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guide. >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on suay book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including buckeye broadband. ♪♪ >> buckeye broadband along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> on this afternoon i'm really, really happy to discuss the new book black liberation through the marketplace, heart break, hope of america. chronicles the failures of policy and offering solutions from a classical liberal perspective.

they argue that had a political system uphold individual rights, encourage exchange and allow a civil society to flourish. if you couldn't tell, i'm not an american, but always admired the united states and history, a nation founded on values and individual rights on the rule of law. the founding of america is unique in history. how few of the human race had an opportunity choosing a system of government for themselves and their children. and united states today to create a new order of the ages. unlike fuedal europe built on customs and hierarchy america has principles like documents off the declaration of independence. with no blueprint or road map to follow. along the course of history, america has fallen short,

denying black americans freedom, jim crow laws and modern day police brutality, all of them are an insult to the proposition that we're all born free and equal. though advancements have been made we cannot turn our eyes away from the past failures especially when they continue to affect the prosperity, liberty and life of black americans to this day. you didn't come here to listen to me talk. our guests, marcus, received a ph.d. university of alabama and assistant professor at hunterington college. and his research covers the political, economic and intellectual history from 1920 to the present day and he's authored the book getting right with reagan, a struggle for the conservativism 1982-2016. raich clel received a philosophy of university concord university of chicago. assistant dean of the college of business and director of the

free enterprise sector. her books on philosophy and virtue. she's also affiliate scholar. and finally here to moderate is amisha croft as a democratic strategy and activist. and she served with al gore and barack obama. and the national urban league and naacp we're going to start off by rachel with a quick introduction of the overview of the book and then taking over for questions. at the hour mark questions from the audience in person and online. if you want to want to ask online #cato events. >> well, hello, thank you for coming... take up this project marcus and i are both classical liberal scholars. and you know if you run in those circles, you know that classical liberals have a lot of great

insights on race and discrimination really important work that's been done in economics in the history of economics. but we're not necessarily known for that. are we but we are not necessarily known for that, are we? people don't necessarily associate classical liberals as a great resource for thinking about race and discrimination and we wanted to solve that by bringing together a lot of the great insights. we thought i would also serve another purpose which is sort of address some of this tribalism and polarization we are experiencing in our country right now. as classical liberals we sometimes agree with conservatives and sometimes agree with progressives. it depends on the issue and so having that ability to be a politically homeless, to the outside of the tribes, to bust out of those categories and unbundle one issue from another we felt could really serve us well in thinking about the history of black america in particular because lack americans as well do not fit

well into the political categories of the majority culture. we thought it gave us a great opportunity, the first thing you have to do when thinking through the history of black america of course is to address the relationship between markets and slavery. immediately as we jump into the book we take a look at the new historians of capitalism who are kind of rolling the idea of markets into all of the different forms of oppression like a colonialism and imperialism, and we are saying we really had to separate these out. we have to go back to adam smith, go back to john stuart mill whom knew not only how immoral slavery is because it's a violation of your most fundamental property right, you're right in your own body,, but also economically foolish it is. any time we take a group of people in our population and we don't allow them to improve their human capital we don't

allow them to move around to whether labor is most needed. we don't allow them to invest in things and sell them. we are all losers. so yes, that if you southern planters get rich? yes, of course, they did but that's not what free markets do. free markets don't make a few aristocratic tax rich. they make regular people richer. they make the lights of regular people better off. and regular softeners were not better off. they were worse off. even poor white southerners had their wages dragged down by the fact that they were competing with those who were enslaved and, of course, the lives of the enslaved were ruined by the slave masters in many ways. as we go on and we look at emancipation embassy after emancipation black americans are so excited about the possibility of owning land and owning farms but, of course, we all know how that story went. they were not given any land in compensation for all of the stolen labor. and so they went on to enter into sharecropping and one of

the things we noticed there is that while so many of their rights were still being abrogated, courts were not really recognizing their property rights or the freedom of contract. they had one very precious right and it was the right to leave. it was a freedom of movement. because you could threaten to go, because you could move from the deep south to the upper south, because you could remove yourself from the farm and go over to that farm over a few decades usada the formerly enslaved freed men now bidding up their wages, in this case their shares, quite a bit. even though they're starting from from a very low point you actually see black incomes rise at 2.5 2.5 or three times as white incomes at that time. there some catching up happening there but we also see an amazing flourishing of black civil society. we see the rise of educational efforts particularly come out of

the church and we see one apostle be one of the most amazing leaps forward in literacy in the history of the world thus far going from basically zero at emancipation to 80% by 1930. it's quite stunning. there are just efforts everywhere in this regard. that i kind of positive story but as a go on this roller coaster ride through black american history we have to stop and look at the atrocities against black americans. some of them are quite famous like the thousands of lynchings that occurred but others are not as well-known like convict leasing in which black men in particular were just criminalized with many laws the didn't even make sense, like vagrancy laws that treated you like a criminal just for standing around and not having a job or not being able to prove that you have a job. i could go on and on about the ridiculous crimes these men were charged with but the worst part is that they were then leased out to minds and farms as

workers. because they were not own there weren't even seen as investment and so they were treated even worse than they were treated under slavery, and many of them simply died. they were treated so badly that if any kind of sickness came to the camp, 20, 30 and sometimes 40% of the men in the camps would die. this happened to tens of thousands of black american men. it's an absolute tragedy and there are many other atrocities that we deal with than the chapter including things like the massacre in tulsa, oklahoma. we turned into a more positive story look at the history of the black church. we see a black americans identified with the idea being made in the image of god, right, having the same equal status with her white brothers and sisters. we see them identifying with the story of the exodus and being released from slavery, that dream of freedom, and we see them identifying with the prophets who care for the poor and the widow and orphan and the stranger and they feel cared for

by god. we see how the black church becomes like the cultural womb of black america in which so many of the forms of networks, including business leaks and mutual aid societies and literacy efforts and school efforts all flew out of that wonderful thick civil society institution. and then in chapter six or take a look at black entrepreneurship beginning with the great booker t. washington. of course washington gets kind of band as an accommodation sometimes given his debate with w.e.b. du bois and, of course, being in the deep south he did have to be very careful about what he said. he was an actual physical danger from being assassinated if you spoke out of turn. but secretly booker t. washington was actually funding a lot of the great legal efforts for political rights as he was working on getting blacks into positions where they could be owning property starting businesses and really flourishing economically. we try to tell and longer story

of civil rights that starts with the business community and the churches who are building up a black middle and upper class that are then able to be the lawyers in the funders of the fight for civil rights later on. so we really see booker t. washington as playing a partner that he doesn't always get credit for we going to talk about the wonderful stories of madam c. j. walker of course,, john h johnson the very brave publisher who puts a picture of emmett till in eboni and "jet" magazine and, of course, tr m howard who protect the family of emmett till during the trial and was a mentor to medgar evers and fannie lou hamer. that's just a wonderful reflection on what black americans were able to accomplish, despite all of the ridiculous obstacles that were being put in their way. then as we move on we take a look at some of the really

egregious, the egregious eugenicist views of the progressive era where right at the turn-of-the-century it is sometimes underestimated just how popular these eugenicist ideas were, a notion of racial superiority and inferiority on a pseudoscientific basis. and from there we see the rise of the minimum wage, the idea of the minimum wage and the notion we can is employed certain people so that the white aryan head of household can be supported by the economy and everyone else can just kind of fade away. really and strange philosophy. and we go on to see how the progresses push for massive social engineering projects like in a way that the federal housing administration use red line to keep black neighborhoods and white neighborhood separate, along with immigrant neighborhoods as well. they go on to use that social engineering mindset to build the

federal highway system, right? and so as municipal leaders are given millions of dollars to decide where these highways go, instead of putting them through some industrial area that will affect anybody, they decide purposefully to put them right through the black economic centers in so many american cities, and latina centers out west. it's a terrible case of eminent domain abuse with property rights being violated. and, of course, the really tragic part of this story is the way in which the civil society institutions, the business districts, the schools, the churches, the networks are just blown apart by blowing apart these neighborhood centers. it's only made worse by urban renewal which james baldwin called negro removal because the same thing was done by taking away people's property and in many cases not even compensating them as the constitution

requires. we go on to look at the effect of the great society. we agree with many conservatives who see the terrible disincentives in the way that our welfare system is arranged, the perverse incentives against work and marriage. we agree but we also challenge our conservative friends to be just as hard on other forms of welfare, like corporate welfare which will also cause all sorts of mal investment. and dysfunction in the economy. we go on to look at other social factors, and then by the end of the book where come up to the present day and looking at the rise of the drug war. we are looking at mass incarceration. at this point we're looking at things in america that are actually not specifically black issues because they're affecting all americans but we we're go hear from black people about them or because black people are desperately affected sometimes because of race and sometimes because of class because they're overrepresented below the

poverty line. so we shouldn't be surprised when we hear about this particularly from the black community. and so we look at creative market solutions to thinking better about how we can deal with mass incarceration crisis and, of course, we want to end the drug war. throughout the book as were going through kind of the history we drop in two things. one are lessons in classical liberalism we just take advantage of moments where we can explain various things but classical liberalism in away that easily understood by a popular audience. so if your friends who are not familiar with classical liberalism this is a great way to help them out. and then also drop in solutions, including economic freedom, educational freedom, criminal justice reform, those things i assume you're somewhat familiar with but the two that you may be less in may with our transitional justice which is an idea that has to do with healing huge societywide massive

injustices. one of the main things we focus on there is the idea of institutional memory. we think conservatives and libertarians should be just as excited about going into our local histories and really telling the stories of the survivors and those who were harmed by our racist policies historically. because it's important for a healing process if we don't tell the truth we will never be able to reconcile. and then finally neighborhood stabilization is the idea that no matter if we get every single policy we want and we get everything in place that we think is right politically, some of these neighborhoods particularly in our very isolated inner cities, are so destabilized that there's a gap in terms of bandwidth. you have people who would love to take advantage of all the things that are being provided by that too much to contend with and i call the network poverty, right? they are so isolated from the employment networks, for instance, that the need to take advantage of, the only solution to this is a bottom-up solution.

we need a decentralized solution in which individual people and groups and philanthropic efforts are on the ground walking through life with people surrounding neighbors with the resources that we all take for granted, , right, the kinds of networks that we take for granted. as a labor of love. that's not something a policy or a check in the mail or government office can do. but it's what we've got to do. i'm excited to inform you it's already being done by people like bob lupton in atlanta with his focus community strategy, the great john perkins of the christian community development association, bob woodson who many of you know. brian sicknick wrote a wonderful book called when helping hurts, where he deals with flipping oua philanthropic model and really empowering people and dignifying them by treating them as not just as recipients, right, so i'm going to drop my gift on your head but rather as someone with whom i want to exchange. and so it's an important kind of paradigm shift that a think we all need to think about in a

philanthropic models. so i will stop there and they will get started with the questions. >> actually. i think that deserves a round of applause. [applause] very happy to be here with both marcus and rachel. you guys did an amazing job with this book. we cannot underscore that enough. it is a very thorough and, quite frankly, in-depth vision of an understanding of black america not only in terms of history but also of the present day one in which even those of us who have grown up in those communities who are of that community and i've been through that school system quite frankly don't always get as in-depth with that. so just giving you that off the top. with that being said we are not in the midst of celebrating juneteenth so they could never been a better time for this to be hosted, so thank you to cato for that. there are several things within this book that if i'm quite profound and the ways that you state them as well as examples utilized. one of the top things for me is looking at black america as well

as the vision of america as a whole. we would talk about the american dream there are all of these idealistic goals. there is this euphoria of sorts about being american and what that means and the promise and the future that it holds, something that has largely been kept away from black america quite frankly since our inception in this country. with that being said i great deal of what you talk about is within the business ownership entrepreneurship space. as you know business ownership and entrepreneurship has been such a large and it back a part of the black community for a very long time. quite frankly the only way that many black americans are therefore able to compete or have any extent of capital for their own families and communities, but with that being said there are so many impediments to owning your own business, building that as well as getting the capital get it started and avoiding some of the pitfalls that quite frankly government institutions have put in place when it comes to black business and black business ownership. currently black women hold the most black businesses of any demographic in the country. however, the gains the potential

gains that have not been seen. black women are also the population that is least amount of wealth in this country. from your book you speak about entrepreneurship as this particularly to opportunity but also as one that has been built over time as it relates to black people being able to have access. how do you translate that into what is being seen today? entrepreneurship is continually pressed throughout the committee. that's something regardless of what party you stand for entrepreneurship is something you feel as though the black community jumps a hold of but with that being said they are not necessarily seeing those same gains even though the numbers in terms of black entrepreneurship are there. >> me? yeah, so we first take a look at some of the policy issues that we could address and that's the economic freedom section. we draw a lot on michael tanis book the inclusive economy which i highly recommend. this only things about the where system that awards -- rewards

people. for instance, we reward rich people for saying but we punish poor people for saving. if you try to save something up you will lose a a certain benefits, right? there's a lot of little things like that, stack policies we could change to really change the incentive structure. we also look at things like occupational licensing reform. these small businesses don't need more hoops to jump through. middle-class person may take for granted that yeah, takes weeks and weeks to get this done, right? i have to ask five friends to help you fill up this paperwork but no big deal, i can get it done. but imagine if you're an inner-city entre nous. you may not have the five funds. you may not have the weeks to wait. we need to lower all of those sorts of regulatory barriers for people who want to start own businesses. a great example was the tennessee law in which barbers had to have a high school

diploma. why? what does having a high school diploma have to do with being good at cutting hair? nothing. but what use is really crony capitalism, cronyism and which rent seeking what a joy to call it privileges seeking in which established notice a local salon doesn't have to be a big business. they could be a small business but they are an established business. so the established business congruency hey, don't they have to have a high school diploma? you need to add that can or doesn't that african hair brighter had to go to cosmetology school such us to work at my salon and and i o take up the top from her profits? no, she shouldn't have to do that. we have to fight hard in our state legislatures and at the local level to make sure we are removing every barrier we possibly can, but i also want to return to the point about neighborhood stabilization to say sometimes we can't wait, we can't wait for those barriers to come down to my friend in misery

missouri work on african hair braiding for years for she got that removed. what do we have to do? with the come up from below, bring her own networks and her own resources into the inner-city entrepreneurs and help lift them up above the barriers, right, by giving them the bandwidth that we have. part of that is philanthropic but then i want to end by remind everybody and it always careful to say this, 80% of black america's above the poverty line. more joy of of black americans are middle class. they are on their way, right, so black americans are tracking in terms of income not caught up in terms of wealth which is more complicated so they can talk about that but when i'm talking about things like neighborhood stabilization i'm talking to those up and left behind, both were stuck economically. both the black america is not stuck economically and that's important to say. >> no, , absolutely. i'm glad you added that content for the reentry population, marcus can which is a bike collision that happens in many cases by no fault of their own the idea of reentry is that you

pay to debt to society so you come out and now you're able to go back into that society and their significant barriers whether you are finding housing issues in many cases even getting a driver's license access to personal documents i'd invitation documents but the biggest barrier is job access. we see there are more people who have reentered society who get all the doors slammed in faces with trying to apply for jobs. they have taken the entrepreneurship on any much different way because the idea is they cannot apply for and actually get accepted to traditional work. even those who had education while they were in prison or in any other form of detention, so that credentials are still able to get jobs. for those individuals who have barriers to job access what is entrepreneurship look like and how has come have states or how do you think states should manage that? this is significant population of individuals who come out of jails or prison systems of year and, quite frankly, if no place else to turn. >> yeah, the story, the ways in

which got to where we are rather than talking about certain sort of prescription. i leave this rachel to prescribe what we should do today. but having said that i think there's been a lot of good work done and surprisingly in some southern states, states like texas, kansas, georgia, kansas, oklahoma to try and attack sort of the mass incarceration crisis and help people as a transition into sort of normal life. one of the things we try to do in the book is we want to speak to conservatives in a way that says listen, these are past injustices. whether b is a term social justice or past injustice these are past injustices that we need to address. they were wrong so were done and to try and give them a bouquet boot and speak in a way that will get them to recognize there is a problem with mass incarceration. we see that happening already. it's already beginning to happen in the numbers are beginning to fall. as far as what we can do for those folks to help them reenter, rachel give any specific ideas on policies?

>> one of the things we do in the book as we try to direct you to other great books come and we are drawing of those, those were interested in particular issues can go deeper. one of the ones we look at is ending over criminalization and mass incarceration by anthony bradley. the subtitle is hope from civil society. what he's saying is look, you have a government run prison system so it's terrible, right? it makes things worse rather than better. the only hope you're going to have is from civil society ansley goes through many examples of groups that came in and make your kids didn't go into juvenile to link with the end of first place, right? so that they didn't get into that crime cycle. groups that met prisoners six month before they got out and started making sure they were making the transition. business people who are actually bringing work into the prisons with real wages, not just the

federal rages come with real wages. these guys were getting on the phone to do their homework with her kids because they could afford to pay for the call because they had a real job in the prison. really creative stuff. of course to go back to neighborhood stabilization can getting those kids before they ever get there. so finding these kids when they're 12, 13, 14 not taking them out of their of t, bring opportunities into the neighborhood, the committee guards, the woodworking, the lawnmowing so kit by 13, 14, 15 years old is only getting paid and we had a short to work and be responsible and deal with it when they don't feel like it and all the things that are hard about being a teenager. so that kid is already on their way to school or job rather than into the gang life, which is in many cases almost inevitable in some neighborhoods. it's really important to go back to the route root as well. >> and civil society is a a cn thread. it's a common theme throughout

the book and as a relates to the black community particularly it's not a buzzword even though the activities with activities of it had been seen throughout history. where do you see civil society as it takes place today specifically looking at the chapter on the black church? as we know church attended in general have got to take amongst the melinda generation and we don't have that much, we don't have that much to look forward with the next generation either as a relates to people going to church on a regular basis and being involved at that level. where do you see civil society playing in those institutions? >> so civil society is like the missing piece. we talk about markets, we talk about the state and we always forget all of our lives happen in civil society most of our life, 90%. happens in civil society and all of our voluntary associations. while it is true that the rise of the nuns, the churchgoing and things like that are going down, black americans are the most religious demographic and the united states. they still are.

the millennials are more religious than black melinda is a more religious than white millennials, or likely to pray, or likely to believe in god and be the bible. the black church still a strong influence in the black community even though that struggle is occurring and how are going to shift and maybe other civil society institutions, i think it's an important question. one of the things which is somewhat provocative think wishes just in the book is that if we had school choice, if it education freedom may be the black church would be empowered to do for many black kids what the catholic church did from an immigrant kids, right, that would be a huge boon i think of empowered the black church to do what they did all along, , righ, which was a wonderful black education. >> i i also think one of the things as a story i think we lost over the course of the last 40 or 50 years is, many books about about the decline of civil society, declined community is moving to sort of more advanced technology, internet et cetera a one of the things recapturing

the book and hope it's one of the things that resonates for new generation of activists who want to achieve equality is the amount of work that civil society to build towards the civil rights movement. there were massive protest in 1905 booker t. washington supported on the download not actively because didn't want people to come and storm to speak tuskegee may hit sport of it ultimately fail. the boycott failed by 1904, identify. as a as a store just ask why did he succeed in 1955 in montgomery? the answer is in the chapter black entrepreneurship and that chapter black vote up and worship isn't just about business men and women going out and making becoming millionaires like madam c. j. walker. it is a book about how civil society or position such as the black elk simile people come together to band together to create an insurance, a co-op for themselves people would pay in and then they would have life insurance, they would also have if you get sick, were all going

to go over to her house make sure she is sick and issues will go ahead and pay her days wages. some of my pop in a weekly to make sure you on the men and whatnot but it provided a means by which, without access to those white institutions or without government which is a pretty welfare state, they create their own society can own organization that enable them to have those types of sort of social safety net. the black elk for so much more than just that. they also brought african americans with the first opportunity at like political activity. many african-americans got an opportunity to this radical reconstruction but by 1873 that opportunity is pretty much, definitely gone across the south. they offered an opportunity for black men usually but also female associations to come together to vote, to become active in their communities to earn a role and then to begin educating.

the work of the elks the work of the churches the work of the businessmen and women the naacp which is an organization built out of some silicide that borrowed, many of its worst came from the elks because white fraternal societies did what black fraternal societies to use their quote-unquote their name. many of the early naacp lawyers grew up or get there experience fighting these cases. we see over 50 years what might seem mundane but it's really the stuff that changes the world which is the small, small activity by the civil society organizations that build up a foundation upon which civil rights activist like martin luther king, jr. and others could get donations and get support, , they could call on people to help them as they in the making '50s were actually successful in carrying out these types of boycotts, et cetera. civil society is immensely important and one of the things i hope the younger generation takes away from this is change

doesn't happen overnight, right? its gradual. it can sometimes be slow, agonizingly slow but join a club, be a part of your community meet people like the just like tiktok for whatever it is young people do these days, right? i hope there's a sort of appreciation for several saudi that comes out of this chapter. >> i appreciate the most you took that the tiktok shade, but you talk with the progress because progress and change is often slow and and i think y generation assumes the generation before them was able to get things set at a much faster pace. a lot of younger people look back at some rights movement and they see these young african-americans on the front lines anything okay, if they're able to move this piece in this amount of time not recognizing he put to work on that for 40, 50, 60 blushes before them and they came in and it took some of the lessons of the past and also adapted them to a television modern air the time and they think that people adapt them to the digital space because that's what action is. civil society is, as you phrase it, the idea that these things

are starting at the local level at a very bare-bones level at aa level that doesn't have hierarchical structure as one that allows for innovation as one that allows for a bridge to have direct impact in kyrgyz, where the data through education models or through programs that allow you to feed the hungry or take care of healthcare and ensure should have those benefits. those are all things that members of any committee would jump on but especially the black community because regardless of who is in office or in front your name, it hasn't necessarily moved the needle towards the types of progress those committees need. specifically those in your ultra- urban or strong in rural areas become a native of chicago and at the end of the there's election after election and right up there having a primary and the largest voting district happen to be a cook county jail. no one came out to vote. the city is wondering why. we are like, well, violence,

really bad schools, not many options to go to school outside of your community, in addition to an extreme level of poverty highs black male unemployment in the entire nation, and an economic system where it is also the lowest economic outcomes inn the state of illinois for black people anywhere. in america. so when have those things set up which are shocked by the lesson because i thought it was in the south, completely wrong, isn't an incentive people feel like there's no incentive. they are living this every day. there's no incentive to get it though because nothing changes no matter who's in office. when you have that set up which happens in committees across the country the idea of a civil society is something that is white frankly appealing. what would you say to people who are not yet involved or looking to engage, how do they themselves create this system? >> can i jump in and make another comet first just as you're talking?

i'm sorry, i lost my train of thought. go ahead, marcus. come back to it. >> can you repeat the question? >> how to create this type of system for individuals interested because we hear they don't feel like there's change in the community, they been fighting for very long time company to ensure they have healthcare available, that there's housing option and was a time in history as you alluded to in the book where there are co-ops can organization seeking to give me this happen because outside of government has large been the only way that many black committee seven able to survive all of this. >> the comet as can make them real quickly, sorry, is that i think your question gets at the heart of sort of this push and pull we have between the left and the right to right now. which is where the right wants to sort of say none of this has anything to do with history of racial injustice in the left wants to all that has to do with the history of racial injustice. one of the points we want to make in the book is racial injustice is the thing that gets the ball rolling, but as the

ball is rolling it starts causing these other things which include breakdown of civil society institutions, right, so that's we get some of the things concern is talk about like family structure breakdown and so forth and those things are real and then the question is how do we solve those problems? well, soon everyone to antiracist training doesn't necessarily solve it, out on because at the races training is not working but also speeded black people to and ask for that. >> but also you're going back to that non-proximate cause rather than the proximate cause which may be something like i need a mentor to help me how to parent, i need a mentor to help you start a business. that's why i think in many ways conservatives and libertarians to be better about telling the history, people feel more compelled by the actual suggestion for what did you right now because we would be giving that nuanced story of the way it's like a domino effect

from racism and then into the effect on civil society institutions. there you go. >> i think your question about how do normal everyday average americans make a difference, i think it's quite actually quite simple. the answer is i would come via the dad went down to lunch with a colleague of mine and she is very invested in montgomery and her neighborhood in mind, and she said i was really excited, really excited about all this talk of a stabilization in st. louis because rachel is connected with love the loop which are doing amazing work going block by block revitalizing the boulevard, like the rough or blocks pick she goes how can how to do n montgomery? sees the spark, the person who is i want to do something and have church and she says we have the resources and in our ch. we've been doing charity for so many years wrong, right? we have resources. whether you're in a white shirt or black church or multiethnic church come like there are resources network connections that can be drawn images like

how to get the ball rolling? she was asking me that question. i said you should talk to rachel because rachel does way more about this than i do about like the specifics of how you get that started that i think it starts the conversation, conversations about our right you are enthusiastic and you have the energy, you're excited. you want to live in committee which she does. she and her husband bought in the committee rather than i live in a suburb of montgomery. she invested in the community because she wants to make a difference in the community. now what we need to do and what i need to do is i need to set up a zoom call with rachel and maybe rachel can explain, maybe we can set up a zoom call with lucas and say, the person is in the actual neighborhood, right, and talk about what are the impediments, the things you have to jump over to get this done? and then there are people like me who would be super enthusiastic about helping with a project like this who don't feel called to live necessary i don't think i've made of that metal to live in actual neighborhood but what i have maybe i should be shamed for

that but i do have other skills like hypothetically i talk, i teach people supposedly in classes and stuff so i can tutor, i can help mentor kids. like you i say you can drive a kid to go lexie is that if his dad happens to be incarcerated. like there are things that are missing one of us can do. if you're a lawyer you can come and help people who have questions about the legality of how to start a business. connecting those folks to the networks that likely to simply take for granted. i mean, this sounds like a lot of work at a think it is for the person who is invested neighborhood it takes a special type of person but for the rest of us it might be five hours of your week. it might be the equivalent, it might do less than tied to get in the amount of money you contribute to the cost or if you enough people who care about revitalizing montgomery and approving its schools and other things like that, then you can make a tremendous difference. the other thing you can do is

become politically active in local elections like anybody gets excited about presidential election but if you want to make a difference the local level as we can make a difference what your boat might actually carries more weight just statistically, carries more weight than it would at the federal level. become active him go to the school board meetings, advocate for school choice if you believe in the cause which i do. over time through neighborhood stabilization i am a huge school choice advocate, probably the most and most and port can implement to sort of address these issues. i think that's what you can do. i've gone on long enough. i think that's what you can do. you have to be the change. we all have something we can contribute. >> you definitely walked into what was going to be my next topic of, so school choice has a many different tentacles and it gets people start up on the left, the right and in the middle.

people that have kids, people who don't have kids, people who have kids of the system. with that being said when those people hear school choice to either think charter schools or voucher. the school choice argument is a lot more than that, and the idea of school choice is one that is somebody who does identify as a liberal some of who voted for democrats and work for democrats i've always stood on school choice. my mom homeschooled me when i was a kid and then i went to a public high school for high school and went to a christian university for college. i believe that at the end of the day the communities that my family was afforded to live in because my mom was a single bomb would not have provided us the best opportunities educationally. we had this discussion before the green room around the fact that schools, the quality of your skull should not be determined by your zip code or how much of how mimics or the color of your skin. sadly across the country it is. there are great variances to the next on where you live,

depending on the income of oe family, depending on quite frankly the color of the predominate students in that building. that becomes a very hard thing to sell and i've had several discussions with union members, some of those quite heated and very vocal. there are things they say that a problematic with the idea that you can basically wait it out. i don't have children but if i did have a child you cannot tell me that i can wait for ten, 12, 14 years for your school to maybe get it together. i don't know what this means because there's literally 500 things going wrong. so if you think one, we're still kind of screwed. with that being said, school choice is still a hot button topic and they think largely it is because of sometimes having faulty charter school administrators or people of single site to come up and do shady things and then leave but also many people don't fully understand the provisions of school choice and what that actually means. the idea of homeschooling is

just taking another trenches because of the crisis we saw during the pandemic and still is been forced to be at home with their families. but school choice and homeschooling in general had a stigma to it for quite some time around ultrareligious people who didn't necessarily want to have the young people around the predominant culture. it was also one that was seen as more only white people do this. where do you think we are today, and where is this school choice argument going to go? we know in the previous administration there was a large amount of who rock around school choice. right now we're seeing some of those things pulled back. state of fighting back and forth as how funny what to school choice to go, there is provisions on where you live. it's not going to change anytime too soon. parents what a certain level of autonomy. they want to know what the children are learning. there is a risk right now between school choice and crt which will talk about the culture wars later it for this

question when it comes to school choice where do you see this going as a policy matter and why is it such an important part of civil society? >> i think this is the moment. okay, this is a moment for school choice. the next two to four years is going to be really, really important for what happens to the educational, the teacher educational system and the united states. this is a moment for school choice. if you care about school choice, like we should be like trying to knock down the doors, knocked down the impediments can push on every single state legislature. this is the justice issue of our, the justification something we have to get done. it's something conservatives and libertarians should be advocating for but also something black parents have been advocating for. what's your approval rating among minor repairs? 60, 70%. this, this is opposed by teachers unions buttoning the basic concept as you introduce competition and education, if you introduce competition the competition you know the cost, increase the quality. that's a competition works

despite criticisms of market processes. that's a competition works. it will empower parents, we're going to empower students an edge is what you say like from a progressive friends alike in many of these places students can't get any worse. it can't get any worse. it absolutely can't get any worse. when the montgomery school system i think every one the schools, the public schools, not the magnetic, doctor charter schools, anyone of them is like the lowest ranking to possibly get. they had been that way for an extended period of time. spending tighten of specific spending numbers in my come but the spinning numbers over the last four years have gone up dramatically adjusted for inflation of course. outcomes remain completely stagnant. what we are doing is not working. what are often tell my progressive friends is like let's give this a shot. let's give this a shot. we have evidence that charter schools perform better than public schools. they may not be as good can we

talk about this, the data in some places that would like it to be but they also compete, the better on the margins of other things. i do not want to talk about those things. >> mental and physical well-being, it's extremely important to parents and so even if you don't see test scores shooting up, some charter schools do but in some turn schools they do a little better but why should we take this risk if there's only a marginal change? because test scores isn't the only thing that matters. it also matters your child doesn't get pregnant until after high school or doesn't get bullied to the point of a mental breakdown, right? or maybe your kid is a a litte different from other kids and they are not fitting in. it's really important to parents to have safety both mentally and physically in the schools and using amazing outcomes out of charter schools in that regard. where you have many fewer students getting involved in the criminal justice system, you have better outcomes in terms of teen pregnancy et cetera. that's repairs really value but if you come at it from the

outside culture, you're not necessarily understanding what's that play there. so i agree totally with mark esper i think there's been 27 states that passed some kind of school choice legislation, the pandemic just pulled the blanket off and we also was underneath editing the exciting thing is markets create variety. kids are unique, unrepeatable individuals. we need educational systems that feed their special callings, right, and what we have is a one-size-fits-all ham-fisted system. the worst part of all, go back to everything i said earlier at the beginning about highways, about fha red redlining cant urban renewal. we ghettoize poor black people now are asking them to set up the school district based on a zip code that is totally geographically unjust. all we're doing is perpetuating the injustices that we did in the '70s. that makes it that much worse.

i think we have to make it possible for the statistical elsewhere and there's 1 million different ways to do it. there's hybrid, there is these special tax refund things. i don't even remember all the names of the different kinds of things you can do. there's a lot besides charters you can do in terms of school choice and i think now it is busting open the people are getting more entrepreneurial and realize we can go in a lot of different directions and create all kinds the schools that serve different kinds of students. >> we don't even know what the alternative necessary is to the public education apparatus until we introduce competition because suppliers of education, producers of education whether it be charter schools or other private institution to setter, like we don't know what's going to emerge. if we have actual like school choice in montgomery, like who knows, maybe we would have four or five different schools that would come in and terror themselves to certain demographic. >> maybe there would be a school for kids whose parents don't

want to transfer them from place to place the statute of the question what about the kid to get left behind? what about the kid to get left behind? it depends on how it's done oftentimes when the students leave there's actually more money than left in the public school for the skids. as sort of a a bethink fundins issue than per-pupil there's more money because these are the kids have left, smaller class sizes et cetera but there might be an educational auditor who comes in and says i want to target people who are in a position where their parents can't take them five or ten miles across the city to go to the charter school, or maybe those charter schools create innovative ways in which they bus, what i said bus, provide transportation et cetera for the students to get to their school, carpool, i don't know something along those lines. i oftentimes get asked to was going to look like. as a libertarian, so who believes in markets i can tell you what would be created because if i knew then like i would be -- all this

would be poor central planners to i don't know what's going to emerge. whatever i imagine like should emerge i imagine the market will produce something like 100 times better than what i in my limited mind could think of as a solution. it's really, really exciting but also think on a more basic level middle-class families and wealthier fans have been able to send the kid to schools of or choice for an extended time because they have money. why shouldn't working-class mom's and dads have a right to send their kids where they want to send their kids? i'm just saying on a more fundamental level this is an injustice and its perpetuating past injustices which would talk about extensively in the book about caused by large government programs. >> it's also good example of public choice theory. you have budgets going up and up and up we are spending two and half times will be spent in the 1970s all of the money is going to administration, right?

administration issues booming. teachers are not making that much more as a we're really seeing that cronyism and corruption in the education system as well. >> we are also seeing students try to fight back. we just saw this a few months ago in baltimore we had a a gp of students who literally graduation high school diploma in hand who came out reading on the kindergarten level. no matter how much high school graduation has got up, which it has shot up tremendously over the past few decades come what we know is the students who are graduating do not have the skills, the acumen or quite frankly the basic education on the reading writing math level to succeed in the real world come to even succeed a past elementary school level. just having a diploma in hand with chicken high schools are giving those things out like candy doesn't necessarily mean that anything is changing for those young people. i could talk to you all forever but we do have some great questions that are from our audience. we will start here. sorry, wrong person.

[inaudible] >> does anybody have questions? in the room. >> hello. i'm curious about the response you guys have gone to your book and if you ever get any pushback for being two white people writing about black liberation. >> we've been asked that question now for a five times and every single time we been asked that question it's by a white person. soft or that there. usually, it's usually by white progressives but will use asked that question by other white people. it's something we were concerned about. we had a paragraph in the introduction in which we are like hey, why are we writing this book what we know we are both white, like kind of apologetic, right? we ultimately check it out because we didn't round table

with black scholars and one was like why is this request you do not need to apologize for writing about black america. white people have been writing about like a for longtime. there's a lot of really good work from conservative and white scars so there's no reason to apologist being white and writing about black america. we care about individual liberty and that doesn't stop, it's not based on the color of someone's skin. we care about individual liberty for all americans. we've gotten a simple question that fit with got the question several times. the overwhelming response of our like knock on wood from reviewers has been overwhelmingly positive and overwhelmingly positive from the black scholars who engage with her work up to this point expert i have to brag about the tweet of the other day because the was a debate on twitter about us being white authors of the book and some people argue back and said welcome what about the ideas, and cagey ideas? one person said about a week later he said you know,

something like hot take of the day, this book is actually valuable, and he was definitely left-leaning person pick and he said i listen to some of the videos and she's clearly a conservative leaning classical liberal, but she really understand racial inequality. and he went on to say do we really want to argue with conservatives about basic facts? we want to be argued of the facts of racial inequality or have the argument about the solution, right? because we don't need to disagree on the facts of racial inequality. we want to disagree on the solution i thought this guy gets me. but i thought that was neat that out of that conversation about why should these people in write this book he went back and looked and said no, she's really taking the history very seriously. i felt that was a good plug. >> yeah, one of the things we really want to achieve by writing the book is we think we could speak to conservatives and libertarians in a way that maybe we can sit around and wait for someone else to write this book,

we could. i probably never would've gotten written but we can wait a a wk it's a listen we have unique opportunity to try and speak to people in a language they understand, right, conservative value, individual liberty, protect private armey. it recognized like past injustices should be addressed, so one of the things we try to do is try to take a language that we know that we speak with conservatives and try to get them, we want them to read a book and engage with the things and recognize the real, real, real sort of injustice and struggles that black americans have gone through so that perhaps some, not all concerns but some concerns have lower empathy and talk more intelligently about these issues moving forward. even though we are white i think doing something valuable. >> i'm glad you both can acknowledge the whiteness. we have another question in the room and then going to go to some of our viewers online. >> my name is everett bellamy.

i'm going to break the trend, as a black person asking two people about to vote. when you listen to black scholars and you get the feedback how much actually on the ground work that you do in black committees talking to community leaders, seeing what their dearly lives were like as you wrote the current aspects of your book, , not going back in history, but what's going on today, how much of that kind of work did you do? >> i would say organically i do a lot of that work through several organizations i'm involved with in st. louis. i'm part of group called gateway to flourishing. it's a group of christian business people who are trying to flip their philanthropic model and do a better job, so we are both black and white believers and we also bring in both black and white speakers. so that's actually how i met lucas and that the community there. a lot of that is happened

somewhat organically and, of course, it's just naturally involve itself into the book. i actually give a little shout out to lucas in the book itself because i think he's a real hero comes work he's doing there. the wonderful part is he's empowering the committee members themselves. there's much more to do in terms of having conversations on the ground. i think that's a really important point actually. we are often and totally separate social networks and so we are all talking to each other and we're not always talking across. i'm really excited, looking over at stephanie because we are going to be next week at the acton institute and what are things i love about the acton institute is what talk about religion and liberty but it's extremely diverse, and very diverse group of people. a lot of inner-city pastor because of the organization made to flourish which is dealing with how we can bring economic empowerment to our communities. i go to all those lunches every year at acton university and i'm

beating, people from detroit and people from various cities and it's really wonderful but we need to have more of that. we did be crossing over our socioeconomic barriers, our neighborhood barriers and our political barriers. the saddest thing that i've seen over the last five years is a way in which the political barriers are going up, right? those walls are getting higher and we're talking to one another less and separate ourselves out more. that's really, really damaging and classical liberals in particular have a good role to play and breaking them down because we never fit in any way, right, so we can come and push the wall that facilitate those sort of civil conversations across those really tough barriers. but appreciate your point, you're right we need to do as much of that as we can. >> this question comes from and on online. why don't black political leaders support charter schools and vouchers that provide better educational opportunities for minorities and inner cities?

>> well, i have seen some black political leaders majorly cross a line on this. i want to get some credit where credit is due. i believe her name is maria chapelle nadal is represented in st. louis who really make people upset by associate himself with the school just move in though she's a very far left person. i think it does happen and cross of more than you think we're right in washington, d.c. which is where miss virginia lipscomb virginia walden ford who got the washington teeth out your system into place and i recommend that movie, miss virginia to anybody, it's a good. i think some have honored to think that the pressure from the teachers union, remember, they are the funders of the democratic party. if you go and you look at the amount of money that's given, like the top givers to the different parties can the unions are at the top of the list, right? so it's really hard to go against that. it's just politically very, very

difficult to do and also want to point out that in misery we have a problem with white rural republicans say no to school choice because out in rural areas they unions are the greatest or i should say the public schools of the greatest employers, right, in the rural areas. they were kind of hammond hall and say no. on the foot of the legislature. -- him and hall. i have to say blame the unions, the teachers union. >> on school choice will stick with this what do you think of all school districts? this person is in favor of enabling low income kids to go to private but what about a lot of those who stay public to choose which public school to go to regards of income? >> sure, absolutely. i think it should be completely open and free like if you get a voucher and you want to leave your public school to go to the other public-school across the city, i see no reason why the best public school shouldn't win out and the other public-school shouldn't with on the vine, if that sort of its future. if it's that poor we should

empower, we should send the resources to the institution, the facility that is getting results. if parents think one schools better than the other school, like i've no problem with that. there are some schools that need to fail. that may not be popular to say both but there are some schools that the culture is so bad we would be better off if it died, okay? and we created something from the ground up. like some things need to divert some schools should perish and so like that will happen and that's healthy and good that hopefully we can also drive a bad teachers and bad administrators in the process, right? that something that will happen with school choice. that may not be popular with some school teachers. that not be popular with some people in the teachers union but the reality is that we need actual market competition and also aspects of american society but specifically in education center on education some schools i think that's absolutely perfectly fine. if the public-school ultimate is the best school, better than

charter school, better than private school, that's fine with me. my mom was a public-school teacher. i have no problem with public schools ultimately winning have to compete. no more sort of protection for poor districts can port facilities, poor teachers, et cetera. >> i think we have another question in the room. >> i actually have two questions if that's all right. one question actually is a flip off stefan is question, which is what is the conservative response to your book? there are two two schools ot and what's keeping down black progress here conservatives think it's lack of individual initiative and drive, and, of course, the progressive response is the system. you think it's actually the system comes first, if i understood you correctly. >> chronologically. ..

black support for school choice. i'm wondering if you know, i mean i i lived in michigan and detroit for a for a long time. the first of the initiative, i think it was the first one in the 1990s in detroit went down in flames. there was black support but not all of black support and opposition in conservative suburbs. there were multiple forces that defeated this initiative but even more black support because in some ways, the government is a vehicle for progress for black folks. if you can get a job as a teacher or government office, that is poverty so they also

see public schools as a way of employment if you can speak to that. >> with regards, i want to talk about how housing affects this debate. don't know if cartel is the right term but when you have a school district, you have the value of your home associated with the district. that is not really just in some sense but that is the case at the moment so there's a status quo that is hard to overcome. thinking about how it will affect home values if the district is different so to be realistic about public choice issues and keep the momentum going and push through those obstacles but i am familiar with this, to see why we got to

where we are. in this book about african-americans and the unions, they were deeply and persistently racist, this is a story that goes on and on and on and you see tiny little efforts and they peter out. what you have is a situation which many black people were never able to take advantage of manufacturing jobs dominated by unions. we don't disagree with the idea of unions, we have some laws in the united states that empower unions in a way that changes the power dynamics. if your union is all white and you have the david bacon act where everything the federal government does is done through a union then no black people can work on the job. because the union is building

the highway. what does that mean? the government areas have often been ahead of the game. desegregating the army, the military which became a great source of opportunity for black americans and public unions had that effect too. we have to look at how we got here, the way we own up to those races. and it is progressive. that is important to point out, we have this stereotype of conservative racist and progressive to love minorities but history is not like that at all. that is important to say. we've gotten very good responses from conservatives and they are willing to tell a more nuanced story especially if you blame progressives a little bit.

everybody was pretty racist so both sides. they are attracted to that point, and the big government projects, and and we want agencies, once great antilles kids that they, they can make it in the united states. we can't say that if we are not surrounding them with resources. it is unrealistic to pull yourself up by your bootstraps in that isolated situation. >> the question of how

conservatives received the book, the philadelphia society which was founded in 1964 or 65 by milton friedman and william f buckley, invited rachel to speak, to give a talk at the philadelphia society about -- they have that on one of the panels, proud to see that in the philadelphia society's program, thoughtful conservatives, most of the people in the philadelphia society and we had our enormous book there and people came around and we got tons of positive feedback. we've not gotten a ton of reviews yet from conservative publications the "national review" plans to review the book and so -- the story we are telling offers conservatives a

narrative, while not jettisoning the principles of america because many feel threatened by what they perceive to be crt, the 1619 project, american exceptionalism and greatness under assault. one thing we say is it is not our liberal founding that is to blame. the folks say that on the left are to blame. liberalism is not to blame. liberalism is the answer to our problems, not the cause of our problems. we fail to live up to our liberal ideas, to protect black americans, fail to extend the rule of law. by providing conservatives with this, don't know if you want to call it it 1/3 way, third type of narrative, what i hope we provide is a way they can retain their beliefs in america and the promise of america while doing right by their neighbors.

by injustice that occur. we will see how it goes. hopefully this event helps. >> the best line as frederick douglass's when he says it is not the constitution but whether we have honor and courage enough. >> next question from online viewers. what are your opinions on systemic racism? does it exist? >> what do you mean by systemic? i would tend to say i agree systemic racism exists, that it is embedded. if we are looking at young black men, drug charges versus young white men, partially socioeconomic and partially racial as well as they tend to be at higher numbers than young white men.

impediments that disproportionately disadvantaged people who are working-class and explicit racism that occurred in the past from government policy. folks don't have access to these resources so it continues to harm those communities. you have a hangover for hundreds of years, hundreds and hundreds of years of injustice. that is not going to be solved overnight. even if we get everything we want in terms of policy and a end to the war on drugs and every one of you make a fundamental difference and still going to take transitional justice and neighborhood stabilization and time to right the wrongs that existed in the past.

we have systemic issues, changed through legislation in the case of the war on drugs, don't think the american project or liberalism in itself is tied to racism which is something people who advocate some advocates -- it exists and ties to -- i don't believe that at all. i think they are holdovers from economic systems that continue to haunt and sustain, we try to right those wrongs and give them an opportunity. >> one of the points of the book is to have a causal story. we have to be nuanced and bring in all the various causes. we acknowledge the existence of systemic racism but we don't total fat as an excellent nation for anything that is wrong with us as a country.

we want to compensate that and add more information. >> we hear a lot about books like the color of money that contribute to racial wealth inequality, what rule has the banking system played to amend these injustices? >> this is huge. we got a glowing review from the american institute for economic research and one critique has to do with what we would do, with money and he was pointing this out, going in supporting black banking, and and just regulatory stupidity.

after the 2008 financial crisis, the new regulations made it impossible to have any small banks. there are no new small banks. it is hard to have community credit unions. you can't get a small home loan for starter home. so we are just crushing anyone starting from a low starting point from getting onto the economic ladder. that is really good example of the way there's historic injustice but also bad policy. it has bad effect on a community that is vulnerable because of historic injustice. that community is like hello, help us. that story where we can show it is not only racist but have

terrible disparate effects. back to the question of systemic racism. is it systemically racist there's a regulatory system that is crushing the poor in terms of home ownership? not in terms of that but an outcome then we call it. banking is a huge area, and stuck with terrible regulations that are making any small experiments almost impossible. they are not allowed. >> all of those are virtually gone, got swallowed up after the crash of 2008 and people

who depended on those banks don't have anyplace else to go. >> people underestimate the extent to which extra medic growth helps the poor. the hardest on the poor, poor didn't recover from the recession after 2008, middle and upper classes were just fine. and a lot of people's minds they think of economic freedom and economic growth, a bunch of fatcat ceos, if you suddenly shut down a major part of the economy because you had a major recession it changes your whole life if you lost your job, you can't buy a house if you can't open a small bank or go to community credit union as get a small loan, that changes your life trajectory.

to get out of our heads that it is something rich people care about and care about it for the sake of for poor people. >> a 4% growth rate. >> students are like what is he talking about? it means you can save for your kids college funds. students don't have children, this is important. something on black banking good, if you're interested, my advisors book black maverick. and civil rights activists, and during the trial and other things, they use the banking system as a means to crush black activism after the decision of brown versus board. that has 5 or 6 pages, the way

black americans pooled resources through the banking establishments to outlast the citizens league, the citizens council, the vigilante group's trying to freeze black americans from the economy to get them to be quiet about protests so there is an amazing historically about the role black banks paid enabling activism etc. . the banks no longer exist. >> we have a question in the room. >> my name is foster. we spoke about the empowering force, do you highlight groups that were empowered by the

communities, and mainly do their rally and other historical standpoints, first there was a decline -- does it correlate. what does the society work around to incorporate the black church in the community so it can't become more within the 21st century? >> that the controversial question. i have to tell you we have different perspectives on this question. the pbs special on the black church, henry gates. the first 3 quarters i left. i thought he told the story i told in chapter 5, this incredibly empowering source of self-esteem and in the last quarter he made the point you're making they are not

progressive enough, not socially progressive enough on issues of gender and sexuality. and intersection hourly point. if there's a form of oppression happening other oppressed groups have to band together. i didn't appreciate it. you spent three quarters telling us the power of this, very very high way. interpretation, a high idea of scripture and it goes deep theologically and so to say you guys need to tough up this ethical area, don't think that is fair and feels mercenary. if i support black people after all they have been through they give up something that was central to them in their face, to be on their side, i don't want to do that.

black suffering in america is unique, uniquely terrible part of history and i don't feel right asking the black church to do that. we probably will have separate society institutions. there will be black churches who go progressive but it is true it tends to consist of these areas and i want to honor that. people have different ways that they are pursuing and sources of meaning and so i want to let that proceed as it is but i don't know if you disagree or agree on that. >> i am sure there will be black theologians who take the opposite view. that will emerge and those who support those initiatives will

do so and that is how society could grow. it may not be connected, this is the chapter from a traditional church but could be a new form of civil society that grows out of and borrows something from, that is perfectly legitimate and something that is great about liberalism, 19th-century europe to next semester. and it is profound to see the ways liberalism created civil society where it had not existed prior so in a liberal society this is what we do, we don't all go to the same club or have to be part of the same church, we don't have to do xyz. we have tolerance for one another and build our own societies, whether it is in the church are outside the church it is worthwhile as they try to flourish.

>> a few miscommunications. >> i was wondering if you could elaborate on tulsa's black wall street in regards to liberation in the marketplace. >> tulsa offers a word of caution. markets are not enough. markets are not enough. if you don't have rule of law, the government does not protect private property, government and police do not arrest people, the people who got a gatling gun and shooting people were domestic terrorists. they are the vigilante army. what we see in tells a is beautiful, the community is beautiful, greenwood is beautiful. i've been teaching about for

ten years or so. i was happy when it was included in the watchmen. my students actually know a little bit about it but i've been teaching for twee 8 years and the first half of the book is about the beauty of entrepreneurship and civil society and prosperity in tulsa and there is an unequal relationship, many crossbow train tracks, there is still segregation imposed by the top down. interesting history. more intermingling until oklahoma became a state and then they had a state legislature so it is interesting how that became very rigid but greenwood was beautiful and it was destroyed. why was it destroyed? they did what rachel and i want them to do? what booker t. washington wanted them to do, put down their bucket when they did their job and were great at it, they were best doctors, the

black doctor, they did what they are supposed to do, worked hard, got ahead, and then i think tulsa is a cautionary tale. they think, no, we have to have rule of law, have to have the rule of law. without private property protection you can be as entrepreneurial as you want to and that's something we had to grapple with in the book, black americans, this happened in memphis. this happened time and time again and it was a failure of americans to live up to liberal values. this is not an indictment of american liberalism but a failure of the individuals to

live up to the system. >> the rule of law is great but the rule of law across many states served to punish the individual to create this or to make it more open for others to do the same thing with black economic progress, not to protect those you are abusing but rule of law for me and a lot of black people is the idea that rule of law for certain people is not enough and it falls on us to protect ourselves and figure out a way through it because whether it is imposed locally or historically the federal level has not necessarily been provisions extended to the protection of us and our property. >> i was on a liberty fund roundtable for black history month and we answered each other's essays and this, make

sure you say the rule of just law because we say rule of law, we know what we mean which is universally applied law, not everyone reads it that way so i said i will say the rule of just law to make sure everyone understands. >> one more point. you talked about the rule of law but we need to talk about a liberal culture, that we see ourselves as having a lot of when/win situations we can cooperate and be better off and we don't conceive of a 0-sum game. it is a status thing, have to be above it so mvs and compatible. >> time for one more. >> back here.

>> thank you for this talk, the current national mood is pessimistic for racial disparity in relations. are there any current trends the regulatory potential of the market that are uplifting? >> we are not at a wonderful moment culturally when it comes to this conversation. there may be an element what we are going through, sometimes you can get to a point you are finally safe enough to express how much pain you are in and that is happening now as we have this conversation, we are seeing things like groups that are trying to have these conversations, barriers, that

is wonderful and the idea of black owned businesses and supporting one another, some conservatives don't like that idea because we are making that distinction but when you realize there has been so many setbacks, why not special emphasis on supporting that so that could make a difference and that is something to keep our eye on in a moment of hope. i absolutely think the flip to neighborhood stabilization which is gaining momentum, nonprofit administration programs reading these books, we are doing philanthropy wrong, the more you can get that described the more we can send to the charmers center the better we will be in terms of sparking entrepreneurship. >> thank you and look forward to reading the book, my

question is the tulsa massacre, that was destroyed by urban renewal. >> do you know that story? are generally leave tells a after the burning of the book as an epilogue talking about forgetting what took place in tells when black and white forgot about the burning, because they were petrified and the event, they left tulsa so i think you are right, greenwood did come back to a certain extent and it is never going to be the thriving place it was because so many people thought of it, going to oklahoma when she leaves memphis, this has

been the promised land and she goes i don't think so but it is not burning it doesn't get back to what it was before, don't know that story specifically. >> we draw on two books, the color of law, he does deal with urban renewal as well and highways, we deal with the freeway. he goes over several cities and it would not surprise me at all.

>> decades after that. >> okay. another round and i'm not surprised. it happens in every major american city. handed millions of dollars by the federal government. >> one of the things that is positive in tulsa is an example. how many lost their lives in the burning and recognition of the injustice. there cannot be any reconciliation without recognition. we didn't get to move on until we acknowledge. tulsa is doing that and there was some pushback and those

efforts that we talked about is good to have those conversations and that is promising. >> thank you for those that are here and those listening at home, where can people purchase your book? $18, to make it possible in readability and price, straight to paperback, whatever you want to do and posting everything i write on rachel ferguson.com. >> i'm not extraordinarily active on twitter but if you comment to me on my response, it is quite easy. >> marcus does not like twitter or tick-tock. >> thank you both so much and

thanks to the cato institute for hosting this event. >> thank you, hope you all enjoy. one last round of applause. we are going to go downstairs for food and drink so thanks again. >> american history tv saturdays, exploring people and event claman and on the presidency. nancy pelosi and the majority congressional delegation unveil a bronze statue of harry truman to the us capitol rotunda and to mark the 50th anniversary of the return of american p.m. w - pows, alvin helmsley talked about their harrowing experience and the league of pow families to bring them home.

exploring the american story, wah american history tv saturday on c-span2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime on c-span.org/history. >> booktv every sunday on c-span2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. 8:00 pm eastern, republican south carolina ambassador nikki haley shares her book if you want something done. she talks about the women she's drawn inspiration from throughout her life. and chris miller traces the history of microchip technology. in his book chip war. interviewed by democratic congressman jim hines. watch booktv every sunday on c-span2 and a full schedule on

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