(audience applauding)
- Good evening.
It's my great pleasure to welcome you
to this Brennan Center for Justice event
here at NYU Law.
I'm Trevor Morrison, I'm
the dean of this law school,
and also very proud to
be a member of the board
of the Brennan Center.
As many of you know, the Brennan Center
is a nonpartisan law and policy institute
that works to reform and revitalize
and when necessary, and it is necessary,
to defend the systems
of democracy and justice
and the rule of law.
It has been deeply engaged in addressing
what we see as a new and
alarming set of assaults
on norms of constitutional
democracy and the rule of law,
and I urge you to keep up with their work.
It is also my pleasure to
introduce our guest this evening.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a
distinguished writer in residence
at NYU's own Arthur Carter
Journalism Institute,
and we are very grateful
to Ted Conover and his team
at the Carter Institute for helping making
this event possible.
Ta-Nehisi as you all
know is a best-selling
and award-winning author,
McArthur Award recipient,
among many other things
and we are thrilled
that he is part of the
NYU community as well.
Hosting the conversation
with him this evening
is Melissa Murray, a
professor here at NYU Law.
She too is a relatively new
member of the NYU family,
having joined our faculty this year
after 12 years on the faculty
at the University of California Berkeley.
She teaches and writes in the
areas of constitutional law,
family law, and reproductive
rights and justice,
among others.
And she is also a member of
the Brennan Center's board.
It gives me great pleasure
to ask you to join me
in welcoming on behalf
of the Brennan Center
and the law school, Melissa
Murray and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
(audience clapping)
- Hi there.
- Hi.
Are we doing that again,
we already said hi.
- I know, we're pretending
like this is the first time,
we've actually met each other before
in other circumstances so let me just say
welcome to NYU.
Again I feel weird welcoming you
because I feel like I just got here.
(audience laughing)
But it's a great place.
- When did you come?
- So I was here last year visiting
and then this is my first
full year on the faculty.
- I actually got here before you.
- So maybe you should welcome me.
- Welcome Melissa, welcome to NYU.
- Thank you.
So can I ask you a question,
I know why I'm here,
and it makes sense that I'm here.
I've been in academic
communities for my entire career.
But you've had a really
storied career as a writer
so why join a university at
this point in your career?
- Yeah that's a question
I ask myself a lot.
(audience laughing)
No, in all seriousness first of all,
thank you guys for coming out tonight.
I was joking backstage
that I would not have come
to see myself tonight.
(audience laughing)
I had like 10 friends and they were like,
"Get me on the guest
list, I wanna be out,"
every single one of them canceled.
(audience laughing)
Literally all of them,
I got a note from my sis
she says, "No one's
coming, no one's coming."
I said jeez.
- It's cold.
- It is, it is, but all my friends though.
(audience laughing)
That's my friends, man.
- I think you have to
have deeper relationships
when it gets below 10.
- I guess.
I guess.
So and I especially wanna thank,
I don't know if we have
any J-school students here,
but if we got any, raise your hand?
All right beautiful, beautiful.
They're none of my students here are they?
- [Woman In Audience] Wooh!
- Oh really you say who's here?
Oh thank you for coming Talius,
he's one of my students from last year.
- Talius is getting an A.
- Tali already got an
A that was last year.
- Any law school students?
(crowd cheers)
Any failing law students?
(crowd woohs)
- Wow.
- All As, there they are,
perfect.
- So part of it is
like what happens after you write,
so I started my career in 1996,
so it's been about 23 years
now, I'm going on 23 years.
And what you're trying to do as a writer,
I compare it to athletics
a lot in the sense that
you go through certain steps
over and over and over again
trying to cultivate a kinda muscle memory.
So that you're not really
thinking about it anymore,
so somebody can teach
you how to shoot a jumper
and then you go shoot 1000 jumpers a day,
and you know you won't become Steph Curry,
but you hope to get to the point
where you're not actually
thinking about the steps
it takes to shoot a jump shot.
The problem with that is you
actually forget the steps,
and you're not really
conscious of what you're doing
at a point because you do it so much.
And like one of the cool
things about teaching
is that in order to teach
you have to actually
go back and break down every step.
You almost have to recall what you forgot,
or what you had to forget about
the foundations of learning.
That old saying,
"Those who can't do, teach,"
is the dumbest saying in the world.
- Yes.
- And it's a deeply, deeply stupid--
- And insulting.
- And insulting, and
there are plenty of people
who do and can't teach actually,
you know what I mean like literally can't,
like wouldn't be able--
- Not here, not here.
- Right, right,
or at all like literally can't explain.
I mean I know this as a journalist,
asking you know it's nothing
like try to ask a artist
why they did X, Y and Z,
and it's actually a tremendously
hard question and so.
I taught for a while up at MIT,
and that was the first time
I had that experience, back in 2012.
And I just gained so much respect
for having to do the
actual very hard work.
See it's easy to say this is good,
but to actually figure out why it's good,
what the writer's doing,
I think when you're at a school like this
with the you know beautiful
students that we have
over at the J-school,
they also see things that you don't see.
And so even you know things
that you kinda take for granted
that you thought you understood,
you get more insight into them,
so I look at it as like the
other half of my writing.
I do the work that I
do and this is the time
to break down the writing
and most of the stuff
I assign the stuff that I absolutely love.
There's a lot of times that
students are telling me
why I love it, believe it or not,
it's like they actually explain that to me
as we break it down, or
why I shouldn't love it,
'cause sometimes they
don't like what I love,
so you know there's that too,
so I enjoy it, I thoroughly,
thoroughly enjoy it.
- What are you teaching this semester?
- So my class is called
Writing For Reporters,
and it comes out of, you know
again, out of my own biography
before I was a journalist,
you know I always loved
the sound of words.
And I actually thought
when I was at Howard
in my freshman and sophomore year
that I would go on and
get an MFA in poetry.
I took a workshop with Yusef Komunyakaa
who was here for a while actually,
he's still here, Yusef
is still here actually.
And it's weird 'cause
I was in that workshop
with Yusef Komunyakaa,
and Terrance Hayes, and Yona Harvey,
these are like big time poets
if there are any poetry fans in here.
And it immediately became clear
that I did not have the
talent to be a poet.
(audience laughing)
You just don't have it.
You know it's like they talk
about like concert pianists
and at a certain age it's like,
either you got it or you don't.
And poetry doesn't get that respect
but it's actually true of poetry.
But I always had that love of words and I
spent a good part of my
early part of my career
trying to inject that into my writing.
And I think, I don't know,
but I think to the extent
that people respond
to what I write, it is
not so much the arguments
that I make, well that's
just one part of it,
I think the other part is
how it's actually said,
and how it's written.
I think like when people have
intense emotional reactions
to things that I write I think
part of it is like what I'm saying
but I think like a less
understood part of it
is the way it's actually put.
And in journalism writing
assumes a kinda backseat
because obviously the
bases as you're reporting
and your research are so important,
but as I tell my students,
I don't want people to
read what I write and say,
"Wow this guy Ta-Nehisi
is technically correct,"
and then walk away.
(audience laughing)
- If you're a lawyer
that's exactly what you--
- No you want that but
what I want more than that
is I want them to put down
the article or the book
and then go tell their friends,
and then I want them at
dinner to be talking about it
and to go to bed thinking about it.
You know and wake up,
the verb I always use,
I want the work should haunt people.
And if it doesn't haunt,
I don't know why I'm doing it.
So I'm trying to teach these kids how to
write things that haunt.
(audience chuckling)
- So I think it's really
interesting because I do think
you write things that haunt.
You are a beautiful writer.
I usually associate
journalism with a kind of
economy and parsimony.
And not necessarily
always with the lyricism
I associate with your work.
You know I think I just read
something that you wrote
where you called President Trump "orcish",
and I was like yes.
(audience laughing)
Orcish is exactly the word.
And this sort of flair for language,
maybe it's just like when
you are like stringers
on articles you don't see that
but I take your view of journalism is that
you don't sacrifice the
beauty and the lyricism
for the economy.
- Yeah that's 'cause I think
beauty is actually economical.
I don't think like people believe that,
as you say lyricism and
economy are like opposites,
but I think that's actually not true.
I think beautiful writing
when it's done well
takes the least amount of words possible
and puts the most punch it can in.
And this again goes back to my background
you know coming up as a poet,
that's what poets are really trying to do,
they're trying to shove as
much emotion as possible,
as much feeling as possible
into as few words as possible,
which you know obviously
has some sort of relation
to journalism and so for me
I never saw it like that.
I know I write really long articles,
but from my perspective it's like,
believe it or not I'm trying not to use
any words that I don't have to.
You know like orcish might
be a lyrical word but--
- It's so perfect.
- Yeah.
And I think it has like
five different things
in it at the same time.
- Yes.
- You know what I mean, and
that's what you're trying to do.
You know you want the person
to think five different
complicated but kinda
coherent things all at once,
and so that for me is what economy
and efficiency is all about anyway.
- So where are you writing downtown,
so you used to write
at The Hungarian Bakery
in Morningside Heights,
did you eat anything there?
- Yeah I used to eat croissants everyday
and then I had to stop.
(audience laughing)
- So when I worked at Columbia
at the beginning of my career
they had great rugelach
and I ate so much rugelach
from that place.
- I know.
- So you're not up there now so.
- I was just there Sunday.
- Okay.
(audience laughing)
Anyplace here
with good croissants?
- Can't say, can't say.
- Okay that's fair, that's fair.
- 'Cause if you see me there that's fine,
but I can't say where else I go down here.
- Okay so just haunting places,
just not for you, okay, all good.
- They are for you, they are for you.
- It has to happen organically
and serendipitously.
- Yeah I think,
I have not reached the
point where so many people
come up to me like that I can't work.
And I don't want to reach the point
where so many people come
up to me that I can't work.
- That's fair.
So you called Trump, orcish.
How would you describe
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
whom I saw you interviewed
the other day at MLK Now?
- Wow, see you can't, that's
the thing about writing,
you can't put me on the spot like that.
(audience laughing)
Because what I would have to
do is I would have to sit back.
Like you know how long it took me
to get to the word orcish?
(audience laughing)
- It took me exactly two seconds
to say orcish is exactly the right word.
- Man it probably took me two weeks.
- It's a great word.
- Yeah I probably had a
different word every day
and scratch that doesn't
work, that's not it,
that's not it.
- Okay so it's an unfair
question, it's unfair.
The interview between you and
AOC was so interesting to me
because you and I are the same generation
and she is a younger person.
And I think I wanted,
(audience laughing)
she's a younger person.
- Significantly.
- Significantly younger.
And I think there are times when I think
I, like you, watch her and I'm like,
that is a younger person's move.
This is a younger person's game.
And then you asked her questions I think
I would have asked
because there are things
that she does where I'm
like oh don't do that,
and then she explained
herself and I was like oh,
like she's taught me something,
like I am an older person and
I need to learn new tricks.
So did you feel like that
about the interview?
- I think I said this,
I really hope I said this,
I'm still not convinced,
I get it.
I think she's brilliant
and very intelligent
and we had a conversation
about social media
and the usage of Twitter.
- Her Twitter game is incredibly strong.
I mean didn't you just have a class
where she's talking about,
"I taught Nancy Pelosi"?
- I hope, again and I think
I communicated my feelings,
you know when I was up on stage with her.
I got her explanation, I feel it,
I think okay let me say a big thing.
The big thing is she has
done an incredible job
as a freshman who has
only been in Congress,
what like three days, to
shift the conversation,
I mean it really is incredible.
Like I asked her onstage, I said,
"You know do you think
like in this society
"having billionaires is
any sort of moral outcome?"
And people debated that, like
her answer, which was "No",
for like a week and then I
saw the town hall with Kamala,
and they asked Kamala Harris that.
And so the way she has
shifted the conversation
around wealth and justice and inequality
is pretty incredible,
you know what I mean,
so I think from that perspective,
I could very well be wrong
about her usage of social media.
My working hypothesis
is that I'm not though.
(audience laughing)
And that in the long run,
I don't know if this works.
- So what do you think
happens in the long run?
- I think you make a grievous error.
One of the things that,
and this is coming from
a journalism perspective--
- Like Kevin Hart error or?
- I don't think like that,
'cause I don't actually
think that was an error.
I think that's who Kevin Hart is,
which is a very different thing.
And this like I guess this is not
to some extent this is not about her,
this is about me, coming into my field,
what I noticed and I
vowed would never happen
was you know you would see
these Sunday talk shows
and journalists would go on there
and it would be so obviously bullshitting.
You know what I mean,
like a guy who's covered,
I don't know the Walter Mondale campaign
is talking about like the Iraq war
as though he's some
sort of like authority.
It's a constant thing, I mean
journalists still do this
you know on talk shows and
I vowed never to do that.
But what I quickly realized was
if your job is to talk a lot,
you have to say something stupid.
You just have to.
It's not 'cause you're a bad person.
The most brilliant person in the world
eventually says something stupid
if they have to talk at a certain clip.
And I just think--
- It's inevitable.
- I think it's inevitable
and I think talking
that much on social media
leaves a trail that maybe
you would not want to,
now the flip side of this
is it could also be true
that being wrong actually
isn't that bad for her.
If she's wrong, she's wrong, so what,
and then she keeps going
and then it actually doesn't matter,
you know what I mean?
But I just feel like the
people who are out to get her,
the people who are
her enemies, I think I can use that word,
like they don't play fair man,
they do not play fair and I just worry,
and I hope you know this was
conveyed in the interview,
I worry because I'm so impressed with her.
You know I'm so impressed
with her as a candidate,
sorry not a candidate as
a congresswoman you know.
And hopefully as a candidate
for something higher
at some point, I'll leave that out though.
I just worry that you know
like she gets taken out
and you don't get to see
that kind of potential
in politics.
- You don't want her
to be a one-hit wonder.
- Well I don't think she's that
'cause I think what she did,
I think already it's significant,
yeah I think this is
actually quite significant.
I just I want her to
be around for a while,
you know and I want her to
continue to shift conversations,
I think she's got a good heart.
I think she has a brilliant mind,
I think she has energy,
I think she does a great job of
walking on these two, for whatever reason,
between these two paths that
have befuddled Democrats
where she's able to talk about
the very real problems of inequality,
you know the very real problems of wealth
being captured by such
a small group of people.
And at the same time,
you know what I mean,
actually have intelligent
responses around gender,
around race, and she does
it naturally and easily,
and it's a beautiful thing to see.
You know and I would
like to be able to see
that for a long time.
- So one of the things she talks about
is mass incarceration.
- Again I just wanna be clear,
I could be dead wrong,
I just wanna be real clear about that.
Like it's just what I think man,
you know what I mean.
- This is how you're hedging
on being an older person like
'cause older people aren't.
- You know what older people do,
they think they know everything.
- That's what I was gonna say.
- Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah,
and we say ahh you know.
- So you're hedging.
- I am hedging, I am, 'cause
I watch older people do that,
you know like I remember being a rap fan
when I was a kid and people would be like,
"This isn't music, it won't
be around in 10 years."
I don't wanna be, which
is very different than.
- Turn down that music kids!
- Right y'all remember that right?
I mean you know what I mean?
So I don't wanna be one
of those people, you know,
she may conquer the world with Twitter
and then you know I'd be wrong.
- So she's shifted lots of conversations.
She's probably talked less
about mass incarceration
than other candidates.
But that might be an issue where
moving the ball a little
would be important
because we've talked a lot about policing,
and sort of common practices.
And another legal scholar James Foreman
has hypothesized that one of the reasons
middle class black people are comfortable
talking about policing and enforcement
and why it's part of the
national conversation,
is because that is the most
immediate threat to them,
like they could imagine themselves,
they can imagine their
sons and their daughters
being stopped by the police on the street.
The prospect of mass incarceration
feels much more remote.
But your writing suggests
that it's actually
much closer than we perhaps appreciate.
- Yeah I'm loathe to disagree with James,
who is absolutely brilliant.
And knows this stuff up
one side, down the other,
but the majority of black
people I know, class aside,
do not have to reach very far
to find somebody in prison.
Now you know it might not be
your like, I don't know,
like well it is for me,
I was gonna say it might
not be your brother but,
you know what I mean, I'm just saying,
you know you don't have to go that far.
If you go to the family reunion
even if you're middle class,
there usually is somebody
who's been incarcerated there,
you know for me it would
be multiple people,
and so I don't know that
that would be the same
experience for a white NYU professor.
Like whatever the white--
- Counterpart.
- Counterpart to me is,
I don't know that it would be the same,
you know I think the
distance is quite different,
I saw there's, god I don't
remember this guy's name,
Ralph, I don't remember his name sorry,
he's a sociologist up at Harvard,
and it's not Ralph I'm
blanking on his first name,
Sampson is his last name.
Anyway, don't worry about it,
sociologist he wrote this
book on Chicago right?
- Someone is telling me, Alyssa Sharp.
- [Alyssa] Robert.
- Robert, Robert, Ralph Sampson
was a basketball player thank you.
(audience laughing)
- UVA!
- Robert Sampson he wrote this
brilliant book on Chicago,
and he has a chart and it
like graphs incarceration,
and on one end are all
the black neighborhoods,
regardless of class,
and on the other end are
all the white neighborhoods,
I guess it would be like this,
the black would be up here.
And there was no overlap at all.
Like Chatham, which at that point was
you know pretty middle class,
you know like nice houses and everything,
is not even close to the
poorest white neighborhood.
- So regardless as an African-American,
regardless of your class,
regardless of your station,
the impact of mass incarceration
will touch your life.
Not maybe in an immediate way,
maybe more remotely, but you will feel
the impact of it in some way.
So why don't we talk
about it in the same way
we talk about global
warming or climate change,
which we see as immediate
and urgent problems?
- Yeah I mean I think one of the things
that James did identify in his work
is the tension within the black community,
on some of this where anybody who's been
to a community meeting,
knows that black people
don't like crime either.
Surprise.
(audience laughing)
No because there's this
whole meme out right
that like black people only
protest when the police,
and people who say that have never
lived in a black neighborhood
and never seen a Stop the Violence march.
You know which you see
all the time in Chicago.
But I think like we haven't
had too many tools, right,
you know what I mean because we take
what the society gives us.
And if it's more police,
you know what I mean,
that's what we have to choose from,
so I think there is some
of the weird tension
over this, and I actually think
this criminal justice conversation
around Kamala Harris is
gonna test that a lot.
- How so?
- So I'll be clear, like when
I watch those truancy videos
there's a huge problem for me.
It would not shock me if when
she goes to South Carolina
it's not a huge problem.
- So she's an interesting candidate,
so she is from the Bay Area, Oakland,
I am from the Bay Area, Oakland,
you know I've seen her over time
and it's really interesting
and it's interesting
to sort of watch her progression.
I saw her as the DA in San Francisco,
I saw her as the AG in California,
and then I saw her as the Senator,
and I think there are real differences
in her positions in all
three of those spaces
and part of me wonders if to
be a law enforcement officer,
and you know the DA is a
law enforcement officer,
the AG is a law enforcement officer,
as a black woman, a single
black woman in California,
do you have to do things
that you might not
want to do and have the freedom not to do
when you're senator.
- And also in the time
in which she was one
which is not right now.
Probably, probably.
But I think, A, again and
this is just me talking,
the kind of...
I don't wanna, almost glee
or maybe glee is too strong,
certitude almost that she showed
in the videos where she's talking,
and I don't know, I guess most of you guys
are familiar with this.
But Kamala Harris at the
time she had this idea
that by prosecuting parents for truancy,
or threatening to prosecute
parents for truancy,
in fairness to her,
threatening to prosecute
parents for truancy, she would be able to
connect them to social
services in the area,
all right that would give
them a way to getting
to the family.
And she's very proud of this
you know in the video she's
very, very proud of this
and it's not like you know
I just wanna be clear,
you know I don't wanna bash,
because what she's saying is,
"I'm trying to help them,"
it's not lock 'em up, da da da,
that's not the rhetoric she's using.
And nevertheless I have
a big problem with that.
- It's very Obamaesque.
- It's very Obamaesque,
it's very, very Obamaesque in the sense
that you know the embedded presumptions
of black people, I would
argue of poor people,
in that approach.
The notion that I have to help you
by pointing a gun at you.
(audience murmurs)
I mean I don't know about that,
that sounds like Iraq War to me.
You know where I invade your country
in order to liberate you.
People who are weak,
we tend to use, and you
know this is getting
back to your conversation
about mass incarceration,
we tend to use the stick of the state
in order to quote, unquote, help them,
but we don't do that with
people who are strong.
And so like when I think about,
and I was reading this piece the other day
and it was a mother who
was locked up for 180 days.
180 days man, I mean jail is not fun.
Like jail is bad, jail is where
you know Kalief Browder died.
Jail is not a good place,
and the notion that because somebody's kid
didn't go to school
they should go to jail,
I mean that's tough. I
don't care if you helped,
I don't care if the truancy
rate dropped to 10%,
just from a moral perspective
that's hard for me to accept.
- So it's a really important point I think
that bears repeating,
there are various
technologies of discipline
that get imposed on the weak,
and as you note the weak
are often the underclass.
So mass incarceration is one scourge,
the foster care system and
the child welfare system
as surely you know there,
truancy might be a species of that,
and there are all of these
technologies of discipline
but I would suggest
that these technologies
are not just about disciplining the weak,
but about also casting a shadow
that in turn disciplines everyone else,
or at least everyone who might be
associated with the weak, I mean,
I think about the child welfare system.
I know as an empirical
matter that I am unlikely
to have my children removed from me,
nevertheless when I'm screaming
at my son in the subway,
I'm thinking, like is someone watching me,
is someone observing this,
I'm a black woman and
I'm screaming at my kid,
maybe I should stop screaming at my kid.
But and I think that's the point,
like I know as an empirical matter
that I'm not the person that
they're likely to look for,
but yet.
- It could set an example?
- Well I mean I think
it is an example setting
or at least a way to discipline,
and disciplining can
happen in lots of ways
and maybe this is the point
of mass incarceration,
for black people at least you know
that maybe it's not you,
maybe it's your cousin
or your brother or whatever but the system
is meant to discipline all of us.
- Yeah and you know like I guess,
by the way I'm gonna
have to think on that,
that idea that something is being said
to the larger society in that message
'cause I hadn't actually considered that.
- You gotta come hang
out at the law school,
that's all we talk about.
- Yeah I should, I should.
Invite me, y'all invited me I'm here!
- You have a standing
invitation, come to family law,
most students will be there every day
if you were there.
- So actually I'm gonna do that too,
you know why because I
dropped out of school
and there's so much I did not learn.
And I should just be going around NYU
and sitting in classes, I
gotta finish this book first,
but when I'm done with that,
that's what I'm a do with my time at NYU.
But you know one of the things I guess
that really bothers me about that
is you can see that discipline model
extending across the board.
You know one of the things I talk about
in "Between the World and
Me" is the schools right?
You know what I mean like one of
the most shocking experiences I had
was when it was time for
my son to go to school
and we didn't have a lot
of money but we had I guess
what we would call a lot of social wealth
in the sense that we knew
people and knew places to go.
The difference between how his teachers
talked to him when there was a problem,
and the way I was dealt with,
which was very reminiscent
of this "no excuses" model,
you know the notion that for black people
like you have to threaten,
you have to cajole,
you know in every aspect and it's old man
it goes back to--
- Slavery.
- It goes back to slavery but
from a liberal perspective
it actually goes back to immediately
after slavery or Reconstruction.
And these folks coming
South and thinking they have
to threaten black people
or explain to black people
why they should get married,
you know what I mean when these people
are dying to get married,
you know minus a world
of racism, minus a world of racism,
I am not convinced that
we would look at a mother,
because it's gonna be mostly mothers
when you talk about truancy laws,
minus racism I am not convinced
that we would look at a mother
and say the best way to deal with this
is through a prosecution.
I suspect we might try to find out
what was going on there.
You know what I mean before
we threaten prosecution.
That doesn't mean that like Kamala Harris
is looking and saying,
"I'm trying to go out
"and get black women,"
that's not how it works.
You know it's systemic,
your options are shrank,
reduced, and so you end up operating
in a space which goes back to the point
that you were making at the beginning
about well what compromises
do you have to be
to be a single black
woman who's a prosecutor
in the first place?
Well those are the lines
within which you can operate.
From my perspective, as a
writer and a journalist though,
my sympathy is with that woman
who was in jail for 180 days.
- So mass incarceration it seems
is like one of these
critical issues for you,
at least going into the next election.
- Oh we keep getting off that subject.
- No, no I mean we can
get off the subject,
I just like we have these new candidates
that keep popping up every day,
not all of them are talking
about mass incarceration.
Should they be, and if they should be,
what should the nature
of the conversation be?
- Man no they should,
but I fear what has happened is that,
and I'm here so I guess I'm gonna talk,
everybody says I'm pessimistic,
well you 'bout to catch it now.
(audience laughing)
I fear that what you are now seeing
will become a permanent
feature in America,
that it's too much to disentangle.
So it's been a few years since
I looked at these numbers
but I think I'm about right.
You know if you look at the early 1970s
America is basically where the rest
of the industrialized world is in terms
of mass incarceration, y'all
can yell out and correct me,
I know I'm here with a bunch of folks
who know this stuff better than me,
so feel free if I say
something completely egregious.
And then you get to, you know,
what the 2015 stuff, '16,
you're talking about
750 per hundred thousand
and last I looked it had
gone done a little bit.
But we are so far off from
where the rest of the world is.
I mean how do you, you know,
the incredible sociologist
Devah Pager, who just passed,
and who was so influential in my work,
you know in her book "Marked",
at one point she says,
"If you opened the prisons
"and jails today, you
would have enough people
"to fill every fast food job
in America five times over."
What are you gonna do with these people?
You have created a
structure that is so large,
so sprawling, you have
created independent interests,
unions, you know what I
mean, across the board,
private prison industry,
how does this get unspooled,
I'm not convinced that it will be.
- You make a point in your writing
that I think is exactly spot on
that the prison has become,
since The Great Society,
really the only site of broad and holistic
social services.
- That's right.
- In the United States.
- Which takes us back
to Kamala Harris and
prosecuting, by the way,
because she's prosecuting to
administer social service.
It's the same thing.
- And I think
it's a great point, and I think, again,
not only is the United
States off the charts
in terms of the number of
individuals incarcerated,
that number reflects the fact
that as a civilized society
we do not have the same
level of social services
that our comparators,
like the Scandinavian
democracies, all of it.
And so instead what we
have, is the family,
which provides most of the
privatization of dependency,
and when the family fails
we have this criminal model,
and it's not just mass incarceration.
- To some extent the church,
to some extent the church.
- Well I mean private forms,
like the privatization of
dependency, the family,
the church, but then you
have the child welfare system
and you have the education system,
and then eventually prison and
it's a cradle to grave system
that creates an underclass for whom
social services are offered,
and you never actually have to offer
the social services in the first place.
- No you're exactly right, I mean,
when you're talking about
large numbers of prisoners
who have some sort of mental illness,
you know what I mean who have
some sort of drug addiction,
you know or chemical addiction,
I mean you are now talking
about a social service provider
whether you like it or not,
it's not the kind we would
want, it's a punitive one,
when you're talking about you know,
god I can't remember
what the percentage was,
but when you start
talking about black males
who have not graduated from high school,
and you see huge numbers of them,
you know bound to do some
sort of time in prison,
like that's the way we've chosen
to address that population of people,
that's what I'm trying to say.
That's a choice that we've made and so,
I mean again to say nothing to
the whole employment question
and I think this is
really, really important
that there's somebody on the other side
of that equation that's
actually getting something
out of social services
being provided in that way.
It's a huge huge problem, so
to get back to your question,
if you're asking why isn't
it being talked about more?
I don't know that it
hasn't just been accepted,
you know I understand
that there are reforms
happening at the state level,
you know across the
country I'm aware of that,
I'm aware that when you talk
about mass incarceration
you are mostly talking about
a state-level phenomenon,
but to get this country back,
hey to get the country back
to where it was in 1970.
And then to actually repair
the damage that was done.
I mean is that gonna happen?
I'm not laughing 'cause it's funny,
I'm laughing 'cause it feels
preposterous, you know.
And that is to say nothing of
the whole Michelle Alexander
question, which is,
is this actually the
system working as intended?
You know like it's not
actually that hard to explain,
this is kinda what we wanted to happen.
I mean one of the things,
I'm wound up on this,
one of the things that I
found that was quite shocking,
you know her book came out,
and I was kinda like nah
it can't be this simple.
And then you start
reading the testimonies,
and you start reading the
way, say Southern senators,
talked about civil rights,
and crime is always there.
"If we integrate, there's gonna be crime."
You know folks talking about D.C.,
the parks in D.C. are integrated
now and there's crime,
it's always there.
And so you actually can see the evidence
of it having been there from jump,
one last piece on this.
You know there's a gentleman,
and I always talk about this story
and I'm a have to get this
gentleman's name down.
But he did a research
paper, again sociology,
I read a lotta sociology.
I should have went and did sociology.
But he did a research paper and
basically what he showed was
the black/white incarceration
ratio under Jim Crow,
was actually not that bad in the South,
but it was really bad in the North.
And what happens is, immediately
after you get integration,
the South becomes even with the North.
And so what that showed was
that Jim Crow was actually
the system of social control.
They didn't have to
have mass incarceration
in the Jim Crow South,
it wasn't necessary.
Minus that they started doing
what the Northern states.
So when you start seeing
that and you know this study
begins in like 1900, you know what I mean,
you start seeing something long term,
a kinda psychology about how
we should deal with black folks
and so how that gets unspooled,
I mean I don't know.
- That's super-depressing.
(audience laughing)
- I hear that a lot.
- I know.
Well I will say--
- Wait no no no no,
so hold up now this is what I'm
a do, this is what I'm a do,
'cause you just said that right,
you said that's super-depressing, okay.
- Not in a bad way.
- No no no, I mean it
is in a bad way though
'cause it is super-depressing.
But do you have, like am I wrong?
You understand what I'm saying?
- I think you're exactly--
- Like you're a law professor,
so I'm dead serious about this,
if that is like over the top.
If I'm being, you know what I mean?
- I think a lot about the family
and the family as a
mechanism of discipline
and other modes of
discipline that get imposed
upon the family so I
also think about crime
in a lot of ways and I think you are right
that in order for mass
incarceration to happen,
you have to have the naturalization
of pathology, basically,
and I think we do have
that and I think you see it
very clearly in the way we
talk about white families,
about black families and I
just told my students today,
we were talking about
wearing wedding rings,
about how to formalize a marriage
and I told them, in taking
your husband's name,
and I did not take my husband's name
and when I was pregnant
with my first child,
my mother, who was a single mother,
was very very very worried about this,
like are you going to take his name?
Now are you gonna take his name
because you know you're walking around,
you've got these swollen hands,
you're not wearing your wedding ring,
and you don't have your husband's name,
people are gonna think
you're a single mother,
that you're not respectable.
And so, I mean she had internalized that
in a really profound way and
I think there are lots of ways
that pathology gets naturalized,
and mass incarceration is certainly
one of the most violent
ways that it happens.
But there are these other ways,
and they're subtle, and they're insidious,
and you find yourself performing them
in these really odd ways as my mother did.
Speaking of my mother,
(audience laughing)
let's talk about women for a minute.
So good segue.
(audience laughing)
Strong.
You recently gave an
interview where you said,
you were asked a question
about the MeToo movement,
and you said that this was sort of this
eye-opening moment for
you and you imagined
that your experience of hearing
about the MeToo movement
was a lot like the way
your white audiences
feel about race when they read your books,
like, "I didn't appreciate
the extent of the problem."
So say a little bit more about this,
like what do you think
about the MeToo movement?
- Yeah I actually think like
taking it back to the class,
and taking it back to journalism,
I think the power of journalism
is how it can turn ideas
into reality and can confront you
with a way to make you realize something
that maybe you kinda knew
as an idea, or as a notion,
but did not understand as a reality,
so I'll take this back.
When I published "Case
For Reparations" in 2014,
I you know would be places
and white people would come up to me
and they would say, "I read that article.
"I really had no idea about redlining,
"I had no idea at all."
And they meant it, this
was like a, you know,
like they were serious,
do you know what I mean?
Like you know it would have been,
and it was clear to me at that time
in the way that they approached me
that it actually would
have been deeply malicious
to be like hah hah how didn't you know?
Like it was clear these were
good, well-meaning folks
who just literally did not know,
about something that if you're black
you just sort of take for granted, right?
So MeToo happens and you
know those stories start
appearing and had you asked me,
before say the first Harvey
Weinstein stuff came,
do I think sexual
harassment, sexual violence,
is a huge problem in Hollywood?
I would have said yeah, yeah.
If you said do you
think it's a big problem
in the workplace, and I'd say yeah.
But like that's a abstract
yeah, you know what I mean?
That's not, well you know
he had his assistant,
who was also a woman
invite me to the meeting
under the pretext of her being there
and that made me comfortable,
and then she left the room.
And this dude could make me or break me
in this chosen career, see
now that's institutional.
That's systemic, that's a
person with an entire operation.
I mean to the point like once
I got done with those articles
I was like, well then
movie-making was a side business,
this is like a kinda trafficking,
you know this guy was a predator,
he was in movies to be a predator.
It was like his cover
story, you know what I mean?
And to be confronted
with that in that way.
And then when it started
getting to like journalism,
by which I mean my field,
like when it became like
people I knew or knew of.
And people have rape buttons,
like Matt Lauer has a
rape button in the office?
Like you can have that,
do you know what I mean,
like these are things
someone will install,
you literally sit at a desk and lock?
I mean that, you know what I mean,
I was like those white
people, I didn't know.
You know I was stumbling around,
in fact I had called up like
a couple of my students,
you know women who I was close to
from teaching at MIT since
that was the last place I was,
and I had to like talk to them.
You know what I mean like, are you okay?
Has anybody ever done this to you,
like is this like a thing that happens?
You know and they sort of laughed at me,
you know because I was
very much in that position,
I didn't know.
- Did that happen to them?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, not rape buttons,
not quite that far.
- Yeah that was extreme.
- Yeah that was extreme but
it was pretty clear that
a natural subtext of their
lives was men as a threat.
It just was there, and that was a thing
that they had very,
very clearly negotiated,
which again like I understand abstractly,
but I think like the power of journalism
and the power of story-telling
is when you see it
in a narrative form, when
somebody's going through details
of how it happened, you
know, and dudes always say,
"Well I have a daughter, I have a mother,
"I have a sister, of
course I care about women."
But when it's really good,
actually you see yourself,
you know what I'm saying?
Like forget my wife, forget my sisters,
like you start seeing yourself in it,
you know what I mean like all odds,
the difference between me and
you is I just have more power,
that's the difference.
You know and you start
seeing it like that,
I mean it has been mindblowing,
you know for me personally it
has changed a lot of things.
- So is it different from
the conversation about race,
I mean it seems like something has shifted
in the dynamic that more and more people
are talking about this and clearly
no longer finding it tolerable.
Do you think this is really
changing hearts and minds,
or are we going to have a
kind of MeToo redemption
in the same way as you chronicle
in "We Were Eight Years in Power",
we have had a kind of
redemption and retrenchment
on the question of race?
- I mean probably.
I think some of that has already started.
But I don't think like if Louis C.K.
can you know go and do,
wow who I met like a year
before this happened,
like had, it's so crazy,
had lunch with him like not too far,
he actually gave me some great advice man,
not too far, he did, I
mean he really, really did,
not too far from here and then
you know you see wow Jesus.
Anyway if Louis C.K. can
go and do comedy shows
I don't think that makes
the courage of folks
who came out and said, like I don't think
that makes that worthless.
I think a price has been paid, you know,
and should be paid.
So yes there will be some sort of
backlash I guess is the way to put it,
and there will always be people who think
this is going too far,
it's not doing X, Y, and Z.
But I think the world is
better for it happening,
you know and I think
that's just part of it,
that's part of every revolution,
there are always
counter-revolutions, you know?
- Do you think that the
nature of the conversation
is the right conversation to have, I mean,
it's incredibly, it's been
framed around issues of desire,
like Harvey Weinstein and these women
that he finds attractive or whatever,
or Matt Lauer and women
that he finds attractive.
When as you say, it's really about power
which is not about sexual desire at all,
and yet that is not a
conversation we're having,
and nor are we having a conversation
about what happens afterwards, I mean,
Harvey Weinstein is
going to court for this,
he's being prosecuted for this.
But there's still no woman that I know
greenlighting movies at
The Weinstein Company,
I mean have we missed
an opportunity to have
a broader conversation
about what systemic change
would look like in society?
- So The Weinstein Company
doesn't exist anymore right?
- That's why there's no woman there.
- Yeah but no I take your
point, I take your point,
I mean I think your point
is will this lead to
more executives period, I take your point.
I don't know this is
actually where I tap out,
this is where I tap out because
probably somebody who did not know,
you know who's in the
space of "I didn't know".
- You're a structuralist,
you care about,
- I do, I am yes.
- structural impediments and I think
this is a place where
we have scratched the surface
but not really appreciated.
- What I would suspect, and
again like AOC I might be wrong,
but what I would suspect is when you have
people able to do that
much evil across fields,
you're talking about something beyond
the personal evil in a
person doing the act.
- Beyond the bad actor.
- Yeah you're talking
about something beyond,
you're talking about
something structural.
You know you really are.
Again, and I don't know
the answer to this,
but like when the Weinstein thing happened
I kept waiting for a strong,
and maybe this has happened,
you know union response?
That seems to me because I think like
when you have a structure,
even a way to address that
is with other structures,
not just people pledging to do better.
Which is good, I'm not
denigrating that at all,
it's just that if that's it,
I don't know that that's enough,
and I don't know that that has been it
again this is why I was sort
of passing in the first place
because maybe there actually
is more than that going on.
- This is the opportunity
where we will reach out
to the audience and see
if they have any questions
and maybe some more
hopeful ideas to impart.
So if you have a question there will be
people coming around you
bringing microphones,
and just queue up at the microphone
and we'll take your questions.
Go ahead over here.
- Oh, sorry just me.
So I know earlier you mentioned that you
didn't like being put on the spot
because you wanted to sit back
and generate your lyrical ideas but,
(audience chuckling)
I apologize ahead of time.
So I know you mentioned that you can see
the problem of mass
incarceration being around
but are there any policy solutions
that you think our
policymakers should champion
that you would think would kind of
get us back on track to significantly
reduce mass incarceration?
- Yeah I mean that probably
is already happening right,
I mean again I know that
there's a lot of action
at the state level.
I think you know giving
felons back the right to vote,
because I think that's actually part
of integrating people back into society,
you know I think that's really important.
We saw action in the last administration
in terms of crack cocaine,
all of that's good.
Do you know what the black population
in prisons and jails at this point is,
now I'm putting you on the
spot, if you don't it's okay.
- It's significant, I'm
looking to my criminal law
colleague--
- Does anybody else here
know about, I used to have this.
- One in four.
- One in four black men
and there are about what,
40 million of us so if
20 million of us were,
you're talking about what, five million?
- Yeah.
It's shocking.
- I'm just talking about black people,
I mean that's a lot of people.
- [Questioner] Yeah it's really shocking.
- Sorry and I'm just
talking about black men,
let me be really really clear about that,
I mean that is, I don't
think like what we,
like prison and jail again
it's a kind of abstract word.
You know once again like I think
it hits people in the brain
the way sort of like
sexual harassment hit me,
a thing that's kinda bad but I don't.
Again people die in jail,
people are assaulted in jail,
you are completely in the
power of somebody else,
you know when you're in jail
and when you're in
prison, and so the notion
that you should be subjected to that,
in my opinion there should be
a really high burden for that.
It should be a really, really
high burden for that and so,
it would have to be
like some sort of mass,
and you know what it wouldn't
even have to be like,
you would have to go
beyond incarceration right?
Because we would have to figure out
why we chose this as a
solution in the first place.
Like we would have to figure out
why we look at certain
populations of people,
see mental health issues and decide
that the endpoint for
them should be prison.
You know we see chemical
dependency issues,
we see employment issues, we see education
and we decide that the endpoint for that
should be prison and again the word decide
is getting a little too much work there.
But if you think about the
system as an alive thing
because it's not like some, you know,
white person saying this
is what should happen.
But we make policy choices all the time
and if the system is angling in that way,
you know even if you could decarcerate,
how do we know that it
wouldn't be some other punitive
form of justice that we would
choose after that, you know?
- So you're kind of talking
about diverting people
into like diversion
programs like Sunshine--
- [Ta-Nehisi] Halfway
houses or whatever and then
we would find problems there right?
- Yeah.
- [Ta-Nehisi] We would find
punitive problems there.
- Okay.
- You know so I think like maybe,
you know you've actually
gotten me to a place
of almost a solution.
Like you would have to
go back and ask why,
so as not to replicate with
another punitive solution.
- Thank you for the question.
- [Questioner] Not a problem, thank you.
- So over here can you say your name
and then state your
brief one part question.
- Okay.
- Thank you.
- Sorry and I'll give a brief answer,
that was actually my fault.
- My name is Portia Patterson,
and I have a very blerdy question which is
how did you find yourself
bridging the balance between
writing creatively, like for
the Black Panther series,
and then like also writing very scholarly
in like well-bodied books and articles?
- I don't know I always did that,
like I said I started from poetry,
you know what I mean so it was
always like a feeling I had.
It feels natural to me, I
don't know how else to say it.
- Do you like how do you?
- One part.
- Sorry.
(audience laughing)
- Okay no I'll take it, I'll take it,
I promise I'll take it.
- So like in thinking and processing it,
do you have like different time
you spend on creative
versus like (crosstalking).
- It's way more chaotic,
I do what the nearest
deadline is in front of me.
(audience laughing)
- You could be a law professor.
- Over here.
- Hi my name is Rufie Roy.
I have a question for both of you guys,
thank you by the way for this talk.
So I'm afraid of Kamala.
I feel that the challenge--
- [Ta-Nehisi] Did you say
you're what, you're afraid?
- I'm afraid of Kamala.
- Afraid okay.
- But she's getting a lot of flack
for her prosecutorial days,
whereas all the other candidates
are not gonna necessarily
get that same flack.
So how do we kind of
equalize that conversation
to kind of hold a fire to
those other candidates as well
because not all those candidates have been
very positive for black people as well,
yet she's the one that's gonna be
put more fire under her
foot so how do you think
we help obviously bring
light to that conversation
but keep them going and that everybody
gets involved in that?
- Well I think,
is she the only major candidate
that has like, declared declared?
- No Elizabeth Warren.
- No there was like--
- No no no no no no no no,
because there are people
that have said, "I'm
exploring" even though
we know they're running,
like I don't think--
- [Rufie] There are five
of them that have said it,
like Elizabeth Warren's out.
- No Elizabeth Warren actually isn't out,
Warren has said, "I'm exploring",
I understand that she is out,
I get what you're saying.
- [Rufie] I see what you mean.
- But Kamala skipped it,
like Kamala was like
"I'm out, I'm running."
Like you know what I mean
she didn't do the whole,
you said Gillibrand?
- Gillibrand.
- Gillibrand.
Okay all right, so I think they're the
two major ones who have said,
"We're definitely going",
so I think that's the first thing
but that doesn't nullify your point.
I think Warren actually
had caught quite a bit
for that DNA thing and I think
that's actually going to be
a huge problem going forward.
I mean it was such a
boneheaded thing to do.
- Yes.
- No doubt.
- And it feels like, I
could be wrong about this,
but it feels like it's the
kind of decision that's made
when there's nobody else
of color in the room.
Like it feels like it's
a small group of people
like Elizabeth Warren and
they decide this is the--
- It is a moment where you want her
to have a black girlfriend who says,
"Girl, don't do a DNA test."
(audience laughing)
- Or Native American, like
how many Native Americans
did you talk about
before you decided--
- Zero.
- Yeah I mean clearly, clearly.
But that doesn't, I think like like.
The thing that's I think
happening with Kamala is
that the question of law
enforcement is so hot right now,
after Black Lives Matter,
you know what I mean
after that period that I
think there's just gonna be
a harsher light.
I probably could be
convinced that that's unfair,
I'm not sure it is.
I also think that if you are going to,
you're gonna exalt in your ties
to the African-American community,
if you're gonna have the AKAs
come out and support you,
if you're gonna launch
at Howard University,
if that's gonna be your
base, and I'm all for that,
if you're gonna have offices
in Oakland and Baltimore,
I'm all for that.
I don't know that it's
wrong that people hold you
to a higher standard in
terms of what the effects
of your policies have
been on black people.
I don't know that that's wrong, you know.
Obviously I hope all of the candidates get
a kind of scrutiny.
And I wanna be real clear here man,
'cause I went through this
with Bernie Sanders before,
like when I offer this
critique, or whatever it is,
it isn't don't go vote for,
like that's not what I'm saying.
And it's not even like,
Kamala is a bad person,
like that's not, you know what I mean,
I think like this is
what this period is for.
You know it's for figuring out
well how much valence should we give that
compared to say, her
position on healthcare?
You know what I mean
which probably a lot of us
feel a lot more positive about.
So I don't know that was
a kinda messy answer to your question.
- Okay over here.
- I just wanted to ask,
- Your name please.
- Oh sorry, Daniel Collins.
And I am a big fan of
your comic book writing
and writing about comics.
And I just wondered if
you could talk about
the cultural import of
things like Black Panther
on advancing some of the
social justice issues
that we've been discussing today.
- Well I think, those of us who are in
the world of policy deeply often
underestimate the power of myth.
When the Charlottesville
stuff was happening,
they were trying to get the
statue of Lee taken down,
I think it was Chuck Schumer
or somebody who was quoted,
and they were basically like,
"Well we're not gonna focus
on these symbolic issues,
"you know we're gonna focus on," yeah,
"we're gonna focus on policy,"
but symbols like define
what your imagination is.
And your imagination therefore bounds
what possible policy you can have.
It's not a mistake that those statues,
and I'm getting to comic
books, I promise you,
it's not a mistake that
those statues went up
during the period of redemption
and those early days of
Jim Crow, it's intentional.
It's intentional, it was a statement on
what they thought about the
humanity of black people.
If I don't think you're a human,
there's only a certain
amount of range of policy
that I'm going to apply to you.
I would argue that myth
is ultimately the source,
for instance of this question
that we just finished talking about,
about punitive justice that's so often
directed towards black people,
about why punishment is
often seen as the solution,
well if you believe somebody's less human,
that becomes a lot easier to do.
How do we decide, you know, who's human,
how do we reify those beliefs,
you know where does the dialogue happen,
it happens in the world of narrative,
it happens in the world of story.
When Woodrow Wilson is screening?
- "Birth of a Nation".
- Thank you, "Birth of a
Nation" at the White House,
right like that has policy implication,
that means something,
something is being broadcast
to the wider world about
the humanity of black people
and policy takes its cues from there.
So it's tremendously,
tremendously important you know.
So for me, in the world of comic books,
and I don't know how
heavily you follow this,
but right now there's
this huge, huge fight
about who's gonna write the comics,
how diverse the cast of
the comics is gonna be,
this ranges all the way into Star Wars.
It gets really nerdy and you can think
it's a bunch of nerds over here,
until you realize that this is
a multi-billion dollar
industry they're talking about.
And then you realize how
central those notions are,
like those Marvel movies
are defining for people
who is going to be human, and who is not.
So, if you give me the opportunity
to author some of the
source material for that,
I mean as somebody who's concerned about
you know the humanity of black people,
by the humanity of all people,
about the policy that comes out of that,
why would I not take that?
It's right in line with the mission.
This is the root of it,
comics are actually,
I can't believe I'm gonna say this,
the comics and the creative ultimately,
I actually feel like might actually be
more important than the journalism.
(audience laughs and claps)
Because when I get to journalism,
I'm dealing with end results right,
like I'm dealing with the
decision already having been made
that somebody isn't human.
But when you're over here, when
you're at the level of myth,
you're actually fighting the battle
of who's, you know because
people who are kids today,
who's going to be human 20 years now,
who's gonna be human 30,
40, 50 years from now.
That's why it's so important,
that's why all this diversity,
you know why Black Panther
was so significant.
Sorry I'm ranting on
this, this really, really,
I promise I'll get to
everybody's questions,
I'm not gonna cut it
short, this is my fault.
But this is like really, really important,
you know I'll never forget
when Black Panther came out,
that right wing dude, Ben
Shapiro, he tweets out,
"Wakanda is not real."
And then somebody went into his like,
(audience laughing)
somebody went into his Twitter feed.
This dude is going off
about Game of Thrones
and how awesome Game of Thrones is.
(audience laughing)
But that's real though,
right, that's real?
Of course everybody knows
Wakanda is not real,
but the statement is actually.
- Not everyone here knows that.
(audience laughing)
Ta-Nehisi.
- Everyone of a certain age, shall we say?
- Okay.
- Of a certain age.
But of course it's not real
but this is about myth.
What he objects to is
you creating that myth,
you see like he's
objecting and he's right,
given his particular
political perspective,
he's right to fight the
battle at the level of myth.
We make the mistake of
diminishing that battle,
and it's a huge, huge, huge mistake.
That to me is the core, it will bound
what policies are possible,
if there's any sort of hope
for unwinding, you know, mass
incarceration for instance,
it begins in the comic books.
- Like I wanna thank you for writing these
because I lured both of
my children here tonight,
with the promise that they
would meet the Black Panther,
so my daughter thinks
Chadwick Boseman is here.
(audience laughing)
My son thinks he's meeting T'Challa,
but I appreciate that they've had
a very edifying evening nonetheless.
All right over here.
- Hi my name's Joseph.
First of all, a huge fan of your work,
thank you so much for doing this tonight.
I thought a lot about what you said
about the power of words and also about
AOC's use of Twitter.
And it seems like every
day we're inundated
with a new struggle, a new issue.
Just yesterday the Jussie
Smollett situation in Chicago.
With the speed and sort of the velocity
that all these things are happening,
do you feel that people
are sort of getting numb
to some of these tragedies
and what can we do
as informed people to
push back against that
and say this is stuff
that's actually happening,
let's push beyond Twitter activism?
- I don't know man.
I mean shockingly, even though everything
of what I said about Twitter,
I know I'm not the hugest fan,
I mean you know again you're talking
about somebody that came
of age in the 80s and 90s.
The amount of activism I've seen,
real activism that
actually comes out online
as an organizing tool has been tremendous
from my perspective.
I grew up at a time where like
Charles Barkley was walking around
talking about how he wasn't a role model.
And you couldn't get Michael Jordan
to take a position on anything.
And now it's like, and
I think a lot of this is
about how people use social media,
you know you got Lebron and you know Devos
and these folks out here wearing
Black Lives Matter teeshirts,
you know the Los Angeles
Rams a few years back
coming out with the Hands
Up Don't, I mean that again
I think this goes back to symbol.
That stuff is so significant,
that was unimaginable in my time.
You know it was unimaginable
that a Kaepernick would have happened.
And I know like the NFL's
fighting back on that
and blackballing but the very fact
that anybody would kneel to begin with,
that this would actually be the fight.
So I'm pessimistic
about the possibilities,
I'm extremely optimistic
about the activism,
you know and I find it pretty inspiring.
It would be hard for me to argue
that folks are numb to it.
I actually do think you've seen,
you know I think again,
going back to Kamala,
I think the whole reason
why there's so much heat
for instance around her
criminal justice record,
I think social media's
a huge part of that.
And I think that heat is good,
so once again maybe AOC is right,
you know what I mean I
could be dead wrong on that,
I think if anything worries me about it,
and I forgot this but this
worries me with her too,
I think the amount of
negativity you have to take in
on Twitter I think has
serious, real effects.
When I left, like within
two months my wife was like,
"You seem like a much happier person."
(audience laughing)
So I worry about that,
you know the ability
of what it does to people
who continue to use it,
but I'm pretty optimistic about activism
that's come out of it.
- Over here.
- Hi I'm Lena, oh that's loud but,
so I go to the J-school also,
sorry I didn't take your class,
I feel bad but.
- [Ta-Nehisi] Okay.
(audience laughing)
We have space, I have like 10 students.
Stop by sometime.
- That'd be right, I'd love that.
- [Ta-Nehisi] Monday 9:30 to 12:30.
- What days?
- [Ta-Nehisi] Mondays, 9:30 to 12:30.
- Sadly I'm taking a
Chinese class but I'll try.
- [Ta-Nehisi] That's a
better class actually.
- I'm barely passing but
back to the question,
so, so I'm a Chinese-American,
so like in our community well,
I can't really speak for South
Asian and Southeast Asian,
but in the East Asian community
there is this very big struggle
of combating anti-blackness
and internalized racism
and it's really difficult to avoid
even calling out people for it.
And to like not to be like that one person
who can't figure things out on their own
but what do you think
Asian-Americans can do
to fix that relationship and to address
I guess racism on the inside.
- I don't know, I don't know,
I think it's tough because...
Okay so you have a country right,
we are you know this is 2019,
this is the 400th year literally
of the African-American
community in North America.
We arrived in Virginia in 1619.
We are one of the oldest
ethnic groups in this country.
Anti-African-American,
anti-black sentiment
is foundational to the country,
it literally would not exist without it,
you try it again imagine the country
without slavery, you can't, you can't.
To ask a group of people
that is coming to America
and entering into America,
or even here in America,
and has aspirations to climb
up the ladder in America
to not assume the presumptions
of the society that they're buying into,
is really hard.
- [Lena] Yeah.
- That's really, it doesn't
mean you shouldn't do it,
I'm not telling you to throw
up your hands and go home,
but understand the historical
and systemic forces
that are at work.
I will tell you one area where I think
a conversation could really happen,
and that's at Harvard.
Because Harvard is being sued right now
in the affirmative action case, right?
I have my opinions on affirmative action,
I think again it's a
part of the imagination
being shrunk that we
have allowed ourselves,
and maybe not allowed ourselves,
been positioned on this thin
reed of arguing for diversity,
when in fact what we really mean
is these people were discriminated
against for centuries.
And at Harvard this is
especially significant,
and here's why.
The law school at Harvard,
which I was just told tonight
has a two billion dollar
I think it was said?
- He said four billion.
- Four billion.
Four billion dollar endowment.
That school was literally underwritten
by a slave trader, Isaac Royall.
It wouldn't exist if
it wasn't for slavery,
do you understand like this place
would not be what it was,
if you go back and look
at who are the founders who
are involved in Harvard,
you know it would be very,
it would be extremely hard,
to not find people who have
zero ties to the slave fare,
and let me make this
absolutely clear for you.
We often think of the North
as not having slaves et cetera
but you know during the period
that schools like this were founded,
there were actually ties to
slavery in the West Indies,
and that was where so
much of the money was.
It was very difficult to
get any amount of money
in the Northern colonies at that point
and be extricated from
the system of enslavement.
What I am saying, is it is somewhat absurd
to come to a university
that would not exist
if not for the oppression
of a group of people,
and then sue that university
for giving a relatively
small, given the crime,
a relatively small leg up
to that same group of people
that it wronged in the first place.
(audience clapping)
But why would you know
that if you're suing?
Why would you know, does
Harvard tell that story?
Who tells that story?
Why would you know that,
you come into the country, or you're here,
excuse me, I'm gonna be really clear,
you grew up in the country.
And your feeling is,
"Well you know I want it to be fair.
"That's what everybody says America is,
"everybody says you know if you work hard
"you get what you get,
you take your tests,
"you get your school
and then you get right,
"that's what I want a meritocracy."
Ignoring the fact that
the entire existence
of the university is not in
and of itself meritocratic,
that it begins with a great crime.
So I think like around an issue like that,
like I actually think that's
so blatant and so obvious.
You know because of the university's
explicit known roots in a crime,
that is to say nothing also,
of what a university like Harvard did
in terms of constructing the architecture
of white supremacy
itself, by which I mean,
giving it scholarly
backing, that sort of thing.
I think maybe if folks knew that
and took it in that sort of context,
it's not that they wouldn't sue,
but maybe they would sue
the legacy students instead.
(audience laughing)
I'm just saying.
(audience clapping)
I'm just saying.
- This is the cost of
predicating affirmative action
on a diversity rationale.
- That's right, that's right.
That's right, that's right.
- As opposed to
a remedial or reparative.
- That's right and I
think people know that
in the back of their head but you know
they're out on this thin reed of diversity
and it's, you know it's tough.
- Over here.
- Hi, my name is Lauren Billie,
thank you both for being here.
I saw you at the Apollo
with Nicole Hannah-Jones
a couple months ago, and I
thought it was so interesting,
I read your work and listen
to podcasts you're on,
and I've always appreciated that really
what it seems you do is,
and I love how you say
"I don't know", so often.
And that you cover what you see
based on all the history that you know.
And what you said on stage was
you've been wondering
if you should do more,
and you said that literally
you were just googling
about like homeless shelters nearby
and like should you go teach
a creative writing class,
and I thought it was so cool
as someone who's a thought leader
who I read to talk about
that internal questioning.
And I heard you when you just talked about
what you're doing with myth and how
that is influencing the future,
and I've always wondered,
as someone who's interested in politics,
what if you were helping to use
what you depict in society
and the history that you know
to actually influence
policies and storytelling
from that great of a platform,
and have you thought about that,
and have you thought any more about,
if you should do more and what is that?
- Yeah I have.
But I'm gonna take the second
'cause that's the one that weighs on me.
I probably at some point am gonna have to
reorganize my life.
I mean like to give you an idea right now,
like I have like two comic book deadlines,
I have a book deadline and I
have a screenwriting deadline
and I got class on Monday.
(audience laughing)
I think I'm giving another
lecture here in a month
that I have not written yet
which I have to write out.
But you see, all of those
are rich people's problems,
those are champagne
problems, do you understand?
That's like the life I
wanted and I like to work.
I really enjoy working, at
some point I will probably
have to ask myself,
and at some point really soon.
Like I think the work does good things,
like I think it's part of the war
but it's like what I love,
do you know what I mean,
it almost doesn't even
feel like fighting to me,
it just feels like why
would I do anything else?
And I'll say this again,
and then I go and I get on the subway,
you know which looks like
a rolling homeless shelter
these days.
And I have like these deep questions
about what am I doing,
like if I'm so bothered
and offended by this,
not actually offended by the
homeless people themselves
but offended that this is
our policy, what am I doing?
And so,
no I haven't figured that out yet,
I haven't figured out
how to arrange my life
in such a way that I can do more.
In answer to your second question,
yeah I think about that all the time,
you know in terms of policy.
I actually hope that that's the effect.
- If I was running for office I would try
and recruit you to be on my team.
- I would stay as far
away from you as I could.
(audience laughing)
Not out of any offense towards you,
you know what I mean but like I kinda
went through this with
Obama, I didn't actually,
but I'm saying, as journalists,
you don't wanna be
friends with the people,
you gotta stay far away man.
As much as you admire them and love them,
it's the ones who you love you gotta stay
the furthest away from actually.
Like I would never wanna
have drinks with AOC,
I just couldn't, that would be like,
you know I need to respect from afar.
I need to love from afar.
- [Lauren] What if they
were telling the truth?
- One part.
- [Lauren] Thank you.
- Over here.
- Hi, my name is Sarah.
So I have a little one at home who's three
and just sort of now just starting,
or at an age where he's
picking up on the world
and obviously seeing how
these structural inequities
play out and what that
means for his friends
or what it means to see two
men holding hands on the street
and trying to understand that,
and my question is to your point earlier
about you know people came
up to you and were like,
"I didn't know what redlining was,"
and it was an honest question,
like how do you think about
raising a generation of kids
so that they actually are equipped
so that those sort of
situations don't happen
or they happen far less frequently?
- [Melissa] Kids who nap but stay woke.
(audience laughing)
- Yes.
(audience clapping)
- [Ta-Nehisi] I mean, I
don't know my son's 18 now.
So actually I think Melissa
should answer that question,
'cause I think she's going
through it right now right?
- [Melissa] My son is
asleep in the second row.
(audience laughing)
Obviously not doing the greatest job.
- I don't know, I literally don't know.
- [Sarah] Well that's
fine, I don't either.
(audience laughing)
- Over here.
- Hi my name is Victoria Albert,
I'm also a journalist.
And to your talking about how
both with racism and with sexism,
it can be really difficult to communicate
what it feels like to be a victim of that
to someone who will never have that
as part of their lived experience.
And so what techniques do
you use as a journalist
to convey your lived experience
to people who will never
go through it themselves?
- But this is actually why I think
beautiful writing is actually important.
When people think beautiful
they think flowers
and bows and rainbows and angels,
but that's not what you're actually doing,
you are taking an abstraction
and you are making it as detailed
and as clear as you possibly can.
And if you are injecting rhythm,
you know as I sometimes do,
into your senses you're not doing that
so that the person can nod their head,
you're doing it so that the actual rhythm
that you inject reflects something about
the situation and so like for me,
the first thing I do is make sure
that I am being as
specific as I possibly can,
and as detailed as I possibly can
because the whole challenge
is to get the person
from there, again, to
take the MeToo thing,
to get the person from an abstract idea,
you know like sexual harassment
which you know a bunch
of goodhearted people
can say they're against and
think is a problem in America,
down to an actual person,
down to that actual room,
and to paint that room
with as much clarity
as you possibly can.
Now first thing you
gotta do is to have done
the reporting to be able to do that right?
You gotta get enough on the record
and enough clarity from your end
and then you have to write
the hell out of it, you know?
By which I do not mean overwrite,
you know what I mean but
in a kind of efficient
packing as much information as you can
into every word, I think that matters,
I think you gotta listen to people.
I remember when I was reporting
"The Case For Reparations"
and I interviewed
this guy Clyde Ross and I was
sitting in his living room
and he was 90 at the time, 90, 91,
and I said, "You know Mr. Ross,
"where are you originally from,"
we were on the west side
of Chicago, he said,
"I'm from Mississippi"
and I said, "Where?"
He said the Delta, I
said "Home of the blues,"
he said, "Yeah."
I said, "Why did you come to Chicago?"
This was so early, I'll never
forget this in the reporting,
he said, "Because there was no law."
And I said well what does that mean,
of course there were laws
you know in Mississippi,
he said, "There were no black police,
"no black prosecutors, no
black judges, that's no law."
And I was like wow, yeah
what he was saying is
that he was basically subject to anarchy,
he had no protection,
anything could happen to him.
There was no law and he explained this,
"And then I came to
Chicago," and as you know
he explained in the
story, "I got ripped off,
"and I found it was no law here."
I never would have
thought of that on my own.
But it was such a clear
explanation of what was going on,
and it went from the abstract of racism,
you know down to this very
specific thing of no law.
And that's what you try
to do when you write,
that's what I hope I'm teaching,
to get people down to be able to write
on that kinda granular
but not tedious level I
think is so important,
and there are words and phrases
that I just basically
ban from the classroom.
You can't say white privilege in my class.
You can't say patriarchy in my class.
Not 'cause I don't think
those things exist.
(audience laughing)
But because we're writers, right?
Like we're writers.
And writers have to get past
that kind of assumed phraseology
that people have into the
granular and the specific,
so that you can get the people
to come up to you and say, "I didn't know.
"I didn't know."
- [Victoria] Thank you.
- Over here.
- Hi I'm Gina, I had to
ask this question because
it came up today in the
Family Defense Clinic
here at NYU.
We were talking actually about a comment
you had made, Professor Murray,
at a symposium last week on racial justice
in the child welfare system and you'd said
that because the child welfare system
is one of these technologies of discipline
like mass incarceration,
that it affects all of
society and not just
communities of color, at least that's what
the class had interpreted
your question to say
and maybe we misinterpreted it.
So my question is, is that true,
and I mean obviously it seems like these
technologies of discipline
as you call them
really mainly I mean almost only affect
communities of color, and
if that's the case then
how do we get white people to care?
- So I don't think you misinterpreted,
I do think that, I was
saying it as a black woman
so even though I am relatively insulated
from the child welfare system
because of class privilege,
I recognize that I'm a black woman
parenting in the world
and so I think that,
but I do think that the
child welfare system
is meant to model a
particular kind of parenting
for everyone, right?
And it is certain communities that feel
the weight of that model
more acutely than others.
- I don't know anything about
the child welfare system.
- So then you have to come--
- But I'm interested in it.
- You should come
to Family Law and you will like this is
a terrific conversation.
- What's the course?
What's the course?
- So the course is called Family Law
and it's you know marriage, divorce,
property distribution,
child custody, parenthood,
and as part of parenthood we talk
about the child welfare system.
But it seems so arcane but if you're gonna
go to law school, you
need to take family law.
- Why?
- Well I mean we have all these courses
at the law school, administrative law,
the former dean of the
law school is smiling
but I'm gonna burn
administrative law right now.
It's probably not the case
that lots of people will
leave the law school
and become bureaucrats, some of them will,
but not all of them will.
Every single person
who comes to law school
comes from a family,
whether it's functional,
whether it's dysfunctional,
whether it's fractured, and
many of them will have families,
and you are regulated in
every way in your family life
in all of these 'cause the family serves
such an important role for the state,
and I just think you should know about it,
like before you get
married you should know
what it means, like what
you are getting into,
what it has meant historically,
in a way that I think is really different
from any other kind of course,
I mean I said this all
the time at Berkeley,
like if you're not taking this class,
if you're getting married
and not taking this class,
you are doing it wrong, wrong, wrong.
- That's a great argument, wow.
- Full of 'em, okay.
(audience laughing)
Gina more questions?
- I just wanted to
clarify then do you think
that the way that the
family is disciplined,
or disciplines all families,
is different than mass incarceration
and how that disciplines everyone.
- Yeah I think these are
systems of discipline
and they work systematically
and in concert,
and they are totally
interleaven and interwoven
and you know one of the things
that's really hard about law
school is that we're so siloed.
There's criminal law, there's family law,
but these things intersect constantly.
- [Gina] Thank you.
- Over here.
- Hi thank you both for being
here tonight (clears throat),
excuse me I'm under the weather.
My name is Samuel, I'm
a first year law student
here at the law school.
And I have a question for you both,
but especially for you Mr. Coates.
As a person of color when
you come to law school
you recognize you're
entering an institution
that was not built with you in mind.
And me personally I am
struggling and vacillating
between I know I wanna enter
the criminal justice system,
work in the criminal justice system,
between whether my role
is on the defense side,
or on the government's side.
In the conversation
you know we've been--
- I think you mean
prosecutorial?
- Prosecutorial.
And the conversation that's happening now,
we've talked about
Kamala Harris as well as
our former president, Obama,
is how important the role
of government actors are
in dismantling mass incarceration
and dismantling the system
that exists as it is today.
But at the same time, at least in my life,
I question whether or not
I can survive and my ideals can survive,
my orientation as you said,
I can't count on both
hands how many people
I have in my family who are incarcerated
or have been at some point in time.
If I can survive in that system
you know as part of a system that again
was not built with me in mind.
I'm just wondering your thoughts on that.
- That's a great question
'cause it's like easier now
to give like this
critique of Kamala right,
but when you take it from here,
and let's take the other side,
I mean are we saying that there should be
no black prosecutors I guess
that is what we're actually saying.
Or do you urge black people not to be,
I don't think that's worse,
I think that's a little too crude.
One of my favorite phrases
from Frederick Douglass is,
and again excuse the
gendered nature of this,
I think I said this at the MLK thing,
"A man is worked on by what he works on,
"for as he carves out his circumstances,
"his circumstances carve him out."
And so, you know you
started with this notion
of law school not being built for you,
and so while it probably is true,
and I'm not just granting
this, like actually true,
that you need black folks
who are prosecutors,
I guess I should say my
brother's a prosecutor
by the way my younger
brother is a prosecutor,
in Prince Georges County, Maryland.
So I have some familiarity
with this argument.
It probably does things to you, you know?
It probably gets you to a point
where you think that
pointing the gun of the state
at somebody to administer
aid is actually a good thing,
and maybe, you know judged against
like what other prosecutors
are doing, it is,
you know what I mean like if you take it
in the context of everything else.
But I watched those
videos and I was like man,
you know this is clearly a conversation
that's only happening over here,
like the job has worked on her,
you know in a certain way.
If there are certain presumptions already
about black people like within,
not within the legal system,
but within the country,
embedded in the country itself,
and the state then goes out and it has to
enforce the laws that originate
and you know come out
of the roots of that,
out of the country itself,
how does one prosecute and
not somehow be part of that?
It's tough, it's really,
really, really tough,
at the same time you know I
don't think like the answer
is to say we're not gonna be,
you know this kind of complete withdrawal,
I don't think that's
a luxury that we have.
I mean so what I would
say, and Melissa is better,
a better handle on this than I do,
but what I would probably say is,
you have to do what's
in your heart, right,
but be aware of the price you're paying.
You know what I mean, be aware
of the price you're paying,
and you know I would extend that further,
be aware of the price you're paying
if you even decide not to be a prosecutor.
Like be aware of the
price of not doing it,
I've gone through this you
know quite a bit myself
in journalism where
I've gone into newsrooms
where there were no black people
and there were no women
and I ended up making
mistakes in doing things
that I would not have done
if the makeup of the
newsroom were different.
But I entered into it,
do you know what I'm saying,
it was my dream to be there,
it was my dream to be part of it,
the way I rationalized, I'm
doing this greater good.
But I've also become part of something,
part of a machine that
does certain things.
So maybe to some extent we all face this.
It is a tough question
and you know the answer
I give here, I don't know that
it's particularly sufficient
but I recognize the
complexity of the problem.
- I think it's a complicated
question, full disclosure,
my husband was a
prosecutor for four years.
And I think he felt that it was important
to have black voices in that conversation
when you're deciding
about whether to invoke
the authority of the state in
all of these circumstances,
and I think there are
places where his voice
made a difference.
I would turn the question
though back on you Samuel,
you say that law school is a place
that was built and not built for you,
and I assume that means you
would want the law school
to have more professors of color, yeah?
Then you should want there to be more
prosecutors of color too, right?
And I say this, I mean I hated law school,
and there are times that I'm like,
have I become The Man?
And you know how to
struggle with doing this job
while also remembering the things
that I felt that you feel now,
and so I think it's complicated.
- If you become a prosecutor like,
can you like go and like
be a like public defender,
like can you do that, can
you go back and forth.
(crosstalking)
- No you can't be a public defender,
you can go and defend Walmart afterwards.
- Why can't you go and
be a public defender?
- I think the distrust
between the two sides of that
is too intense for there to be
a lot of cross-fertilization.
Although I will say when my husband
left the prosecutor's office,
the public defenders came to his party
because he was known as
being the reasonable one.
Over here?
(audience laughing)
- On a different note, hi
my name is Caleb Duncanson.
And I grew up in the New York suburbs
but now live in Manhattan.
And as someone who is a person of color
with some of the discourse
that's been going on
in the recent years,
one of the things that's
been scariest to me
is not necessarily the
outright racist cries
from people within this country,
but from the actual people
who believe they have
very liberal or woke views,
but are not necessarily aware of them,
and I think earlier you
mentioned when you talked about
MeToo movement and how you
had that moment of knowing.
Where before it was just
an abstract concept.
- [Ta-Nehisi] Or that moment
of actually realizing--
- Of actual realizing,
yeah, and so my question is,
as the everyday person how
do we get more people to
come to those moments
when it comes to issues
of race and gender?
- Yeah I mean once again
I will make the argument
for journalism and I
will make the argument
for great journalism.
I think that when it's done right,
that's exactly what it does, right,
that's what it did for me
and I don't think I was the only one.
I think what journalism does is again
it takes these abstract issues,
when it's doing it right,
and it puts faces to it
and it puts stories to it
and it puts details to it so much so that
again, when it's working right,
you can see yourself in that place.
- For those of us who are
not journalists though.
(audience laughing)
- You know what I'm gonna do.
One part, one part question.
- [Caleb] Well that was
part of the question
is for those of us who
are just everyday people?
- I don't know, I mean
this is the tool I have.
You know this is the tool I use.
- [Caleb] Got it, thank you.
- Should we make this the last one?
- Why don't we take the two,
let's take the questions as a group
and then you can lightly touch
on each other so over here
can you say your question?
- Hi, good evening.
My name is Jamina Stevens.
I do not attend NYU my sister does
and she surprised me because she knows
you are my favorite author,
so thank you for being here.
So we were talking
about mass incarceration
and you were saying that black people
don't have to live too far to find someone
who's been incarcerated.
And I'm only 32, and my uncle
has been incarcerated twice.
- [Ta-Nehisi] Your what?
- My uncle, I'm sorry
I'm under the weather.
Can I move it, oh, let me bend down.
He's been incarcerated
twice in my lifetime.
And the first time I
was a child in the 90s,
and the second time I was
an adult in the 2010s.
And the main difference that I saw
with the penitentiary system is that now
it is really a business and I feel like,
we talked about it but that
kinda got skipped over.
And when he would call home
for instance in the 90s,
you know he would call collect,
you'd pay for it and what have you.
Now Global Tel Link is an entire operation
and a business that profits
off of mass incarceration.
So similar to you, I'm very pessimistic
that it will be undone
because there are so many
businesses and billionaires tied to this
feeding into and making
sure that mass incarceration
continues because they're
making so much money.
So my question to you to is,
how do you feel about the business side
that has come into mass incarceration?
- [Melissa] Right so the business side
of mass incarceration, over here briefly?
- Yes hi my name is Virginia,
I was gonna just reference the discussion
about the job as conflict.
It's a lot like the quote that,
"Life is the art of contradiction."
So I think but that was not my question.
Seeing that you said
when you spoke eloquently
about the role of myth is to reveal
often the core power dynamics,
it seems to me also in this conversation
that we need to really be able
to name the systemic crisis,
not in the abstract mental health world,
but in actually the realities
of people's happiness,
in their loneliness,
in their isolationism,
and in the power dynamics
that happen in families,
and in communities.
And I would just say because
it seems to me lately
that the 99% are not as happy
as the dream team of the 1%.
And I think that's another
way to reframe the question,
which is that we need to
address the needs of people
and in their lives and
how they're operating
in their lives today.
- So addressing rampant inequality
and the needs of those who
have considerably less,
all right over here, your question?
- Hi my name is Matthew Singh and I work
in the affordable housing industry
where broadly speaking we apply
finance and philanthropy
in order to alleviate
issues of poverty and
recently there's been a turn,
you know rather than focusing on sort of
traditional mechanisms of welfare
to thinking more broadly
about the justice question.
And I wonder if you've
given any thought to
or have some ideas around
how both philanthropy
and finance in a very
typical sense of the term,
whether it's equity or lending,
can actually contribute to the furtherance
of racial justice, social justice,
in the legal sense that
we're talking about here.
- And over here, last question.
- Hi I'm Kevin I'm on the voting team
at the Brennan Center.
I'm curious how you think about the world
of the journalist when
there are competing goals,
and what I'm thinking of in particular
is we were working on Amendment
Four in Florida last fall,
we were getting polling data saying
that as soon as you
start talking about race,
people become less supportive of it,
white people become less supportive of it.
So in a context like that
how does the journalist
choose between reporting in a way
that is maybe more likely
to help Amendment Four pass,
versus truth telling and
calling a spade a spade.
- Right so a lot of questions,
one about the business
of mass incarceration.
One broadly about inequality
and how to address that,
one about the use of
philanthropy and finance
to address the problem of racial justice,
and then finally voting.
- So the business side is
one of the arguments for why
I was arguing it's gonna
be hard to unwind this.
Prisons are a job program in
a lot of communities in America, they are.
Prisons where it's been
deemed also allows you
to build a prison and you
know this provides jobs,
and then you're dealing
with a social problem
that people have decided to address
by being punitive towards black people.
So it's difficult for me to see something
that is that enmeshed.
You know one of the reasons
I said people fought so hard
against Obamacare is
because once it got in
it would be extremely hard to pull it out,
once it became a part of the fabric,
I think the same thing goes
for mass incarceration,
I think it's the exact same thing.
Second question was about inequality?
- Broadly, how do you
address the needs of those
in the 99%?
- I think there are
people who are doing that
a lot better than me right now.
I think perhaps you should
be like AOC on Twitter,
maybe that's what's happening,
maybe that's what's happening
'cause people can't get
away from it, I mean these
billionaires in Davos
they had to address it.
The best part of that, just a quick aside,
was Michael Dell being like,
"Where has that ever happened and worked,"
and the dude being like,
"Well in America actually,
"your country!"
So I mean I think actually
we're in that period
where it really is happening.
The third was?
- Philanthropy and finance.
- No I have nothing
to say about that at all,
'cause I just don't know.
You know I've done no
reporting no anything
like even close to that world.
And the fourth question
was about journalism
and voting and how you
report if you don't like
what the story, no you call
a spade a spade every time,
every time, I'm sorry it's going to hurt,
but I actually believe that lying
over the long term would hurt more.
I'm sorry and this is like
why I always say this,
and you know people get kind of upset,
this is why I say I'm not an activist,
and I have to actually keep
my distance from politicians
and activists because I
understand why the politician
or the activist has to
phrase things a certain way.
Because they're trying
to get immediate action
on a particular issue.
That's fine but the
calling of a journalist
is something different and that is
to illuminate these kind
of overarching truths
that may in the moment
make things difficult,
but I kinda believe in the long term
you can't really get away from.
- So I have one last question
and I'll be really brief
'cause you all look antsy but,
do you follow Meghan Markle
and the British royal family?
(audience laughing)
- I mean, you know what I didn't, I didn't
'cause for a long time
I couldn't figure out
what the significance
was of her being black,
and then that wedding
happened and I was like, oh.
- 'Cause it was kind of
the blackest wedding ever.
- Yeah yeah, no it was pretty wild,
but everybody around me does so I guess
I have to, I do.
- I think Meghan Markle
totally fits into your whole view
of black exceptionalism, right,
so she is this incredibly
educated, very attractive,
very well-spoken, and
really committed woman
and she has so married up, I mean,
(audience laughing)
Prince Harry is punching
way above his weight
and he knows it.
Right and she's punching way above
the rest of the family and she's--
- In British history?
I don't know and I'm not like objecting,
I honestly don't know--
- I mean, I mean, yeah.
(audience laughing)
She could run circles
around the rest of them.
She's being pilloried.
- I do know that.
- And it reminds me so
much of President Obama,
and the only reason she
could be in this position
is because she is actually exceptional,
she's a unicorn.
And so, having read all of your work,
I mean I read all of your
work for this interview,
and I have to say I usually
read your work episodically
but for this I read it all
together which is a very
depressing enterprise.
- So sorry,
I wouldn't do that to myself.
(audience laughing)
- But I'm left with the
weight of black exceptionalism
is so real, you know you
have to be twice as good
to get half as far as you say,
and even then when you get there,
just constantly avoiding
being torn down entirely,
and so it makes me wonder like maybe
the greatest marker of
success for black people
would be to have all of
the markers of success
while also being utterly mediocre.
- Yeah no I think that's
when you will know
things are equal, you know what I mean,
like again I think the president
is a great example of this.
I maintain if Donald Trump was born black
like he would have been killed.
(audience laughing)
No I mean that literally.
- Like in prison.
- No I'm not like, it's
just not like mocking,
I mean that the way
those communities work,
because that's the flip side of what
we just finished outlining,
this punitive approach,
they punish you, they punish ignorance.
And they punish it harshly.
There would be, I mean it
would have just ended badly,
and so at the point, like I can't imagine
somebody like that being, like a mayor,
much less a president.
You know what I mean and
so at the point, I guess,
when black people can be that ignorant,
and obtain that much
power, well that will be
the end of racism, I guess.
(audience laughing and clapping)
- To mediocrity.
- That's when we'll know.
That's when we'll know.
- All right on that
note let me just extend
a huge NYU thank you to Ta-Nehisi Coates,
author and distinguished
writer in residence
at NYU's Arthur L. Carter
Journalism Institute.
We are so glad to have you here at NYU,
we wish you well in your projects ahead.
I am Melissa Murray of the NYU Law School,
a member of the board for the
Brennan Center for Justice.
So let me just say you can follow
the Brennan Center
online, brennancenter.org,
and also follow us on
Twitter and keep abreast
of the Brennan Center's fantastic work
and programs just like this.
Thank you so much
for joining us.
- Thanks for coming out,
thanks for coming out.
(audience clapping)
