rat and rolling infested mess where no human being would want to live in and then the local congressman from Baltimore basically calling what the president said racist and then the president responding by saying I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world. What is inherent in that? A different completely different definitions of the term racist itself and and I think that so I wanted to provide the American people with research-based sort of definitions because how are we going to talk about race or racism how are we even going to see it if we don't even know what it truly is or if we're defining in a way that always exonerates us or exonerates our nation which is how people typically define these terms. Yes racism is everywhere affects people everywhere geographically and it really affects people of all ages and that led me to think about in particular your work you published last year anti-racist babies and I was curious why did you think that it was important to write a book that specifically introduced the idea of racism to young audiences? I think it's a combination of having a young daughter I have a four-year-old daughter and and like with anything else whether it's had a you know potty train her or you know whether it's understanding empathy or what it means to be kind we typically use books to introduce or to accelerate those conversations I certainly wanted to have a book to begin talking up to her about what it means to be anti-racist and I think that combined with the data that shows that as early as three months babies start understanding race as a concept so it really happens between three and nine months and as early as two to three years old you have children for instance deciding who to play with based on one skin color and in the way adults decide who's dangerous based on skin color you have so many parents who are thinking that our kids are colorblind you know when that's not true and all the while study after study shows that when parents actively talk to their children about race you know actively teach them that you know look at all these different colors and although they may be different they're they're they're equal they're part of the sort of same human rainbow that that actually causes the youngest of children to in you know more adult terms be anti-racist how early should parents start you know having those conversations about race with their children and what should they look like I mean as early as possible I mean so let me give an example most parents I would say probably most parents start talking to their kids about what it means to be kind you know before their kids can even talk kindness is an extremely complicated concept and and it and it's the type of concept that what it means to be kind is potentially very different in a multitude of situations and and the reason why I'm emphasizing how sophisticated kindness is is because you have parents who say oh well it's just too sophisticated to talk to to my kid about about race kindness is sophisticated but along with this I think it's important to know that even more impactful than what we say to our children is what we don't say how non-verbal language in other words like a child sees when all of our friends are let's say you know you're a white caretaker and and all of your friends are white like a child sees that you know child sees when you know you're walking down the street and a black male comes upon you and you get scared a child senses that that's a that you're saying something to that child you know child sees and indeed studies show that those children who grew up in homogenous neighborhoods that that impacts their racial development not in an anti-racist way the issue of representation goes beyond B.U. Walls and it's also in Boston we were talking and scenes our teaching assistant was telling us that she was she's a black woman and she was specifically told not to come to Boston to study because of its reputation and I am curious what are your thoughts on Boston's racial reputation I have lived in the United States my entire life and I have yet to live in a city that wasn't deeply racist I have led to live in a city that didn't have racial disparities and inequities and substantial ones in that so I wasn't personally I did not personally shy away from let's say coming to Boston because of this label of it being a racist city I lived in Washington DC it was a racist city I lived in Philadelphia I lived and grew up in New York City I've experienced and seen racism wherever I've lived along the East Coast what actually attracted me more though was the 19th century history of of Boston and in Boston was one of if not the cradle of of the abolitionist movement and and you had everyone from Mariah Stewart to William Lloyd Garrison to Wendell Phillips to the Charles Sumner and then you know going into after the end of slavery we had people like what W.E.B Du Bois and and and of course Barney the King and Malcolm X and me you named the pivotal important leader prior to the Boston era which of course really labeled this city you know there were there were so many great folks who who came through this city and I just wanted to walk in in their footsteps and Abu and I we represent the next wave of journalists what would you like to see us do when it comes to conveying this idea of anti-racism if journalists were willing to use the term racist when it's appropriate that would be a huge step forward for the field right and and if and if journalists were willing to tell the truth even when a particular political party when they know the backlash would be oh that's you know you're being biased that would be a huge step forward and and if the journalist can't be the arbiter of truth can't tell the American people what is fact and what is fiction then who's going to do that Dr. Kelly I just want to thank you for you know coming today speaking to us there's so much candor you know on a day where you know so so many of our hearts are are are so heavy considering everything we've seen in this past year um for Karakiappa I'm Abu Kamara thank you have a good night thank you all right thank you