1
00:00:01,550 --> 00:00:08,450
Good afternoon, everyone, I'm very pleased to welcome you all to today's event, healing our divided society, the Kerner Commission at 50.

2
00:00:08,450 --> 00:00:13,520
My name is Mitch Robertson. I'm the politics graduate scholar here at the RFI.

3
00:00:13,520 --> 00:00:18,890
It's wonderful to see so many of you here today and very excited to hear from our two very distinguished speakers,

4
00:00:18,890 --> 00:00:25,040
as well as all of you in the question and answer. Now, just a few housekeeping notes before we begin.

5
00:00:25,040 --> 00:00:28,190
As you have seen on the Eventbrite, we're recording this lecture,

6
00:00:28,190 --> 00:00:38,630
so we would just ask you to turn off your camera and audio just to save having to do a lot of commissions for the question and answer section.

7
00:00:38,630 --> 00:00:46,310
If you could please put your questions in the chat function, which you'll see down the bottom on Zoom, and I'll read them out to our two speakers.

8
00:00:46,310 --> 00:00:52,670
So our first speaker this afternoon is Gary Young. Gary is no doubt known to most of you here, but for those of you who don't know him,

9
00:00:52,670 --> 00:00:58,340
he's an Award-Winning author, broadcaster and academic, formerly the editor at large of The Guardian.

10
00:00:58,340 --> 00:01:06,380
Gary was recently taken up a position as professor of sociology at Manchester University between 2003 and 2015.

11
00:01:06,380 --> 00:01:12,020
It was The Guardian's US correspondent and as the author of five books, including No Place Like Home,

12
00:01:12,020 --> 00:01:19,010
A Black Britons Journey Through the American South and Stranger in a Strange Land encounters in the United States.

13
00:01:19,010 --> 00:01:25,520
It was described by the editor, The Guardian, as one of the leading thinkers and writers on politics and society working in Britain today.

14
00:01:25,520 --> 00:01:33,530
So we're very, very pleased to welcome Gary here today. Thanks, guy.

15
00:01:33,530 --> 00:01:47,000
Thank you. Thank you, man. So what I'm going to do is give version of the chapter that I wrote for the book Hearing Our Visions,

16
00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:55,220
but it's been updated to take in more recent events.

17
00:01:55,220 --> 00:02:03,140
Over the past few months, much of the Western world has been blighted by two separate but overlapping pandemics.

18
00:02:03,140 --> 00:02:06,830
First, coronavirus has been of physiological nature,

19
00:02:06,830 --> 00:02:19,190
and second racist violence has been a political major one since the first laid bare our common humanity that we are more alike than we are analysed.

20
00:02:19,190 --> 00:02:24,800
The virus struck the world over. The routes that connect us also made us vulnerable.

21
00:02:24,800 --> 00:02:30,050
There was no wall you could build now, acts you could pass.

22
00:02:30,050 --> 00:02:36,650
That would stop it. But it's also shown us that the way we analyse matters.

23
00:02:36,650 --> 00:02:44,900
We have not all been equally vulnerable to this virus. Of course, the old and the infirm was susceptible, but so are the poor.

24
00:02:44,900 --> 00:02:49,940
And since minorities are, for the most part, disproportionately concentrated amongst the poor.

25
00:02:49,940 --> 00:02:58,630
They've been disproportionately stricken. In Britain, black people are more than four times more likely to die from COVID 19 than whites,

26
00:02:58,630 --> 00:03:05,350
Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and more than three times as likely Indians more than twice as likely.

27
00:03:05,350 --> 00:03:07,810
And there are similar disparities in the United States.

28
00:03:07,810 --> 00:03:16,810
In Michigan, African-Americans comprise 14 percent of the population, but 33 percent of the reported infections and 40 percent of the best.

29
00:03:16,810 --> 00:03:24,290
In Kansas, African-Americans are seven times more likely to die from COVID than whites in New York City.

30
00:03:24,290 --> 00:03:28,450
In the state of Illinois, Latinos have higher death rates than African-Americans.

31
00:03:28,450 --> 00:03:34,980
In Arizona, New Mexico, Native Americans are becoming infected at a far greater rate than Latinos.

32
00:03:34,980 --> 00:03:42,640
African-Americans, Native Americans, black Britons, Latinos and British, both people of Pakistan in Bangladeshi origin.

33
00:03:42,640 --> 00:03:54,210
What do they have in common? Well, they don't share genetic material as such or anything ethically specific or cultured,

34
00:03:54,210 --> 00:03:58,680
but they do share is a common experience of impoverishment,

35
00:03:58,680 --> 00:04:05,400
low pay, poor housing and all the things that go with the dirty, ill health that makes them susceptible to COVID.

36
00:04:05,400 --> 00:04:13,350
For example, Bangladeshi families were 15 times more likely to experience overcrowding than white British households.

37
00:04:13,350 --> 00:04:18,030
Pakistanis were eight times more likely black Britons, six times more likely.

38
00:04:18,030 --> 00:04:20,940
All these groups are more likely to live in deprived neighbourhoods,

39
00:04:20,940 --> 00:04:26,700
experience higher unemployment, higher poverty, lower incomes and whites in the US.

40
00:04:26,700 --> 00:04:33,540
A black man in Washington, D.C., has a lower life expectancy than the man on the Gaza Strip.

41
00:04:33,540 --> 00:04:37,790
While black infant mortality in Chicago is on a par with the West Bank.

42
00:04:37,790 --> 00:04:46,460
So being a racial minority, for the most part, both sides of the Atlantic is a pre-existing condition.

43
00:04:46,460 --> 00:04:51,990
And it was these inequalities that helped usher in the second pandemic.

44
00:04:51,990 --> 00:04:57,840
For these conduct, conditions did not bring people out into the streets over the last few weeks.

45
00:04:57,840 --> 00:05:02,280
The brutal murder of George Floyd provided that spark.

46
00:05:02,280 --> 00:05:09,060
But COVID 19 has demonstrated how racism can kill in far less dramatic ways and in far

47
00:05:09,060 --> 00:05:14,610
greater numbers without offering a morality play that might be shared on social media.

48
00:05:14,610 --> 00:05:25,870
So there is the connexion between the daily drumbeat of systemic racism and the episodic flare up of anti-racist rebellion.

49
00:05:25,870 --> 00:05:35,000
And I want to spend the next 25 minutes exploring the way that the media does and doesn't help with that connexion.

50
00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:46,090
History. It was once said in a line most famously attributed to Mark Twain doesn't repeat itself, but at best it sometimes rhymes.

51
00:05:46,090 --> 00:05:49,690
And so it is that just over half a century after the Kerner report,

52
00:05:49,690 --> 00:05:57,790
we are here again for the riots of the kind that prompted the kind of report were deemed newsworthy.

53
00:05:57,790 --> 00:06:03,100
The brutal reality is that it took riots of that scale for the media and the

54
00:06:03,100 --> 00:06:09,300
political classes to pay attention to the conditions highlighted in the report.

55
00:06:09,300 --> 00:06:13,080
Again, this is not one issue limited to the United States in Britain.

56
00:06:13,080 --> 00:06:19,440
Whenever major Inner-City uprisings in the early 80s, a conservative cabinet minister, Michael Heseltine,

57
00:06:19,440 --> 00:06:25,680
produced a paper laying out what he believed to be the root causes of the disturbances it was called.

58
00:06:25,680 --> 00:06:33,000
It took a right. The Kerner report could hardly have been more straightforward in drawing a link

59
00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:38,160
between the social and economic violence of daily life and the violence of the riots.

60
00:06:38,160 --> 00:06:45,340
I mean, pointing out that both had to be understood within the context of America's racial inequality.

61
00:06:45,340 --> 00:06:53,520
It said, and I quote. Violence and destruction must be ended in the streets as it gets out in the lives of people.

62
00:06:53,520 --> 00:07:01,920
Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans.

63
00:07:01,920 --> 00:07:10,830
What white Americans have never fully understood what the Negro can never forget is the white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto.

64
00:07:10,830 --> 00:07:16,290
What institutions white institutions created it? Why institutions maintain it?

65
00:07:16,290 --> 00:07:22,480
A white society condones it. So, said the report.

66
00:07:22,480 --> 00:07:29,190
But if the riots were news. The segregation and poverty that made them possible were not.

67
00:07:29,190 --> 00:07:35,640
The report sold two million copies and was reportedly the bestselling federal report in American history,

68
00:07:35,640 --> 00:07:45,520
suggesting there was no lack of public interest. But as long as news was framed as things people did now, as opposed to things that shouldn't be,

69
00:07:45,520 --> 00:07:55,050
the megaphone was never going to make the news just by being there. The ghettos presence did not shock, its pain was not contagious.

70
00:07:55,050 --> 00:07:58,800
Its problems were understood to be contained.

71
00:07:58,800 --> 00:08:05,850
America had established a moral, political and economic threshold that had made almost all of its opinion formers and lawmakers,

72
00:08:05,850 --> 00:08:14,120
none of whom lived in the ghetto, inured to unaware of the absurdity of its existence.

73
00:08:14,120 --> 00:08:19,640
While the nature of both poverty and segregation have changed a great deal over the last 50 years,

74
00:08:19,640 --> 00:08:25,070
the question of this dislocation between what we have will become used to and what's nonetheless,

75
00:08:25,070 --> 00:08:32,150
a scandal remains in a period in which approximately three people are killed by police every day.

76
00:08:32,150 --> 00:08:39,050
What is outrageous may also be understood through the jaded lens of privilege to be banal.

77
00:08:39,050 --> 00:08:48,300
And this dichotomy brings to mind the widely known aphorism taught in most journalism schools about what constitutes a news story.

78
00:08:48,300 --> 00:08:54,540
Attributed to both Alfred Handsworth, early 19th century British newspaper magnate and the New York senator,

79
00:08:54,540 --> 00:09:01,710
John Bogart in the same period, the aphorism states simply when a dog bites a man, that is not news.

80
00:09:01,710 --> 00:09:06,480
If a man bites a dog, that is news, and the logic is clear.

81
00:09:06,480 --> 00:09:12,460
Occurrences that are both commonplace and expected cannot be considered news.

82
00:09:12,460 --> 00:09:17,580
Which is a category four events that are relatively rare and unexpected.

83
00:09:17,580 --> 00:09:23,820
But increasingly, as one covers America, as a foreign correspondent or even Britain,

84
00:09:23,820 --> 00:09:29,940
though, of course, the situations for different people of different races is different.

85
00:09:29,940 --> 00:09:38,970
Racism operates in both, even if it does differently. You're compelled to provide an addendum to that adage,

86
00:09:38,970 --> 00:09:49,440
a qualifying footnote to what seems like the obvious for sometimes events derive that potential news value precisely because they happen so often.

87
00:09:49,440 --> 00:09:53,970
Indeed, there are things that happen with such regularity and predictability.

88
00:09:53,970 --> 00:09:59,910
The Germans have simply ceased to recognise the news value, and politicians have ceased to acknowledge the input,

89
00:09:59,910 --> 00:10:09,780
not least if those things are least likely to happen to the people most likely to be journalists and politicians, ultimately to pursue the metaphor.

90
00:10:09,780 --> 00:10:15,900
There is often value in asking why the dogs keep biting people.

91
00:10:15,900 --> 00:10:23,020
Who owns these dogs and why do the same people keep getting bitten?

92
00:10:23,020 --> 00:10:32,560
Now, the first time this occurred to me was in 2007, when I was writing a magazine article about children and teens who was shot dead on a random day.

93
00:10:32,560 --> 00:10:40,000
And I was particularly perplexed by one child story where I kept reaching a dead end.

94
00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:48,970
I knew he'd been shot in Detroit. I was six years old, but the two cities two newspapers never even saw fit to mention his name.

95
00:10:48,970 --> 00:10:57,720
When I described how he'd been shot dead outside National Wholesale Liquidators after a tussle with the security.

96
00:10:57,720 --> 00:11:04,230
When I contacted the police about this, it was clear that the newspapers barely re-read the press release.

97
00:11:04,230 --> 00:11:13,490
It was amusing, brief and both. Eventually, I found out that the boy's name was Brandon Mitchelmore, Brandon,

98
00:11:13,490 --> 00:11:18,080
who was African-American, was in the store with his cousins and an uncle.

99
00:11:18,080 --> 00:11:21,890
The store had a policy that children should be accompanied by an adult.

100
00:11:21,890 --> 00:11:27,120
But when the uncle went to pay, the kid stayed to look at some video games.

101
00:11:27,120 --> 00:11:33,600
A security guard told him to get out. They told him, though, with the uncle, the guard ignored them and got physical.

102
00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:39,210
Brandon's older brother fought back when they saw the guard's gun fly in his pocket.

103
00:11:39,210 --> 00:11:46,580
They all started to run. Then he picked it up. This is how Brandon's older brother, John Henry, recalled it.

104
00:11:46,580 --> 00:11:51,350
Put one arm on top of the other arm and started aiming at us.

105
00:11:51,350 --> 00:11:57,610
Brandon wasn't involved in anything. He was just the last one to take off running, I guess.

106
00:11:57,610 --> 00:12:05,440
Now that in itself, I thought, was worth more than a paragraph. But then what could what came, what should have made banner headlines?

107
00:12:05,440 --> 00:12:09,610
The God, it turned out, was an off duty cop.

108
00:12:09,610 --> 00:12:19,040
In 1971, he was sacked from the Air Force after he was involved in a fatal hit and run accident while under the influence of alcohol.

109
00:12:19,040 --> 00:12:27,830
He was reinstated on appeal in 74. Five years later, he shot dead, an armed and drunk 31 year old involved in a neighbourhood dispute.

110
00:12:27,830 --> 00:12:38,290
Five years after that, he shot his wife. In the side, during a domestic dispute in which he claimed she loves to handle a pair of scissors.

111
00:12:38,290 --> 00:12:44,150
This was the man who killed Brandon. This was a story not worth telling.

112
00:12:44,150 --> 00:12:47,230
The problem wasn't that the papers ignored it.

113
00:12:47,230 --> 00:12:56,600
It never even bothered to look because the facts were black teen being shot in the city prompted no questions.

114
00:12:56,600 --> 00:13:02,960
It didn't challenge how they understood to get out to work. We confirmed it with no public scrutiny.

115
00:13:02,960 --> 00:13:10,820
There was no public pressure. The security guard policeman was assigned to a traffic unit pending an investigation.

116
00:13:10,820 --> 00:13:26,530
The investigation eventually judged the shooting of a 14 year old boy in the back justifiable homicide.

117
00:13:26,530 --> 00:13:33,340
This is the kind of thing that has made the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement under Obama's presidency,

118
00:13:33,340 --> 00:13:38,110
under Thomas presidency so resonant. Buries moments,

119
00:13:38,110 --> 00:13:47,430
particularly when there were clashes with police or looting the limits of what constitutes success in the post-civil rights era were laid bare.

120
00:13:47,430 --> 00:13:52,320
There was the first black president appealing for calm on one side of a split screen when the

121
00:13:52,320 --> 00:13:58,390
other side was a side of alienated black youths smashing store windows or demonstrating.

122
00:13:58,390 --> 00:14:02,020
Particularly revealing that as far as anyone could make out,

123
00:14:02,020 --> 00:14:07,420
Black Lives Matter was prompted not by an increase in the number of black people being killed by police.

124
00:14:07,420 --> 00:14:13,960
Amazingly, no official nationwide statistics exist on recent police shootings,

125
00:14:13,960 --> 00:14:20,410
but rather by growing political awareness that had forced a reckoning with a pre-existing condition.

126
00:14:20,410 --> 00:14:28,450
So these shootings of unarmed people were not news in the conventional sense any more than the violence of the ghetto had been in 1967.

127
00:14:28,450 --> 00:14:32,980
They are neither ran or surprising. They were made to be news.

128
00:14:32,980 --> 00:14:39,310
We were forced to recognise them, not because of the overwhelming statistical evidence suggesting wrongdoing,

129
00:14:39,310 --> 00:14:48,050
not by the testimony of thousands to ill treatment and not by historical precedent of how certain inequities and injustices work.

130
00:14:48,050 --> 00:14:56,720
Forced to recognise them in no small part, because new technology enabled people with cell phones to do the job the established media failed to do.

131
00:14:56,720 --> 00:15:09,280
The world had not changed. What have changed was our ability to pass off the grotesque as unremarkable, simply because it was also commonplace.

132
00:15:09,280 --> 00:15:17,380
The media episodically discovers this daily reality in much the same way that teenagers discover sex urgently,

133
00:15:17,380 --> 00:15:24,790
endlessly, voraciously and carelessly with great self-indulgence for precious little self-awareness.

134
00:15:24,790 --> 00:15:34,070
They've always known that, but somehow when confronted with it, then nonetheless taken by surprise and their surprise becomes the news.

135
00:15:34,070 --> 00:15:38,540
Crikey, look what I found out instead of the news itself.

136
00:15:38,540 --> 00:15:44,590
Goodness. Look what's been going on? Well, I've been looking elsewhere.

137
00:15:44,590 --> 00:15:53,410
But those who live there do not have the luxury of discovering. When I interviewed the late Maya Angelou in 2002,

138
00:15:53,410 --> 00:15:59,880
she told me that the September 11th attacks of the previous year were understood differently by African-Americans.

139
00:15:59,880 --> 00:16:04,450
Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, she said.

140
00:16:04,450 --> 00:16:10,420
But black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years.

141
00:16:10,420 --> 00:16:17,920
Now, at the time, I thought it was an interesting thing to say, but it would take more than a decade before I really understood it.

142
00:16:17,920 --> 00:16:28,240
Only after I had reported for America for 10 years and decided to repeat the exercise I had undertaken when I discovered Brandon's case,

143
00:16:28,240 --> 00:16:38,110
did I really understand what she said? So once again, I picked today at random this time, November 23rd, 2013,

144
00:16:38,110 --> 00:16:43,360
and I set about to write profiles of all the children and teens who were shot dead that day.

145
00:16:43,360 --> 00:16:48,340
Only this time for a book thought about the day in the death of America.

146
00:16:48,340 --> 00:16:54,940
Over the next two years, I saw everyone who knew these kids, from their parents to their pastors and basketball coaches.

147
00:16:54,940 --> 00:16:59,950
Ten kids were shot dead that day in the US. The youngest was nine.

148
00:16:59,950 --> 00:17:05,930
The eldest, just a few days shy of his 20th birthday. Several black two were Latino.

149
00:17:05,930 --> 00:17:10,980
One was white. And one of the first things I noticed.

150
00:17:10,980 --> 00:17:19,680
Was that when I called, the reporters had written the original stories? I found that very rarely had that news organisations follow those stories up.

151
00:17:19,680 --> 00:17:24,360
Clearly, I was the only one who called to seek more information,

152
00:17:24,360 --> 00:17:31,890
and they would generously rifle through their mouth and tell me what they knew and if they had been to the crime scene and what they'd seen.

153
00:17:31,890 --> 00:17:36,430
And invariably when I asked if they made any contact, if they have any contact details,

154
00:17:36,430 --> 00:17:44,010
family members I could speak to or if there'd been any developments in the investigation,

155
00:17:44,010 --> 00:17:48,390
they would explain some of the matter of factly why they had moved on.

156
00:17:48,390 --> 00:17:53,610
Unfortunately, homicides are not uncommon in that area, said one.

157
00:17:53,610 --> 00:17:59,510
Unless something unexpected happened, it just wouldn't be the kind of story would follow up on September.

158
00:17:59,510 --> 00:18:10,670
These were, in other words, dog bites, man stories. What soon became apparent, however, was how traumatised the building had become.

159
00:18:10,670 --> 00:18:22,340
Every single parent of a black teen I spoke to said they had essentially long factored in the possibility that their child might die in this way.

160
00:18:22,340 --> 00:18:30,320
Audrey Smith, the mother of a 16 year old Samuel Bodman, who was shot dead that day in Dallas just while walking down the road with his friend,

161
00:18:30,320 --> 00:18:38,290
the fragile sweet 16 year old kid who didn't even know anybody in the area.

162
00:18:38,290 --> 00:18:43,670
She told me that she didn't think it would be him. She thought it would be his brother.

163
00:18:43,670 --> 00:18:51,110
Gary Anderson, he's 18 year old son of the same name, was shot dead in Newark just an hour after Samuel told me,

164
00:18:51,110 --> 00:18:57,340
You're not doing your job as a black parent if you don't think it could happen.

165
00:18:57,340 --> 00:19:01,110
And in between ceremonial shooting galleries, another 18 year old boy,

166
00:19:01,110 --> 00:19:04,900
Christian Anderson, was shot dead in the stairwell on the south side of Chicago,

167
00:19:04,900 --> 00:19:11,290
and a mother who lived in the same building told a reporter the next day that she was happy that her 14

168
00:19:11,290 --> 00:19:19,030
year old was locked up because it was safer for him to be incarcerated than to live in the neighbourhood.

169
00:19:19,030 --> 00:19:22,900
It was only after hearing these stories told so consistently amongst such a

170
00:19:22,900 --> 00:19:27,220
random cohort that it dawned on me what was the nature of the state of terror,

171
00:19:27,220 --> 00:19:34,600
to which Maya Angelou had referred a statement of parents in constant fear that we have to bury their children and children,

172
00:19:34,600 --> 00:19:43,480
assuming they might never live to be adults? This is a condition of Jesmyn Ward writes about in her book Men We Reaped in what she tells about

173
00:19:43,480 --> 00:19:50,200
the deaths in just four years of five young men who were close to her by all official records,

174
00:19:50,200 --> 00:19:55,570
she wrote Here with the confluence of history, racism, poverty, economic power.

175
00:19:55,570 --> 00:20:04,710
This is what our lives are worth. Nothing. Diane Miller, a primary care physician in Chicago,

176
00:20:04,710 --> 00:20:13,650
told me about a kind of learnt helplessness that so many young people she saw have after living so close to so many deaths,

177
00:20:13,650 --> 00:20:21,490
and that prompts them to ask themselves existential questions, even if not always articulated the most sophisticated way.

178
00:20:21,490 --> 00:20:28,830
A few years ago, many told me she started seeing growing numbers of young patients with psychosomatic illnesses.

179
00:20:28,830 --> 00:20:38,880
She also noticed that many of them had R.I.P. tattoos dedicated to deceased loved ones when she tried to talk to these young people about all of this.

180
00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:44,860
They clammed up. She told me they think, what's the point?

181
00:20:44,860 --> 00:20:47,920
I don't care. There's nothing you can do about this.

182
00:20:47,920 --> 00:20:54,700
Many people I know at the age of 25 have passed on in my community and the same thing might happen to me.

183
00:20:54,700 --> 00:21:01,570
And so in that late adolescent mindframe in which you tend to be to do more risk

184
00:21:01,570 --> 00:21:06,730
taking and tend not to think about the consequences of your behaviour on your future,

185
00:21:06,730 --> 00:21:12,040
you think, she said. What the heck? I'm not going to be here anyway.

186
00:21:12,040 --> 00:21:18,630
I might as well live fast, die young and leave a pretty corpse.

187
00:21:18,630 --> 00:21:20,730
This, then,

188
00:21:20,730 --> 00:21:31,530
is the white noise so sufficiently loud as to allow the country to go about its business undisturbed while entire communities live in constant fear?

189
00:21:31,530 --> 00:21:36,720
This is where we find the connective tissue in this moment between the map,

190
00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:44,820
between the manifestation of racism at its most brazen and at its most banal in the slogan I can't breathe.

191
00:21:44,820 --> 00:21:50,370
We see the line between Floyd's last words as the police knelt on his neck and

192
00:21:50,370 --> 00:21:56,370
the respiratory tribulations of the ailing pandemic patient on a ventilator.

193
00:21:56,370 --> 00:22:05,180
Indeed, for all the commonalities in race and class of the young people who were killed that November the 23rd.

194
00:22:05,180 --> 00:22:15,800
It was Newark where the riots of 1967 were in some ways most fierce that stood out as being particularly impoverished still.

195
00:22:15,800 --> 00:22:20,180
The area in America around the Kretschmer complex on Frelinghuysen Avenue,

196
00:22:20,180 --> 00:22:27,500
where Gary Anderson Junior was shot dead was a warren of high-rise social housing not far from the airport.

197
00:22:27,500 --> 00:22:36,230
A short walk away. Another whole apartment complex stood uninhabited windows that once offered a view of the cranes and the freight in Newark Bay.

198
00:22:36,230 --> 00:22:39,950
Now stuffed with hastily cemented breeze blocks.

199
00:22:39,950 --> 00:22:47,690
According to the census tract for that general area, it was by far the poorest place where any young person was shot dead that day.

200
00:22:47,690 --> 00:22:54,250
Median income in that census tract was just ten thousand three hundred seven dollars.

201
00:22:54,250 --> 00:22:59,860
That's less than half the next most poor area where a child or teen was killed,

202
00:22:59,860 --> 00:23:07,550
more than three quarters of the people who live in that census tract and less than $30000 a year.

203
00:23:07,550 --> 00:23:17,120
The pathos in this vulnerability is summed up in a poem written two generations after the kind of report by a high school freshman named Tyler,

204
00:23:17,120 --> 00:23:19,520
a Central High School in Newark.

205
00:23:19,520 --> 00:23:28,070
The teacher had written hope on the blackboard and given the old boy class a little while to think about it before penning their verses,

206
00:23:28,070 --> 00:23:36,490
Tyler wrote, We hope to live. Live long enough to have kids, we hope to make your home every day.

207
00:23:36,490 --> 00:23:43,450
We hope we're not the next target to get sprayed. We hope never to wind up in new Deadpool.

208
00:23:43,450 --> 00:23:56,380
I hope you hope. We all hope. In ways of seeing John Badger, Rudd, the way we see things is affected by what we know and what we believe,

209
00:23:56,380 --> 00:24:00,580
the relationship between what we see and what we know is never settled.

210
00:24:00,580 --> 00:24:10,090
And what's truly unsettling to me is that more than 50 years after the kind of report, we cannot legitimately claim that we do not know what we see.

211
00:24:10,090 --> 00:24:19,070
We've been told every time we see it again, there was a collective pretence that we have no idea where it came from.

212
00:24:19,070 --> 00:24:26,700
After the suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, went up in flames a little over two years ago following the shooting of Michael Brown.

213
00:24:26,700 --> 00:24:31,400
Department of Justice conducted a study into how the city was being run.

214
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:32,150
That report,

215
00:24:32,150 --> 00:24:42,260
I believe any enterprising journalist could have produced if he or she had not become inured to the kind of systemic discrimination that exists,

216
00:24:42,260 --> 00:24:52,910
amongst other things, the Department of Justice found that between 2007 and 2014, one black woman was arrested twice,

217
00:24:52,910 --> 00:25:02,630
spent six days in jail and had to pay a total of five hundred and fifty dollars as a result of one instance of illegal parking.

218
00:25:02,630 --> 00:25:09,450
Which had originally been fined $151. She tried to pay in smaller instalments.

219
00:25:09,450 --> 00:25:14,550
The court refused to accept anything less than a full payment. She couldn't afford it.

220
00:25:14,550 --> 00:25:19,740
Seven years after the original infraction, she still owed five hundred forty one dollars.

221
00:25:19,740 --> 00:25:25,170
This was how the town raised its revenue. This was not a glitch in the system.

222
00:25:25,170 --> 00:25:34,570
It was the system. And then there was the Ferguson case of the 14 year old boy found in an abandoned building had been

223
00:25:34,570 --> 00:25:43,590
chased down by a police dog that had bitten his ankle and his left arm as he tried to protect his face.

224
00:25:43,590 --> 00:25:48,150
The boy said the officers kicked him in the head and then laughed about it afterwards.

225
00:25:48,150 --> 00:25:51,930
The officers said they thought he was armed, but he wasn't.

226
00:25:51,930 --> 00:26:03,000
Department of Justice Department of Justice investigators found that every time a police dog had bitten someone, the victim was black.

227
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:09,210
So it turns out that sometimes dog bites man really is the story.

228
00:26:09,210 --> 00:26:16,810
But the media keep missing it. Thank you.

229
00:26:16,810 --> 00:26:26,590
Thank you very much, Garrett, is that wonderful and is gut wrenching now, I think we have been having some technical difficulties with Alan,

230
00:26:26,590 --> 00:26:32,440
so we may if he is not here, we may just start by the question and answer a little early.

231
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:39,980
So if people wouldn't mind typing their questions into the chat?

232
00:26:39,980 --> 00:27:14,850
And I will I will write them out. I'm coming to.

233
00:27:14,850 --> 00:27:20,040
I suppose I can start off as we come in just wanting video thoughts on this.

234
00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:26,130
Second, if I can say, does that incarnation of the Black Lives Matter movement, what is what has come in the wake of George Floyd?

235
00:27:26,130 --> 00:27:32,350
How you see, it's different if it's what's new and.

236
00:27:32,350 --> 00:27:36,250
What we're with my head. I think you're.

237
00:27:36,250 --> 00:27:43,050
Yeah, if it feels. I mean, it's coming off the same thing.

238
00:27:43,050 --> 00:27:50,470
You mean it's kind of in that sense, it's no different, but the way these.

239
00:27:50,470 --> 00:28:00,250
Movements matter that kind of operates the kind of like floating signifiers, really, so.

240
00:28:00,250 --> 00:28:06,670
In my experience, I lived in Chicago, it's not like there was a Black Lives Matter office, there was, you know, there's not regular.

241
00:28:06,670 --> 00:28:14,950
So it's the kind of. And that was true before.

242
00:28:14,950 --> 00:28:27,380
It wasn't current, it certainly wasn't global before in a way that it's become now the kind of place adopting its kind of.

243
00:28:27,380 --> 00:28:34,790
Some version of it, so in Europe, it seems to have concentrated on statues in historical memory, issues of colonialism and so on.

244
00:28:34,790 --> 00:28:40,220
Whereas in in in America.

245
00:28:40,220 --> 00:28:50,730
The Defund the police. Thing is really kind of has really taken off in a way that.

246
00:28:50,730 --> 00:29:02,310
Certainly wasn't true with with Ferguson, Ferguson highlighted a general a general problem to which there wasn't really a specific.

247
00:29:02,310 --> 00:29:09,390
It wasn't really a specific demand, whereas more specific demands are coming out of this and there's greater public sympathy for them,

248
00:29:09,390 --> 00:29:16,620
which is interesting because they have been more riotous, they have been moved and some of their responses have been more violent.

249
00:29:16,620 --> 00:29:20,490
So I think it's quite different. I mean, I do. It's rhyming.

250
00:29:20,490 --> 00:29:25,830
It's not repeating. But I see there are similarities, but there's quite a lot of differences.

251
00:29:25,830 --> 00:29:34,720
Ireland's ban. Is Alan back, Alan, are you?

252
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:39,480
You know, Alan, we've got one more question in the chat we can go to, Oh, Ellen is back.

253
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:43,880
I am back. Yes. Wonderful. Thank you. Well, I'll give the introductions.

254
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:49,470
A second speaker is Alan Curtis, the president and CEO of the Eisenhower Foundation,

255
00:29:49,470 --> 00:29:56,310
which the private sector continuation of the 1967 68 commission that we've been talking about today.

256
00:29:56,310 --> 00:29:59,190
Ellen is a social scientist and public policy adviser.

257
00:29:59,190 --> 00:30:03,870
There's extensive government experience, having served in the Johnson and Carter administrations,

258
00:30:03,870 --> 00:30:11,040
is the author of over a dozen books, including most recently Healing Our Divided Society, which I have a copy of.

259
00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:19,680
But it is unfortunately locked, locked in my office and co-edited with Senator Fred Harris, which has a terrific chapter by Gary Young.

260
00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:23,700
Previous, as well as many other fantastic, fantastic chapters in there.

261
00:30:23,700 --> 00:30:27,090
And I'd also like to thank Ellen for all these help in setting up today.

262
00:30:27,090 --> 00:30:33,250
So thank you all. Thank you, Reg, and good afternoon, everyone.

263
00:30:33,250 --> 00:30:38,500
Years ago, in a deadly conference after the protests in Brixton Lords,

264
00:30:38,500 --> 00:30:44,800
Garmin scolded me for saying that there was no institutional racism in the United Kingdom.

265
00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:53,710
I later spoke on the American Dilemma at an Oxford Forum of Souls and was sponsored by the Centre for Criminology.

266
00:30:53,710 --> 00:30:59,710
So I'm honoured to be with Professor Young today to continue the narrative with

267
00:30:59,710 --> 00:31:06,580
you at this perilous moment for Western democracy after disorders and Detroit,

268
00:31:06,580 --> 00:31:11,890
Newark and 150 other American cities in the 1960s.

269
00:31:11,890 --> 00:31:16,990
President Lyndon Johnson formed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders.

270
00:31:16,990 --> 00:31:27,010
It was called the Kerner Commission after the governor of Illinois, who was chairman White, tended to call the disorders riots.

271
00:31:27,010 --> 00:31:30,880
People of colour call them protests.

272
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:39,490
Most of the members of the original Kerner Commission, where white men who bore the imprimatur of the political establishment.

273
00:31:39,490 --> 00:31:48,580
Nonetheless, the commission concluded that America in 1968 had made little progress in reducing poverty, inequality and racial injustice.

274
00:31:48,580 --> 00:31:54,010
The commission said America was to society's black and white, separate and unequal.

275
00:31:54,010 --> 00:32:00,790
In 2018, there is no foundation released giving our divided society, which is our update of the Kerner Commission,

276
00:32:00,790 --> 00:32:09,760
and it included the really insightful and very literary chapter by Professor Young Dog Bites Man,

277
00:32:09,760 --> 00:32:16,810
which so eloquently summarised the situation with the media and the problems we face.

278
00:32:16,810 --> 00:32:26,560
With your indulgence this afternoon for just a few minutes, I want to briefly share our overall conclusions on this update.

279
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:31,900
I want to set those conclusions within the context of the pandemic and the protests

280
00:32:31,900 --> 00:32:37,570
against police violence that resulted in the mayor of Washington where I live,

281
00:32:37,570 --> 00:32:43,780
painting the words Black Lives Matter on the street in front of the White House.

282
00:32:43,780 --> 00:32:51,550
I want to talk about trends, evidence of new will and talk about how the word normal is the problem.

283
00:32:51,550 --> 00:32:58,990
And I want to talk about seising the day in terms of trends since the current commission in 68.

284
00:32:58,990 --> 00:33:03,700
America has, of course, twice elected an African-American president.

285
00:33:03,700 --> 00:33:10,230
The African-American and Latino middle classes expanded greatly.

286
00:33:10,230 --> 00:33:20,860
The African-American and Latino population in elected office has expanded considerably in those 50 years.

287
00:33:20,860 --> 00:33:25,270
Yet at the same time, there have been so many negative trends.

288
00:33:25,270 --> 00:33:33,940
neo-Nazis have made their statements and caused deaths in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in so many other places across the U.S.

289
00:33:33,940 --> 00:33:46,630
White nationalist movements operate online. Some white Americans speak openly of nostalgia for a time when their dominance could be taken for granted.

290
00:33:46,630 --> 00:33:52,600
Nationally, American public school segregation has increased since the Kerner Commission,

291
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:57,280
beginning with the backward looking federal policies of the 1980s.

292
00:33:57,280 --> 00:34:04,480
Black Lives Matter revealed what Americans did not want to see in Ferguson, Missouri,

293
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:10,240
and the movement has matured over the last seven years into the prominent role it

294
00:34:10,240 --> 00:34:16,150
has played in the national protests against police violence that are ongoing.

295
00:34:16,150 --> 00:34:24,640
Zero tolerance, stop and frisk policing against people of colour has failed over the time since the criminal conviction.

296
00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:31,480
American sentencing laws remain racially biased at the time of the current commission in the late sixties,

297
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:41,770
there are about two hundred thousand people in prison in jail in the United States today, thanks to crime legislation of the 1980s and the 1990s.

298
00:34:41,770 --> 00:34:50,860
The American prison industrial complex now has 2.2 million people, and they are disproportionately people of colour.

299
00:34:50,860 --> 00:34:57,400
Mass incarceration is really the current iteration of slavery and Jim Crow.

300
00:34:57,400 --> 00:35:03,010
Yet while the United States has the highest rates of incarceration amongst all industrialised democracies,

301
00:35:03,010 --> 00:35:08,710
it also has the highest rates of recorded homicide and when in many ways,

302
00:35:08,710 --> 00:35:14,620
mass incarceration also has become part of American housing policy for the poor.

303
00:35:14,620 --> 00:35:21,280
That housing policy has included conscious, purposeful government created segregation.

304
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:29,530
As Richard Roth has eloquently documented in his book The Colour of Law, We Need as Well to connect the dots.

305
00:35:29,530 --> 00:35:37,360
In America, between mass incarceration and mass deportation, America began as a nation of immigrants.

306
00:35:37,360 --> 00:35:43,900
My late Polish Boucher was a teenager when she arrived at Ellis Island in New York.

307
00:35:43,900 --> 00:35:50,020
But today immigration has been criminalised, especially for people of colour.

308
00:35:50,020 --> 00:35:56,770
Income inequality and wealth inequality have dramatically increased since the Kerner Commission.

309
00:35:56,770 --> 00:36:00,730
Income inequality was greatly accelerated by the supply side.

310
00:36:00,730 --> 00:36:04,510
Created the Great Recession of twenty eight.

311
00:36:04,510 --> 00:36:10,930
The speed at which the rich in America are pulling away from the rest of us has been remarkable since the Kerner Commission,

312
00:36:10,930 --> 00:36:16,360
and so the narrative today needs to be about both race and class.

313
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:25,240
In the last 50 years, most of the economic gains from rising productivity have gone to the wealthiest one percent and to corporate profits in America.

314
00:36:25,240 --> 00:36:32,020
In the 1950s, top American CEOs made about 20 times as much as their average workers.

315
00:36:32,020 --> 00:36:40,150
Today, they make over 300 times as much. Slaves were, of course, not allowed labour unions.

316
00:36:40,150 --> 00:36:49,540
And today, much of corporate America has attacked unions, even though a majority of American Americans favoured unions and.

317
00:36:49,540 --> 00:36:57,820
The ratio of African-American to white unemployment has remained two to one overall 50 years since the current commission.

318
00:36:57,820 --> 00:37:03,250
White corporate financiers on Wall Street brought us the Great Recession 20 08.

319
00:37:03,250 --> 00:37:13,780
Yet they have not been punished. They have not been adjudicated into the prison industrial complex, which of course, is a source of corporate profit.

320
00:37:13,780 --> 00:37:19,750
Since the Kerner Commission, the deep poverty rate has increased, in part because of what the late,

321
00:37:19,750 --> 00:37:29,050
insightful journalist Molly Ivins accurately called the American welfare reform legislation of the 1990s.

322
00:37:29,050 --> 00:37:37,630
That legislation has failed based on evaluations, for example, by the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington.

323
00:37:37,630 --> 00:37:46,720
The richest country in history continues to produce the highest rates of overall child poverty amongst all industrialised democracies.

324
00:37:46,720 --> 00:37:52,960
The pandemic has made inequality, poverty, racial injustice worse.

325
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:58,120
The resulting frustration amongst people of colour and the resulting awareness amongst at least

326
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:05,860
some white Americans has helped generate the national protests against continuing police violence.

327
00:38:05,860 --> 00:38:11,080
After George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis.

328
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:16,510
Yet in spite of the trends and the data over the last 50 years,

329
00:38:16,510 --> 00:38:24,040
our update suggests that the American experiment in democracy may still have the potential for progress in reducing poverty,

330
00:38:24,040 --> 00:38:30,610
inequality and racial injustice. The potential to begin to heal our divided society.

331
00:38:30,610 --> 00:38:39,340
We need to accelerate the movement to base policy on evidence and science, not conjecture and dogma.

332
00:38:39,340 --> 00:38:46,210
Today, few American national, state and local public sector programmes are Evidence-Based.

333
00:38:46,210 --> 00:38:54,850
All that public money and so little evidence on what works, the evidence based movement as a long way to go.

334
00:38:54,850 --> 00:39:00,970
One of the first steps is to assemble the evidence on policies that have proven to work.

335
00:39:00,970 --> 00:39:08,050
We have done that in healing provided society. Well, just a few examples of what works.

336
00:39:08,050 --> 00:39:13,780
The current commission's recommendations led with economic and education policy.

337
00:39:13,780 --> 00:39:18,550
Today, that means a Keynesian demand side investments in human capital,

338
00:39:18,550 --> 00:39:24,430
job training and placement combined with living wages and secure health insurance.

339
00:39:24,430 --> 00:39:29,710
Employment with upward mobility is especially needed in America for jobs,

340
00:39:29,710 --> 00:39:38,470
repairing the crumbling infrastructure here and for jobs expanding technologies to reverse climate change.

341
00:39:38,470 --> 00:39:48,640
As Pulitzer prise winning author Steven Pearlstein has reminded us, reducing economic inequality won't make us poor.

342
00:39:48,640 --> 00:39:54,340
The Scandinavian countries, for example, have much lower inequality than in America.

343
00:39:54,340 --> 00:40:02,320
The per capita income levels that are almost as high as what it's evidence based policy mean an education in America.

344
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:08,920
We need housing and therefore a school integration combined with much more equitable financing of public schools,

345
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:11,180
greatly improved training of public schools,

346
00:40:11,180 --> 00:40:21,610
teacher teachers and significant expansion of public community schools and all eligible children made head start pre-school.

347
00:40:21,610 --> 00:40:30,850
What is the evidence based policy meaning criminal justice? Well aware of the astronomical cost, the racist prison building states like New Jersey,

348
00:40:30,850 --> 00:40:35,560
California and New York have reduced their prison populations by about 25

349
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:40,780
percent over recent years without any discernible increase in reported crime.

350
00:40:40,780 --> 00:40:48,790
We need to accelerate such reductions as at the same time we shut down modern day better prisons in America,

351
00:40:48,790 --> 00:40:57,880
and we need to encourage the incipient movement to transform American prosecution into a system based on fairness.

352
00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:06,070
We must reform the status quo where prosecutors advance their careers by posturing on law and order.

353
00:41:06,070 --> 00:41:15,310
I encourage you to read Emily Bazelon as well-received new book title charge what evidence based and play space policy can

354
00:41:15,310 --> 00:41:26,080
be targeted to specific geographic locations with truly disadvantaged populations instead of public relations rhetoric?

355
00:41:26,080 --> 00:41:31,690
We need an America genuine, evidence based community policing neighbourhood.

356
00:41:31,690 --> 00:41:39,190
NGOs need to take the lead and should receive considerably more funding from the public sector.

357
00:41:39,190 --> 00:41:46,990
Specially trained police need to respond to community priorities at town hall meetings if neighbourhood residents approve.

358
00:41:46,990 --> 00:41:52,480
Police can even assist in re-entering neighbourhood use.

359
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:57,930
I know that because we are our foundation have successfully replicated such evidence.

360
00:41:57,930 --> 00:42:09,730
Evidence based community policing in a wide diversity of locations from San Juan, Puerto Rico to New Hampshire to South Carolina to San Francisco.

361
00:42:09,730 --> 00:42:15,670
Real evidence based community policing can be designed by creative mayors in

362
00:42:15,670 --> 00:42:21,250
America to encourage community based banking and small business development,

363
00:42:21,250 --> 00:42:26,860
as well as construction of integrated housing by community development corporations.

364
00:42:26,860 --> 00:42:35,560
The integrated housing can facilitate integrated schools and generate good jobs for both community residents and returning ex-offenders.

365
00:42:35,560 --> 00:42:46,420
For ex-offenders reintegration, there are a number of excellent evidence based models like Minnesota Comprehensive Re-entry Plan.

366
00:42:46,420 --> 00:42:54,280
In other words, economic education, housing and criminal justice policy can be these siloed,

367
00:42:54,280 --> 00:43:01,780
evidence based and place based policy that works and code target multiple solutions to multiple problems.

368
00:43:01,780 --> 00:43:06,730
Evidence based policy can be complementary and interdependent.

369
00:43:06,730 --> 00:43:12,220
Evidence based policy need not be separate and unequal.

370
00:43:12,220 --> 00:43:18,760
The scaling up of what works needs to be financed, in part by the scaling down of what doesn't work.

371
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:25,000
What doesn't work includes wilful indifference to the unequal distribution of prosperity.

372
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:29,230
What doesn't work is the present concentration of wealth.

373
00:43:29,230 --> 00:43:36,730
What doesn't work includes supply side, trickle down, economic policy and tax breaks for the rich.

374
00:43:36,730 --> 00:43:46,530
What doesn't work includes. Milton Friedman and neo liberalism, what doesn't work includes global symposia.

375
00:43:46,530 --> 00:43:54,030
In places like Davos and in Silicon Valley boardrooms where so-called thought leaders talk down to us,

376
00:43:54,030 --> 00:44:04,380
avoid how to reduce inequality, avoid how to change fundamental power equations and avoid how to reform the rules of the game.

377
00:44:04,380 --> 00:44:12,510
Instead, the current fashion in America has been to recite ineffective corporate buzzwords like win win,

378
00:44:12,510 --> 00:44:17,420
market driven solutions and social impact investing.

379
00:44:17,420 --> 00:44:22,940
What doesn't work encompasses racist and massively expensive prison building for the poor.

380
00:44:22,940 --> 00:44:32,240
Zero tolerance, policing, supply side. School vouchers, privatisation of schools and failed welfare reform legislation.

381
00:44:32,240 --> 00:44:41,810
Most of all, what doesn't work in America includes false 1980s rhetoric on government being the problem.

382
00:44:41,810 --> 00:44:46,940
In fact, the problem is dishonest government and corporate greed.

383
00:44:46,940 --> 00:44:51,620
The solution includes good government regulation of greed,

384
00:44:51,620 --> 00:45:01,730
well-managed white space policy and significant expansion of funding to NGOs to the scaling down of what doesn't work in the scaling up.

385
00:45:01,730 --> 00:45:10,670
What does the Evidence-Based Healing Strategy that sufficiently invest in human capital can make a difference?

386
00:45:10,670 --> 00:45:19,220
Progress in achieving these goals also is potentially significant as an international strategy for America.

387
00:45:19,220 --> 00:45:23,990
At a time when a majority of Americans disapprove of our foreign policy,

388
00:45:23,990 --> 00:45:35,360
authoritarian dictatorships have routinely and easily deflected our criticisms, pointing to America's own human rights and civil rights abuses.

389
00:45:35,360 --> 00:45:43,910
That is what China's propaganda ministries have been doing with the street protests against American police violence.

390
00:45:43,910 --> 00:45:48,500
What does the United States can finally make progress on current priorities.

391
00:45:48,500 --> 00:45:56,150
America can gain new soft power in dealing with China and Russia and can repair alliances

392
00:45:56,150 --> 00:46:01,880
with our traditional partners alliances that have been weakened by present policy.

393
00:46:01,880 --> 00:46:07,520
Yet a new American soft power, a new American Evidence-Based Policy,

394
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:17,060
cannot emerge without the new will that the original Kerner Commission said was necessary for progress.

395
00:46:17,060 --> 00:46:24,470
What is the use of data driven evidence in our presently threatened democracy?

396
00:46:24,470 --> 00:46:36,260
If there is no will to take action? More than 50 years after the Kerner Commission, the creation of new will may be harder to achieve than ever.

397
00:46:36,260 --> 00:46:43,520
But Black Lives Matter has been making progress, and so we need to remember George Bernard Shaw.

398
00:46:43,520 --> 00:46:52,430
Some see things as they are and ask why we must dream of things that never were and ask Why not?

399
00:46:52,430 --> 00:46:58,730
In that devastating year of 1968 for America, Dr. Martin Luther King asked, Why not?

400
00:46:58,730 --> 00:47:06,620
As he endorsed the Kerner Commission, it was advocating a multiracial coalition for economic justice amongst the poor,

401
00:47:06,620 --> 00:47:14,330
the working class and the middle class. And then he was assassinated while supporting sanitation workers in Memphis,

402
00:47:14,330 --> 00:47:21,770
the creation of the King Economic Justice Coalition, which embraced and moved beyond the civil rights movement.

403
00:47:21,770 --> 00:47:29,060
It used to be one point of departure for the generation of new will in America in the 21st century.

404
00:47:29,060 --> 00:47:36,860
The way has been led by people like MacArthur Foundation Genius Award winner Bishop William Barber and

405
00:47:36,860 --> 00:47:45,630
his continuation of Dr. King's Poor People's Campaign against the Morality of Poverty and Inequality.

406
00:47:45,630 --> 00:47:54,300
The maturing success of Black Lives Matter suggests how current constituencies need to converge.

407
00:47:54,300 --> 00:48:02,790
And Reverend Al Sharpton, another national leader, now is organising a new march on Washington for August, for example.

408
00:48:02,790 --> 00:48:10,500
But what other Kerner constituencies need to converge and support one another in the months and years ahead?

409
00:48:10,500 --> 00:48:21,030
Those current constituencies include most of the 99 percent of Americans who have suffered the inequality, greed and malfeasance of Wall Street.

410
00:48:21,030 --> 00:48:25,560
Those current constituencies include re empowered organised labour.

411
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:36,240
Those current constituencies potentially include the 17 million white Americans who live in poverty and who need to unite with poor people of colour.

412
00:48:36,240 --> 00:48:41,730
Those core constituencies include millennials who are participating in greater numbers,

413
00:48:41,730 --> 00:48:49,500
and I have even greater hopes for my daughter and her Generation Z Z.

414
00:48:49,500 --> 00:48:57,750
Those current constituencies include public school teachers who have walked out of schools demanding higher salaries and new textbooks.

415
00:48:57,750 --> 00:49:01,710
Those Kerner constituencies include the leaders of newly emerging initiatives

416
00:49:01,710 --> 00:49:07,440
trying to integrate public schools that remain profoundly segregated in America,

417
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:14,550
beginning with New York City. Those current constituencies include the high school students from Parkland, Florida,

418
00:49:14,550 --> 00:49:24,270
who have impressively led the Never Again movement against firearms, violence and who have begun to partner with Sandy Hook promise.

419
00:49:24,270 --> 00:49:31,350
The Bradley Camp Brady Campaign, the Giffords Centre against the American Addiction to Guns.

420
00:49:31,350 --> 00:49:36,480
Those current constituencies include citizens who, like members of the original Kerner Commission,

421
00:49:36,480 --> 00:49:45,090
will not give up on trying to find at least some common ground in support of all the current constituencies that need to coordinate.

422
00:49:45,090 --> 00:49:49,020
I believe the academy needs to do much more.

423
00:49:49,020 --> 00:49:58,200
For example, there are excellent professional schools in America for learning how to make money and for healing the human body.

424
00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:01,890
But what about healing our divided society?

425
00:50:01,890 --> 00:50:09,930
New master's degree programmes and related curricula, I believe, need to skilfully integrate courses in economic education,

426
00:50:09,930 --> 00:50:14,910
public health and criminal justice policy with courses and evaluation.

427
00:50:14,910 --> 00:50:22,740
The rules of evidence NGO management, public administration, communications and advocacy.

428
00:50:22,740 --> 00:50:28,710
I challenge Oxford and this institute to help lead a new debate on how the Academy

429
00:50:28,710 --> 00:50:33,900
can play a more significant and less ivory tower role in reducing poverty,

430
00:50:33,900 --> 00:50:36,810
inequality and racial injustice.

431
00:50:36,810 --> 00:50:46,740
The coordinated advocacy essential in America needs to reject calls to return back to normal in the post pandemic world.

432
00:50:46,740 --> 00:50:53,670
Normal is the problem in America. History may be of help in getting beyond normal.

433
00:50:53,670 --> 00:51:01,050
Over the last hundred years in America, there have been at least three points in time when the rules have been rewritten.

434
00:51:01,050 --> 00:51:10,770
The first consisted of the trust busting and related inequality, reducing actions of President Theodore Roosevelt in the early 20th century.

435
00:51:10,770 --> 00:51:20,940
The second consisted of the workers rights protections, Social Security legislation and the bloodless revolution of the New Deal in the 1930s.

436
00:51:20,940 --> 00:51:33,480
The third consisted of Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and the Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Fair Housing Rights Act of the 1960s in America.

437
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:43,950
Now, the pandemic and the protests against police violence provide a fresh opportunity to seise the day to rewrite the rules,

438
00:51:43,950 --> 00:51:50,900
to reframe the public discourse and to renegotiate the social contract.

439
00:51:50,900 --> 00:51:58,250
Crucially, the generation of new will must be facilitated by the creation of a fair or responsive

440
00:51:58,250 --> 00:52:04,190
American democracy if the votes of all Americans were actually given equal weight,

441
00:52:04,190 --> 00:52:12,680
a new economic justice movement would have a better chance. That is why we must intensify the fight for voter rights reform,

442
00:52:12,680 --> 00:52:20,750
intensify the fight campaign finance reform and intensify the fight to ban gerrymandering.

443
00:52:20,750 --> 00:52:26,570
Equally important, the generation of new will must be facilitated by the reform of the media.

444
00:52:26,570 --> 00:52:33,920
As Professor Young has subscribed with his usual eloquence,

445
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:40,700
the media were criticised as much as the police by the original Kerner Commission in the late 60s.

446
00:52:40,700 --> 00:52:47,570
In addition to hiring more people of colour and so including much more coverage on what works,

447
00:52:47,570 --> 00:52:55,010
the media need to listen to Professor Young when he says that the real story is dog bites man.

448
00:52:55,010 --> 00:53:04,070
And we must take regulatory action against social media feedback loops that push addicted users

449
00:53:04,070 --> 00:53:12,200
deeper and deeper into their own hermetically sealed bubbles that intensify division and hatred.

450
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:21,710
To be sure, a new economic justice alliance, a new will need to emerge in America at the grassroots outside of government.

451
00:53:21,710 --> 00:53:29,900
But new legislation and funding must build on good government at the local, state and federal levels.

452
00:53:29,900 --> 00:53:35,660
It is fashionable in America to advocate for what some call the new localism,

453
00:53:35,660 --> 00:53:41,630
and we must encourage it, especially while American society remains so divided.

454
00:53:41,630 --> 00:53:46,520
Yet Americans cannot give up on the notion of good federal government.

455
00:53:46,520 --> 00:53:50,690
However long it may take to return,

456
00:53:50,690 --> 00:54:04,160
new activist national government and leadership must then invest in Kirner priorities at a scale equal to the dimensions of the problem.

457
00:54:04,160 --> 00:54:20,310
That activist national leadership finally would do well to continually remind Americans of how long the dream has been deferred.

458
00:54:20,310 --> 00:54:25,490
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up?

459
00:54:25,490 --> 00:54:31,880
Like a raisin in the Sun. Or fester like a sore.

460
00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:50,820
And then run. Does it stink? Like rotten meat or sugar over like syrupy sweet, perhaps that grain just sags like a heavy load.

461
00:54:50,820 --> 00:54:59,270
Or does it just explode? Thank you.

462
00:54:59,270 --> 00:55:06,680
Thank you very much, Alan. I was fantastic. And now we have just over half an hour for some questions.

463
00:55:06,680 --> 00:55:12,320
So thank you for the people who put them into the chat and please do keep them coming to.

464
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:22,550
Our first question is from Mehdi, who is asked Is American society as we know it susceptible to any meaningful reform and ads by the above question?

465
00:55:22,550 --> 00:55:29,270
I mean, in short and medium term as it is inherently and systematically corrupt and racist.

466
00:55:29,270 --> 00:55:35,270
To know which, if you would like to take that first. I want you to go first.

467
00:55:35,270 --> 00:55:41,690
Go ahead. OK. I mean, yeah, I think it is, I think it is susceptible, but.

468
00:55:41,690 --> 00:55:46,160
And I think it needs.

469
00:55:46,160 --> 00:55:54,260
And a lot of people to put their shoulder to the wheel, I mean, we've seen if you look at the civil rights movement, you seen that.

470
00:55:54,260 --> 00:56:05,420
Quite big things can change took a long time, but big things can change if you see kind of.

471
00:56:05,420 --> 00:56:14,690
I tell you, quite a good example actually would be gay marriage, which when I arrived in America in 2003 was unthinkable.

472
00:56:14,690 --> 00:56:26,830
And the Republicans used it to leverage labour. They would put gay marriage on the ballot in 2004 to make sure the evangelicals came out.

473
00:56:26,830 --> 00:56:37,420
Now, it's the banal facts of life, I'm sure there are people who don't like the fact it exists, but Mitt Romney in 2012 wouldn't go there.

474
00:56:37,420 --> 00:56:43,540
Because there was no way good for him to to go.

475
00:56:43,540 --> 00:56:48,940
And, you know, that's change. I mean, one thing is doesn't cost any money.

476
00:56:48,940 --> 00:56:50,110
So there is that.

477
00:56:50,110 --> 00:56:59,050
But in the most intimate areas of people, people's lives, I think that one see, there are few serious barriers to meaningful change, in my view.

478
00:56:59,050 --> 00:57:04,660
I like to hear Alan's view on this one is gerrymandering.

479
00:57:04,660 --> 00:57:14,930
So the political system for the lower house and for state houses, the politicians get to choose their electorate.

480
00:57:14,930 --> 00:57:23,970
And so you have more and more. Unwinnable and contested virtually seised.

481
00:57:23,970 --> 00:57:30,090
Which is which, which is terrible, and then me and then the other thing is money.

482
00:57:30,090 --> 00:57:36,080
The money in politics, which means that money chooses.

483
00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:42,410
You get to vote on who money has accepted, but without money, you can't do it.

484
00:57:42,410 --> 00:57:50,540
And those two things are the biggest obstacles to major or two of the biggest obstacles.

485
00:57:50,540 --> 00:57:59,810
And then you have the Electoral College stuff like that as well, which the is more fluent in than I am.

486
00:57:59,810 --> 00:58:05,450
But there are there are serious structural barriers and.

487
00:58:05,450 --> 00:58:18,270
There is scope and space for reform. I would I would say this following up on Gary.

488
00:58:18,270 --> 00:58:24,930
As I speak around the country in America on the negative trends increase in poverty,

489
00:58:24,930 --> 00:58:36,390
inequality and mass incarceration as the contemporary iteration of slavery and Jim Crow.

490
00:58:36,390 --> 00:58:43,350
People of colour audiences, of course, understand, but a lot of white audiences still don't understand.

491
00:58:43,350 --> 00:58:51,180
And I have sort of dedicated myself in the next year to taking on white audiences and corporations.

492
00:58:51,180 --> 00:58:56,670
I don't know if that's going to be a helpful process or not.

493
00:58:56,670 --> 00:59:06,030
But Americans, many Americans, very many white Americans still don't understand the trends over the last 50 years, and that has to be changed.

494
00:59:06,030 --> 00:59:11,850
Or at least we have to try. Also, many Americans don't understand that we do have the evidence.

495
00:59:11,850 --> 00:59:16,560
We have a lot of evidence on what works, what can work.

496
00:59:16,560 --> 00:59:23,010
We were told in the 1980s that government is the problem in a lot of government funded programmes have been successful.

497
00:59:23,010 --> 00:59:29,040
So there's a lot of there's a lot of effort in terms of education that needs to be done.

498
00:59:29,040 --> 00:59:35,310
So work on the trends, work on the evidence, but then the new will is still the key question.

499
00:59:35,310 --> 00:59:42,390
And I see hope in the progress that Black Lives Matter is made.

500
00:59:42,390 --> 00:59:53,020
Black Lives Matter started about seven years ago, and it was slowly building up its infrastructure and acceptance of Black Lives Matter,

501
00:59:53,020 --> 00:59:59,190
as it has been so great over just the last few months.

502
00:59:59,190 --> 01:00:10,620
I had tried to get police leaders who I thought were progressive to talk with Black Lives Matter people at several points in time in recent years,

503
01:00:10,620 --> 01:00:19,830
and it just didn't didn't work out. So I look at the street in front of the White House, as I said, and the mayor of Washington,

504
01:00:19,830 --> 01:00:27,510
who's an African-American woman, has painted Black Lives Matter. And I look at the continuing protest and I think there is some hope.

505
01:00:27,510 --> 01:00:33,700
There were a hundred and fifty protests in the 60s when the current commission was formed.

506
01:00:33,700 --> 01:00:46,380
There were there were over 750 protests on the police violence over recent weeks after George Floyd was killed by police.

507
01:00:46,380 --> 01:00:50,520
So what? What will happen to that movement? Will there be more protests?

508
01:00:50,520 --> 01:00:56,250
But how does that get converted into into action? That's the big question.

509
01:00:56,250 --> 01:01:06,570
When we talk with non-profit organisations, NGOs now, we are encouraging them to to focus their attention on voter registration.

510
01:01:06,570 --> 01:01:09,780
If the election goes one way in America in the fall, well,

511
01:01:09,780 --> 01:01:20,130
maybe there was a process in which some change can can reach some critical mass in future years and months.

512
01:01:20,130 --> 01:01:27,810
If the election goes in another direction, then it's going to be much more difficult to take.

513
01:01:27,810 --> 01:01:45,250
The energy that has been generated by Black Lives Matter and by others like Reverend Barber, and convert it into something that goes beyond just hope.

514
01:01:45,250 --> 01:01:54,210
On the topic of policing came up in the answer, The Ellen Show Schofield has asked in response to Gary Young, but the both of you.

515
01:01:54,210 --> 01:02:00,190
The issue of defunding the police seems like a possible solution to the issue of police violence against communities of colour.

516
01:02:00,190 --> 01:02:06,620
They ask. But the US is a big place with many, many models of policing and regrettable few have made significant progress.

517
01:02:06,620 --> 01:02:15,450
All too many of violence, violent and overfunded. Can those progressive police service models apply a hopeful role going forward?

518
01:02:15,450 --> 01:02:24,270
I mean, I would think so. I mean, I mean, these things, there are national demands and then there are local solutions.

519
01:02:24,270 --> 01:02:28,660
And in those areas where you know, there were.

520
01:02:28,660 --> 01:02:36,460
The were rebellions everywhere and some places you saw police engaged in, some places you didn't.

521
01:02:36,460 --> 01:02:42,480
So, uh, yeah, and even defund the police.

522
01:02:42,480 --> 01:02:48,120
I mean, in Minneapolis, they've been doing a lot of work on what that would look like.

523
01:02:48,120 --> 01:02:54,750
I mean, it's fun. It's a slogan. You know, it works. It forces people to kind of reckon with what is and what might be.

524
01:02:54,750 --> 01:03:04,290
But it's the start of the process. Yet you still have to work on issues of security and equity and all that kind of stuff.

525
01:03:04,290 --> 01:03:09,990
So I guess I am. I'm agreeing with you.

526
01:03:09,990 --> 01:03:18,060
Yes, it is. America is a big place, there's lots of different kind of police perform very differently and lots of areas.

527
01:03:18,060 --> 01:03:36,190
The solution in rural Idaho or Arizona will be very different to this solution in downtown Detroit or New Orleans.

528
01:03:36,190 --> 01:03:50,950
And so this is this is a really key question the the Kerner Commission essentially focussed on white racism as the cause

529
01:03:50,950 --> 01:04:01,180
and the police traditionally are the institution that projects white racism to more people than almost any others.

530
01:04:01,180 --> 01:04:09,970
So it's understanding it's understandable that there are the protests that are happening today facilitated by Black Lives Matter.

531
01:04:09,970 --> 01:04:17,140
I think that the the police can have a reduced role in a number of ways.

532
01:04:17,140 --> 01:04:23,710
I guess defunding now police are involved in and criminalising homelessness, for example.

533
01:04:23,710 --> 01:04:32,950
Well, the solution to homelessness is build houses and police are involved in various mental health services.

534
01:04:32,950 --> 01:04:46,250
They need not have to do that. If we have a public health policy, take over quite a bit of what criminal justice policy has been.

535
01:04:46,250 --> 01:04:48,950
Will we eliminate policing? I don't think so.

536
01:04:48,950 --> 01:05:01,130
And of course, police unions are very concerned about maintaining the status quo, and a number of us will be trying to engage in that narrative.

537
01:05:01,130 --> 01:05:05,030
But I agree with Gary. I think I think there are possibilities.

538
01:05:05,030 --> 01:05:11,840
There are seventeen thousand over seventy thousand police jurisdictions around the country and they all have their their

539
01:05:11,840 --> 01:05:21,800
different ways and they have their ability to create what they think is most appropriate in their cultures and societies.

540
01:05:21,800 --> 01:05:28,730
So some of them have the potential for undertaking.

541
01:05:28,730 --> 01:05:32,990
I think change with with the police.

542
01:05:32,990 --> 01:05:42,410
I presented on these issues last year at at Noble and obviously the National Organisation of Black Law Enforcement executives.

543
01:05:42,410 --> 01:05:47,750
And it was it was a Sunday morning in New Orleans.

544
01:05:47,750 --> 01:05:54,710
So I thought everyone and 9:00 a.m. and I thought everyone would be hung over from partying in New Orleans.

545
01:05:54,710 --> 01:05:58,520
And it would be a sad, very boring session.

546
01:05:58,520 --> 01:06:02,300
But everyone was dressed in their Sunday best. It was energy.

547
01:06:02,300 --> 01:06:10,130
There was standing room only and the police, the African-American police chiefs and other senior executives.

548
01:06:10,130 --> 01:06:18,680
Clearly said, yes, we have responsibility for all people in our city and in a racially diverse class,

549
01:06:18,680 --> 01:06:24,170
diverse way, but we get it, we get the Kerner Commission and we want to do things.

550
01:06:24,170 --> 01:06:28,730
So there are some police chiefs with whom we are trying to work.

551
01:06:28,730 --> 01:06:31,460
It is not easy because this is so politicised.

552
01:06:31,460 --> 01:06:40,790
But I would essentially agree with Gary that we can identify those police leaders who are willing to take some step and

553
01:06:40,790 --> 01:06:52,550
undertake some new forms of policing that build on what evidence already exists and then try to scale up what works.

554
01:06:52,550 --> 01:07:00,590
Excellent. Thank you. And on the topic of the media, Al has asked, is there capacity for reform in the American media?

555
01:07:00,590 --> 01:07:06,960
How do we fix the system that prioritises the unusual and breaking news?

556
01:07:06,960 --> 01:07:11,970
So I think that there are a few. First of all, the media.

557
01:07:11,970 --> 01:07:18,030
Is in a state of crisis because its model has broken down in the state of.

558
01:07:18,030 --> 01:07:31,070
And that does offer opportunities because we have to think of what they can do to be distinctive and to be relevant and that.

559
01:07:31,070 --> 01:07:38,840
The proliferation of social media, the ways in which people share stories and actually create stories.

560
01:07:38,840 --> 01:07:44,980
For example, it was a news journalist who recorded the death of.

561
01:07:44,980 --> 01:07:55,710
George Floyd has forced a kind of reckoning amongst these organisations within news organisations about.

562
01:07:55,710 --> 01:08:07,200
Who they're for, and I read of them now. And so you see some doing very well and that we may not like,

563
01:08:07,200 --> 01:08:15,030
but in some way they speak to people and people are looking for whatever it is that they're looking for out of them.

564
01:08:15,030 --> 01:08:25,200
In the case of, I don't know, Fox News or the Daily Mail, they're looking for an affirmation of who they are or who or what they do.

565
01:08:25,200 --> 01:08:41,950
But then you also see a proliferation of independent, small, fast break outlets that really do pose a challenge every so many hours in a day.

566
01:08:41,950 --> 01:08:50,000
It was having so much news anyone can watch, and if you read and if you're reading it on intercept.

567
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:55,370
Then you're probably not going to kind of, you know, that's less time that you'll be reading a New York Times, The Washington Post.

568
01:08:55,370 --> 01:09:02,810
So, for example, I generally don't do punditry because I find.

569
01:09:02,810 --> 01:09:09,000
The story's third line of questioning.

570
01:09:09,000 --> 01:09:24,760
Too restrictive and the frames that you're set in, too limiting, and you have to get there in 30 seconds, preferably with a joke, you know,

571
01:09:24,760 --> 01:09:36,180
and so I don't do, you know, I don't go on TV panel shows and things that generally don't panel shows, but, you know, news programmes.

572
01:09:36,180 --> 01:09:40,020
But I did do a thing with a group called Double Down News,

573
01:09:40,020 --> 01:09:50,430
talking about the the what's taking place in America at the moment and what I thought about it and how I would put it in a historical context.

574
01:09:50,430 --> 01:09:57,070
As far as I know, it's got two and a half million views. Now that is really a story about double down.

575
01:09:57,070 --> 01:10:10,260
It's not about me, it's that kind of there. This was a guy with his camera who came and did it in my backyard and got it together in two days.

576
01:10:10,260 --> 01:10:16,440
And it was about the whole thing is about three minutes, but the thing that was about 11 minutes is a teaser.

577
01:10:16,440 --> 01:10:23,970
You have to pay a bit more. Now, I don't know if that guy eats mean, I don't know how he ends up living,

578
01:10:23,970 --> 01:10:31,680
but there are all sorts of challenges to mainstream media from other voices and other outlets.

579
01:10:31,680 --> 01:10:44,570
And if anything is going to keep them honest, it will be the fact that they're broke and they are facing stiff competition.

580
01:10:44,570 --> 01:10:49,670
I agree with what he says, I think this is a really difficult one.

581
01:10:49,670 --> 01:11:01,220
Local news in America still is if it bleeds, it leads and local, though still doesn't talk about dog bites, man.

582
01:11:01,220 --> 01:11:04,910
And local news still doesn't have enough people of colour,

583
01:11:04,910 --> 01:11:14,540
and I find it difficult to try to leverage change in response to those continuing realities.

584
01:11:14,540 --> 01:11:31,460
I guess I'm especially concerned about social media, but I don't have any bright ideas as to how to stop social media from creating so much hatred.

585
01:11:31,460 --> 01:11:40,220
You can bring the founder of Facebook before a congressional committee, but whether [INAUDIBLE] do anything is another question.

586
01:11:40,220 --> 01:11:52,100
And I think America has a long ways to go in terms of actually trying to get media to respond to the realities of the Kerner Commission.

587
01:11:52,100 --> 01:11:58,790
And that's that's just a reality that we're facing.

588
01:11:58,790 --> 01:12:11,120
So I I just have to commend Gary for being a role model for the brilliant coverage he did in America.

589
01:12:11,120 --> 01:12:15,770
And I hope that at least we can continue the discussion.

590
01:12:15,770 --> 01:12:31,610
There are many, many conferences now amongst world journalists of colour, media people going on, and we're trying to be part of that dialogue.

591
01:12:31,610 --> 01:12:36,020
Excellent. So there's another question here from Myfanwy in terms of what works.

592
01:12:36,020 --> 01:12:43,790
Are there signs of people changing their mind and accepting that they may have less privilege in order for other people to live with more fairness?

593
01:12:43,790 --> 01:12:53,390
Or do we need to bypass the resistance to change and just win? Well, definitely, I think the second one is you can't do that.

594
01:12:53,390 --> 01:12:59,100
You can't just win that you whenever people try and do that.

595
01:12:59,100 --> 01:13:03,920
It can. It can work for five minutes. It can work for 50 years. But generally speaking, it doesn't work.

596
01:13:03,920 --> 01:13:12,410
But you have to kind of bring people with you. And with America really going from what Alan said earlier about why Americans,

597
01:13:12,410 --> 01:13:19,220
it's important to remember because America did a good job of projecting reinvention and of

598
01:13:19,220 --> 01:13:26,180
liberty itself in some ways that it was 200 years a slave state and 100 years of apartheid.

599
01:13:26,180 --> 01:13:31,060
Actually, non-racial democracy is very new. So that's five years.

600
01:13:31,060 --> 01:13:38,810
And so in some sense, we shouldn't be too surprised that people are struggling with it.

601
01:13:38,810 --> 01:13:51,300
But I think if you. There was a poll in the New York Times about people's attitudes to Black Lives Matter, and it showed a significant shift.

602
01:13:51,300 --> 01:13:56,310
And I don't think that was because Black Lives Matter could one. I think that.

603
01:13:56,310 --> 01:14:04,820
At a certain point. People either don't recognise their privilege as being privilege if you're a poor,

604
01:14:04,820 --> 01:14:20,450
and while it can be very kind of abstract or even just kind of confusing antagonising to be told you have white privilege, even if you do.

605
01:14:20,450 --> 01:14:26,600
But but those who do and understand, do you have a do you understand it?

606
01:14:26,600 --> 01:14:30,830
I think that kind of is my privilege worth this.

607
01:14:30,830 --> 01:14:35,840
Is it worth it? Are the things that I get from this with people? Kind of.

608
01:14:35,840 --> 01:14:39,920
Quite often they say they want an easier life.

609
01:14:39,920 --> 01:14:46,410
They want a better life, and this doesn't feel like it, a life where.

610
01:14:46,410 --> 01:14:52,740
You feel complicit in the death of people where you feel anxious about raising things with workmates,

611
01:14:52,740 --> 01:15:00,180
where you kind of this is supposed to be your country and it doesn't feel like

612
01:15:00,180 --> 01:15:04,020
a place that you want to be a particularly interesting to me in America,

613
01:15:04,020 --> 01:15:15,930
where soft power the Adam talked about earlier of kind of projection and the notion that many Americans have,

614
01:15:15,930 --> 01:15:27,340
as they grew up, that this is the best country in the world. For all its faults, this is the best country in the world that.

615
01:15:27,340 --> 01:15:41,500
That they're struggling to square that and what they're seeing. And and so when they think about whatever you know and whatever privileges do exist,

616
01:15:41,500 --> 01:15:46,990
even when they're understood, that can't be understood in relation to kind of what.

617
01:15:46,990 --> 01:15:51,370
And whenever I go abroad, I have to kind of feel a bit embarrassed and kind of them,

618
01:15:51,370 --> 01:15:58,150
you know, half of my town is close to me and my uncle is a policeman.

619
01:15:58,150 --> 01:16:08,770
You know what I think about? So I in all sorts of ways, I think that people are persuadable.

620
01:16:08,770 --> 01:16:14,620
And I also think that the massive levels of inequality have done quite a good job with that too,

621
01:16:14,620 --> 01:16:18,700
because Australia has not said, Well, let me look at him.

622
01:16:18,700 --> 01:16:21,040
He's got like all of your privilege as well.

623
01:16:21,040 --> 01:16:29,170
So there is that kind of way in which the kind of when you get to white privilege, sometimes that's all there is whiteness.

624
01:16:29,170 --> 01:16:35,630
It's not actually a whole lot of stuff that goes with it.

625
01:16:35,630 --> 01:16:48,970
I think that as long as I observe Black Lives Matter and as I walk some of the protest with my mask on,

626
01:16:48,970 --> 01:16:54,020
I got a feeling that this is special, what's happening?

627
01:16:54,020 --> 01:17:04,280
And so I at least hope that what's been occurring in recent weeks in America and what is combined with the work,

628
01:17:04,280 --> 01:17:10,850
for example, of Reverend Barber, who just spoke eloquently in front of the White House this last weekend?

629
01:17:10,850 --> 01:17:20,180
I think that in a general way suggests something is happening and whether it

630
01:17:20,180 --> 01:17:28,250
can move on in the next six months to something that results in action by,

631
01:17:28,250 --> 01:17:35,510
say, the government will depend in part on the election. So at least there's there's something going on and whether that is long run.

632
01:17:35,510 --> 01:17:42,020
I just I just have prophesies. I do tell you this.

633
01:17:42,020 --> 01:17:50,260
I approached the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and asked them to have a forum on the current or 50 years,

634
01:17:50,260 --> 01:17:56,060
and I would approach the U.S. Business Roundtable, which is another national organisation.

635
01:17:56,060 --> 01:18:00,380
And in each case that the corporations have said no.

636
01:18:00,380 --> 01:18:06,440
In effect, we do. We don't want to have this discussion at the most.

637
01:18:06,440 --> 01:18:20,930
When I deal with corporate America at panels of a corporation, a bank often will send someone and it'll be the vice,

638
01:18:20,930 --> 01:18:37,700
the vice president for dealing with people like Alan Curtis, who will be very distinguished African-American, who will be very, very well-meaning.

639
01:18:37,700 --> 01:18:52,040
But that's as far as it goes. So while I am hoping for the change that might be possible via the street protests now,

640
01:18:52,040 --> 01:19:05,950
I don't know what to do about corporate America, which represents white privilege, and I'm still searching for answers there.

641
01:19:05,950 --> 01:19:12,940
We have a question here from Kath. This is directed, Garrett says, Professor Gary Young, thank you for a powerful and brilliant talk.

642
01:19:12,940 --> 01:19:19,150
Your research with bereaved families sounds very distressing and sensitive, and there's a sense that is a form of paying respect.

643
01:19:19,150 --> 01:19:24,970
I was wondering about tangible or intangible ways you feel or hope this type of research can make a difference.

644
01:19:24,970 --> 01:19:31,150
Is it a form of political action? And I want to.

645
01:19:31,150 --> 01:19:41,810
I guess it is a form of political action is not necessarily essentially have a story, but that.

646
01:19:41,810 --> 01:19:52,850
My hope was that in the book is another day the Death of America, and it's a portrait of 10 10 lives and the kids who were shot dead that day.

647
01:19:52,850 --> 01:20:02,210
And what it does is it turns them into children, into human beings, it takes them out of a statistic and into real kids.

648
01:20:02,210 --> 01:20:10,520
Doing real stuff which might be called a duty might be X-Box.

649
01:20:10,520 --> 01:20:16,460
It might be weed. It might be, you know, a range of things that kids do.

650
01:20:16,460 --> 01:20:27,370
And some of them. And certainly one of them, I wouldn't want to meet on a dark night, you know, he'd kind of killed other people.

651
01:20:27,370 --> 01:20:34,320
He he was a tough, tough kid, but even then.

652
01:20:34,320 --> 01:20:37,890
Societies, I understand that they have a collective responsibility for children.

653
01:20:37,890 --> 01:20:46,560
That's why we have youth court and, you know, laws that relate to kids and social workers and so on.

654
01:20:46,560 --> 01:20:51,240
And so even then you have to ask yourself about bad boy, how did he get that way?

655
01:20:51,240 --> 01:20:58,910
How did we fail? To get to to, you know, sustain him.

656
01:20:58,910 --> 01:21:12,400
And so. The aim was to vilify the lives of these people who are using briefs.

657
01:21:12,400 --> 01:21:20,530
Someone died and there is there are a series of assumptions that people think they know about each one.

658
01:21:20,530 --> 01:21:26,560
Just from. The picture the a black kid is 17, he died in that area.

659
01:21:26,560 --> 01:21:34,140
OK, that's all I need to know. And actually nearly your waist to so much more to now.

660
01:21:34,140 --> 01:21:39,760
And and one can do that without being in Belgium. It just kind of.

661
01:21:39,760 --> 01:21:48,930
And so, yeah, it was a contribution to the discussion the next time you see Matt.

662
01:21:48,930 --> 01:21:56,460
And that thing was blaming a leading on new local channel.

663
01:21:56,460 --> 01:22:08,010
Think again before you think, you know. Who that is and what happened?

664
01:22:08,010 --> 01:22:13,690
OK, we've got one more.

665
01:22:13,690 --> 01:22:18,700
Quick question here. So is says from Suella says in the late 60s, the logo was Black Power.

666
01:22:18,700 --> 01:22:27,120
Fifty years later, it's Black Lives Matter. How do you explain this transition?

667
01:22:27,120 --> 01:22:32,840
I mean. I I wouldn't want to.

668
01:22:32,840 --> 01:22:37,190
It's a good question, I wouldn't want to read too much into the struggling.

669
01:22:37,190 --> 01:22:45,350
It's quite important to understand where Black Lives Matter came from, which was actually Trayvon Martin, the acquittal of George Zimmerman.

670
01:22:45,350 --> 01:22:59,840
And that's why when I talk about it, being a floating signifier went from that to to Ferguson, Michael Brown and then to George Floyd.

671
01:22:59,840 --> 01:23:11,120
The way I understand Black Power in the 60s was a period of massive turbulence around the world.

672
01:23:11,120 --> 01:23:16,460
It changed with the anti-colonial project that was taking place around the world,

673
01:23:16,460 --> 01:23:25,940
and it was an assertion of no black dominance but of control that we want to control.

674
01:23:25,940 --> 01:23:30,950
We want to control our communities and our lives and so on.

675
01:23:30,950 --> 01:23:41,660
And it chimed. With the demands that were being made, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, wherever you were.

676
01:23:41,660 --> 01:23:47,470
These were the demands. BlackLivesMatter speaks to.

677
01:23:47,470 --> 01:23:57,620
A precarious position in late stage capitalism where.

678
01:23:57,620 --> 01:24:10,360
All sorts of other demands have been met. And we still haven't secured the sanctity of Black Life.

679
01:24:10,360 --> 01:24:16,930
We can have a black president, you can have that in the 60s. But we still can't walk.

680
01:24:16,930 --> 01:24:19,210
We still can't move down the street.

681
01:24:19,210 --> 01:24:32,650
You can't imagine Black Power being the slogan in when Zimmerman was acquitted because there'd be a bunch of people who says You are president,

682
01:24:32,650 --> 01:24:41,620
you're in power. I mean, that's not the kind of power they meant. But so that's how I read it.

683
01:24:41,620 --> 01:24:51,280
Just just to add a footnote, I think Black Lives Matter has been sophisticated in building its infrastructure so

684
01:24:51,280 --> 01:25:01,120
that when we do get an event that finally raised awareness in a significant way,

685
01:25:01,120 --> 01:25:18,190
Black Lives Matter had the the folks in so many cities who or were able to participate and often lead the the marches in a peaceful way.

686
01:25:18,190 --> 01:25:25,960
Excellent. Well, unfortunately, that's brought us to the end of our end of our time today, just for my own experience, I've learnt a lot.

687
01:25:25,960 --> 01:25:30,070
But also importantly, come out, come away with a lot to think about.

688
01:25:30,070 --> 01:25:37,420
So we can't do this with my clients. But at home, if you can put your hands together for our two wonderful speakers, Alan Curtis and Gary Young.

689
01:25:37,420 --> 01:25:43,550
So thank you very much to both of you for coming today. Really?

690
01:25:43,550 --> 01:25:48,840
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

691
01:25:48,840 --> 01:25:56,736
Bye.