[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] host: this is washington journal. protests continue at colleges and universities this week as administrators try to handle student activism. to start the program, we went to hear your view (202) 748-8000 of those protests. at college campuses. the line for support is -- we

want to hear your views of the protests at college campuses. for support is -- the line for support is (202) 748-8000. you can text us at (202) 748-8003. we will get to your calls and comments in just a moment. a headline about those protests. they persist as unrest mounts. authorities arrested around 200 people. student groups resisted orders to break down encampment while some universities pointed to anti-semitic acts committed on

their campus. student groups are demanding cutting financial ties to israel , define pressure from administrators to disperse. it has prompted schools to do away with graduation ceremonies. the university of southern california is one of those schools that has canceled their graduation ceremonies. here is the valedictorian talking about her meeting and what they told her about canceling the event. >> they did not tell you about any specific threats. my asking about any potential threats was denied. it led me to consider whether the decision to revoke my speech was made on the basis of safety alone. >> you know if there was a

concern for your safety or the safety of other students? >> safety is a priority for all students, including myself, so it was not made clear to me because i received no details about what these threats were directed to. >> this is not a free-speech issue. du view it that way? >> i think i expressed an opinion through a link that i had on my instagram, the hate and vitriol that was unleashed towards me after was part of the reason why the university caved in. sure, maybe my speech is a privilege, and it is a privilege i do not take lightly. at the end of the day, my views, the views that i have expressed

and that usc has instilled within me as well were stifled and subject to hate. >> he brought up a link that was posted on your social media page. i wanted to ask you about that. one of the items in the post called for the complete abolishment of israel. is that a position that you endorse? >> if you're asking me if i stand for human right, equality, unequivocal and unconditional right to life for all people, including palestinians, than i am not apologetic. host: we will go first to little in baltimore. caller: good morning. it is a pleasure to speak with you again. these young students -- they are

not going to adhere to the status quo. israel does have the right to exist. we cannot just uproot a country in this day and time. it's but if you do your research , history does not -- the palestinians have been living on that land for centuries, through the ottoman empire and what have you. israel has taken over that land. here we are today, still funding genocide and that culture over there. israel has never tried to come

up with a two state solution. benjamin netanyahu has been a thorn in that quest. we call israel a democracy. benjamin netanyahu has been in power for years. what kind of democracy is that? i support the students. stop trying to silence them. stop beating them over the head and what have you. they have the right to protest. thank you for taking this call again. host: go ahead, and. caller: i called to say that i oppose the current tactics in philadelphia.

some of the models used in some of these diluted the effort. instead, i would like to suggest that we heighten the contradictions that began to occupy the real estate. throughout the cities that they occupy. used to wield political power. if they are going to teargas everybody anyways, you might as well go for it. host: we do remind our callers to watch your language. caller: good morning c-span. i support the students. i will tell you why. america has a rich history of protesting.

protests in the vietnam war. in the 1980's, it was all about anti-apartheid. from texas, georgia, florida, to new york. i always wondered what happened to the woodstock generation. the hippies who protested against the system. i talked to them. i see what happened. but this is what these kids are doing.

the best and brightest future of america. [indiscernible] the world has to stand up. if we do not stand up now -- columbia university, massachusetts. thank you for taking my call, c-span. host: barry. caller: i would like -- a speaker, valedictorian. rights were imposed. they are doing the same thing

against the jewish students where they are refusing to allow them an opportunity to express their position. when i was in college, it was a discussion, back and forth. educate me, i will try to educate you. and then the other part of it is the hate speech. i do not understand how -- understand that you are asking for the abolishment. if that is not hate speech, comments for the death of 10 million people? i do not understand it. i am embarrassed as a citizen of the u.s. that this has gone on. i do not understand how they are

allowing this. host: from the new york times, the headline is unmasked. from coast-to-coast, colleges are grappling with a groundswell of students activism. administrators are happy to make tough decisions over whether to call in police. goes on to say hundreds of protesters have already been arrested across the country. police and protesters have reported being injured. in many cases, the arrests have been peaceful and protesters have willingly given themselves up when officers move in. we will go to tom. caller: yes, ma'am. my solution is simple.

i am a combat veteran from vietnam. our nation needs law and order. without a first amendment, we would not have much. host: tom, can you turn down your tv active we lost him. good morning, keith. caller: i wholly support the students. they represent the best and brightest in the nation. it is just jaw-dropping. all they are doing is showing solidarity. i am completely supportive of the students. they are the best of all of us.

the administrators are sicking the police on students. they call it clashing with the police, which is hiding and concealing the class dynamics involved in this. they are not clashing with the students. they are having the police being sick to on them by the oligarchy , who is absolutely terrified about the protest because they understand that this could lead to something bigger. the whole system is in jeopardy, if they do not clamp down now. many people -- we think the

system is of no use to most people. we support a revolution. i completely support the students. host: we will go to frank in ohio. caller: good morning. i do not know. i think americans are kind of dumb. we stick our nose into everything. when we do not know what is really going on. who do you believe? do you believe the palestinians or israel? i understand the land issue and everything, but you do not have the right to say nothing on either side, unless you have lived in either country for a year or so. you know what the truth is. between their governments, our government, the politicians, the

money hungry people in colleges and everything. why would any of us believe that? as far as being the best and the brightest, i do not believe that. if you ask them what is going on over there, they would just tell you what they have heard. you're causing all this violence over something you have heard and do not even know it is true either way? it is just crazy. we need to stop. let everybody figure out their own deal. host: a couple colleges brought up comparisons to events on campus is from the opinion page, it talks about kent state and at columbia university in 1968.

we will go next to 10 on the opposed line. >> -- caller: good morning. i oppose the protest. i would round them all up and give them a one-way ticket back to gaza. i am retired military. have a good day, america. host: we will go to can on the opposed line. caller: hello. i have written several books on the situation in israel. what is called palestine. i would very much like to point out, where were the students when aside in syria killed

500,000 arabs in his situation? where were they when aside the elder killed 30,000 arabs and muslim brotherhood members in his reign? where were they when they committed genocide against syria? i do not understand how all of a sudden, in the midst of a response to a genocide by hamas, who promises to commit more genocide -- where were the students come these inspired, wonderful people who want to have peace and goodwill in the

world? where were they protesting those genocides that have been committed and continue to be committed. hussein killed one million persians and arabs in his reign of terror during the iraq/iran war. i do not understand how these people can mention genocide when they have no conception about what genocide is. again, let them go back and see what happened in germany. by the by, we are saying they were there during the holocaust and promoting holocaust in the middle east. host: people are texting in.

also tweeting in from our post. one says, i support those standing up for the -- for human rights and truth. another says, i read beds that have the same comparison. the imperative is to be anti-aggression and approach humanity. they deserve a good life. war is never the answer. and also on facebook, support. house speaker mike johnson was up at columbia university this

week speaking about the protest. here are some of the comments he made. [video clip] >> this simple truth. neither israel nor these jewish students on this campus lever stand alone. today, hamas issued a statement. they called them the future leaders of america. all of this has to be said because the chairs tradition are being overtaken right now by radical and extreme ideology. it is like a target on the backs of jewish students. a growing number of students have chanted in support of terrorists, chased down jewish students, mocked them and reviled them. they have screamed at those who bear the star of david.

enjoy your free speech. they have told jewish students who wear the star of david to leave the country and shamefully, some professors and faculty have joined the mob. things have gotten so out of control that the school has canceled in-person classes. colombia has allowed these lawless agitators to take over. the virus of anti-semitism has spread. by some counts as 200 universities are under protest right now. host: adam. caller: good morning. i am not sure. i have mixed feelings about the issue. i am an alum of columbia

university. i recognize the activities on the campus. i do support the right to protest and exercising their first amendment right. however, i think we have to recognize that a line has to be drawn with that free speech extend into hate speech and intimidation, which is what i think we are seeing on the campus. as an alum, i am very disappointed to see how ignorant many of the students are when asked about the conflict. they do not know much about the history of the region. it is very disappointing. there was a little bit of an

irony here. i wanted to just underscore many of the students who are testing our part of an ideological movement of wokism and to culture, which has long been unwilling to support free speech. they have advocated for safe spaces and for environments where student are comfortable. these are students who have advocated for safe spaces, who are gauging in intimidation and hate speech. i find that a little ironic. it might be telling that the speech that they are engaging in , despite formally advocating

for safe spaces, they are using speech that engages with the ideology of anti-semitism. in their mind, if we put two things together, clearly we need to protect people against speech that is harmful. host: you said that you were an alum. what you think of how the administration has handled the situation so far? caller: i'm a little disappointed in the administration. i let the that. as have many other alumni because they sent emails notifying them. i do not think they should be clearing the campus of protesters. it is not what i am critical of. i do not think they should be canceling classes. canceling classes enables protesters and their intimidation of student. the fact that they are canceling

classes and having them virtually allows them to continue the intimidation by the protesters. engage with the protesters. tell them, this is what you have learned in core curriculum about what constitutes free speech and what crosses a line? you cannot have your fellow students study for finals and finish out the semester. it is very disappointing. the students, what constitutes free speech? host: we will go next to ivan on the support line. caller: good morning.

so, basically the reason why i support the students is that it has been written down on big posters asking these colleges to digress against israel. basically, the colleges are acting as essentially a hedge fund that after 1970, they wanted to charge students for tuition after denouncing communism. saying the movements were too radical. if i remember correctly, basically saying that a lot of the students that were protesting at the time -- it was

an unjust war. sorry. it is a little cold in my room. essentially, the students have been met with police repression, which is a form of fascism. it is a system of segregation. the palestinian people are very diverse people. they are all kind of labeled as muslims. and kind of generalized. it is really nice to see that people all over the country were students on the streets -- i support the students. host: we appreciate your call.

we will go to michelle on the opposed line. caller: good morning. i would like to make two points. i am calling in opposition of the protest. number one, they are not protests. this is hate filled speech. it is inciting violence and it is antisemitic speech. it is against the jews. so, no. for a university to support that and faculty to support it, even for politicians to support a, it is hate filled speech. this is not a protest of the 1960's. this is speech in support of annihilating the jews and in support of the actions of october 7, in practicality.

number two, my second point is, these protests -- this is part of last days spirit in this land. i say that as a christian because jesus was a jew. and the bible says that that land, god gave the jewish people that land. and for every christian to be in support of these protests and in support of the palestinians, who are speaking to the annihilation of israel and the jews. next, they are going to come for christians because the body of christ, christianity is a very jewish religion. and the body of christ is made up of messianic jews and

gentiles who have accepted jesus christ, who came as a jew. host: also on wednesday, white house press secretary was asked about speaker mike johnson's remarks at columbia i had a protest. [video clip] >> that is something for the board to speak to make that decision. not going to comment on that. that is the speaker's privilege, to speak for himself and what he sees. look, i would say more broadly, this is a deeply painful moment for many communities. the president believes that free

speech debate and nondiscrimination are important american values. the protests must be peaceful and students must be safe. when we see violent rhetoric, but you have to call that out. when we see intimidation or anti-semitic remarks, we have to speak out. you saw that from the president's statement on passover. he talked about that, taking action and making sure that we are calling that out. we will continue to do that. we are implementing the first ever national strategic effort to counter anti-semitism because there should be no place in this country, when it relates to that type of heat.

host: from the washington post, this headline. it talks about yards from the smiling graduates, students sit on rags and towels for a day of long protest, making for a jarring presentation. as demonstrations over the israel gaza war enter a second week, some students struggle to weigh the pomp and circumstance against the once in a generation protest. looking for idyllic pockets of campus, they put on their cheery smiles. it goes on to talk about the encampment and says it is accessible through one gate that is blocked. it requires students to walk under a sign that puts forward the demands.

do not sees land that could be used for low income housing and stop targeting representation. we will go now to the camp in arlington, virginia -- kent in arlington, virginia. caller: site. from what i am hearing, there is a huge distortion about what this is about. the ones i look to were not he marches. i saw a diverse array of people -- host: can you turn your tv down in the background? caller: sure. sorry. including jewish people, --

host: did we lose you? we might have lost him. we will go to michael in pennsylvania. hello, michael. caller: good morning. i wanted to follow up on what i think young man was trying to say. i am from a suburb of philadelphia. i called the not sure line because i'm not sure what some of these young people are saying , whether that qualifies as anti-semitism. they might just be a little bit misguided. many people with power in israel are american citizens. as a matter of fact, benjamin netanyahu -- he has five social

security numbers. these people are not descendants of holocaust survivors. revisionist zionism is characterized by -- but it actually refers to occupying not just traditional palestine the jordan as well. many times when you hear people say from the river to the sea, it was originated by medical zionists. even as dailies themselves will tell you this. i have yet to hear any of these young people express any direct antisemitic speech. if it scares some of the people calling, that is a problem for them, not protesters. thank you. host: we will go to patrick on

the support line. caller: good morning. i would like to say that they are killing their own cousins for a little bit of land. if anybody ever reads the new testament -- the student i actually correct. they should not oppress the people of palestine. it is sad to see them kill their own cousins for a little bit of land. that is all i have to say. host: john calling on the opposed line. caller: i am 77 years old and a

veteran of the vietnam war. these protests are outrageous. this war would be over in 10 minutes, if the terrorists, eight or 10 of them -- as americans, we should be at war with these terrorists. we support israel instead of stabbing them and back. for those write outenocide, the only ones aid about that are terrorists. and the woman from maryland was right. after thjews, they will go after christians. about that. host: there are also protests

outside college campuses. there were protests outside the correspondence and with protesters chanting, as guests walked into that dinner. president biden did speak at that event. here are some of his remarks last night. [video clip] president biden: do you hear what donald said about the reason -- about the civil war battle? gettysburg. wow. trump's speech was so embarrassing that the statue of robert e. lee surrendered again. age is the only thing we have in common. i vice president actually endorses me.

you might call it stormy weather. trump is so desperate he started reading those bibles he is selling. then he got to the first amendment. you should have no other gods before me. donald put it down and said, this book is not for me. look, being here is a reminder that people think what is going on in congress is political theater, but that is not true. [laughter] host: we have about 20 minutes left in this portion of the program. we will go next to richard.

caller: good morning. i'm going to be in the camp of 100 four cents support of the students. i do not believe the students are for hamas or terrorists. i'not for annihilating the jews. i think the gist of what they are trying to put across is all th--ll the innocence, the worst part of it is that our country, the u.s., we are sanctioning this and paying for. that, i think is the bulk of the problem, that lot of these students are trying to illustrate all these other coarisons. we did not support that. we were not paying for that.

it is time to stop that. i applau them for making that point. a lot of people, a lot of these politicians feel the same way but they do not have the courage to say it because they would be in trouble political. somebody has to take the ball. the students are doing it, so i give them 100% support. up until the violence. i do not believe in that. as far as saying their piece, marching, speaking and talking, i support it. host: dan is calling on the not sure line. caller: i was a student in the

60's at berkeley and new york. it is completely different. they are much more civilized. they talk to people and discuss the issues. the only thing i do not understand that i never used to see before -- they are cluttering up the whole campus. that is a little bit much. other than that, all of this propaganda that people are making against these protesters who are -- once you take the time to sit there and talk with them, because this issue is something that they all have opinions on. this is an issue where a lot of people are dying. i do not feel this craze about

this danger of these illustrations. they have done nothing dangerous. but i do not think people should be cluttering the campus. host: we got your point. we will go to another dan on the opposed line. caller: it is unfortunate that i have to take time out of my call to correct other colors. some of them are unhinged. spreading disinformation. they are in complete denial about the tone of the students and professors on campus. they have -- anti-semitism has been a problem on college campuses before october 7 and now it has gotten worse. they are praising hamas. this is happening.

the guys denying this, you are in denial. lastly, using the word zionist as a pejorative, replace that with jew or any other marginalized demographic and repeat to see how it sounds. i am a former leftist. i used to be far left where i was indoctrinated to excessively hate israel and blame everything on them. a complete 180. what is happening on college campuses now is decades in the making starting in the 1970's. radical extremist professors and their ideology is very antivirus. socialism, marxism. the enemy of my enemy is my friend ideology. people always talk about it.

we should talk about influence on campuses. that is a major problem. regarding kids on college campuses, intersectionality, they view things in a simplistic approach. they view things based on this obsession with skin color. they think all israelis are privileged. that is where they start from. they are getting a lot of their hate from the professors. the professors were literally praising hamas after these attacks. these kids are getting hate from social media, from alternative media and tiktok, which has been scientifically proven now.

so, yeah, this is all decades in the making and a massive propaganda effort starting with colleges. host: we got your point, dan. in the washington post headline, talking about how students are viewing the protests on their campus. it looks at views from different students that they talked with. one of them says she organized her first initiation at the age of 18 and credits her family. she is a 22-year-old student at columbia university. she says the increased police presidents has been uncomfortable. she described calling the public safety line to ask about a way to navigate campus without encountering. she said, i do not feel

particularly safe walking around the area because of the short -- sheer number of comps. she feels the response has been contradictory and that the university wants us to learn about protest and social movement. people like martin of junior did participate in civil disobedience but not to take that knowledge and apply it to something to really matters. daniel in california is a student at berkeley talking about the 20 fear -- 24-year-old english major. he says he has a busy schedule and has not been paying close attention to what has been happening. he says he is a jewish student and rejects -- he is critical of the israeli defense force and says what is done for the identity of jewish persons -- he

does not want people to be hostages. he has chosen a less visible form of activism. he is donating to online fundraisers. we will go next to jesse, calling on the support line. caller: good morning. you know, we talk about anti-semitism. israel -- you know i support the students with what they are doing because we can go on and on. but what about black people? host: we will go to mike in kentucky.

caller: i'm totally against this. it is upsetting to see it every single day. these kids are nothing but spoiled brats. they should be punished severely for participating in it. it is ridiculous. host: why do you feel it is meticulous? caller: because of what they are doing. it is wrong. this is america. this is not palestine or whatever you want to call it. host: ok. we will go to ralph. good morning. caller: i would like to say, these spoiled brats are our spoiled brats.

martin luther king was demonstrating for everybody. it was peaceful. however, there were some people that were paid to go in and disrupt. there were other people who were not willing to bring about a change until we demonstrated and continued to march. to me, these student are saying, we need to bring about a change. the u.s., what you have been trying for years and years is not working. we need to have another support mechanism. as far as speaker johnson going up and telling the jews, we support you jewish people, but he did not say anything or try

to bring people together. these people are fighting every day, not solving anything. he reminded me of her marching, when you had the republican from alabama, the governor that said segregation yesterday, today and tomorrow. another said, you will not eat fried chicken in here. going to the conference of alabama and staying, how do you think they were treated? you are seeing the same thing over and over again. i will say one other thing. i want to know what it means when the neo-nazi keep saying

jews -- nobody answered that. it was brought up to commentators on your show. it was brushed over by your producers. it is ok for them to say that, but others want to bring about a change. nobody will listen. thank you. host: joseph in florida on the not sure line. caller: i just want to underscore some of the common that have made previously. i believe in these protests. it is america, the first amendment to go ahead and speak your mind. as a group or individual. i just am not into holding miller estate hostage. you think that is wrong.

they should do their protest peacefully, no problem. like the last caller said congress is not setting a great example. they should be the adults in the room and setting the tone for protesters, actually showing partisanship, showing that we are going to reach out to the other side and talk about issues. that is really all i wanted to say. congress needs to step up. these kinds of protests are what are showing. the adults in the room are not leading these kids in any particular direction. they can solve the problems rather than pointing them out. host: last night was the white house responded dinner.

talking about some of president biden's common policies. per palestinian protesters gathered outside. here are some common. [video clip] >> let me see if i can summarize where the race stands at the moment. the republican candidate owes half a billion in fines for bank fraud and is currently spending his days firing himself awake during a hush money trial, and the race is tidy? -- tied? [laughter] the race is tied. nothing makes sense anymore. the candidate who is a famous

new york city playboy took abortion rights away, and the person trying to give you your abortion-rights back is an 80-year-old catholic. how does that make sense? [laughter] [applause] by the way, president biden, isn't it crazy that he is only our second catholic president? in a few short months, we will have our third in rfk junior. i'm kidding. like his vexing card says, he does not have a shot. -- vaccine card says, he does not have a shot. host: c-span digg cover last night's dinner. if you would to watch the full event, you can watch it on c-span.org. we have time for a couple more calls. good morning, mike. caller: good morning.

i believe we have the largest jewish population outside of israel. we have a friend who goes -- it was absolutely dateless. -- ridiculous. there are 9 million residents in israel. those who talk about genocide, they forget that jews were exiled to africa, and back and iran as well. host: we look of next to betty, calling on the support line. caller: hello. i was involved in the anti-apartheid is meant back in the day. the land was taken from them. we are --

they have taken over the land and are having negative it -- it is because students force the big companies. this is about racism, money and power. the peer people -- poor people do not have the money of people supporting them. way back, what happened to the palestinian state? thank you. host: we will go to charles in newark, calling on the not sure line. caller: hello.

thank you to c-span for running this particular topic. in 1969, i was a soft were at university. i was not part of any of the protests come there were multiple protests for the vietnam war. i do not think protesting -- except maybe for the civil-rights movement, leads to any productive changes. one time i came into school and i was told by my classmates that the administration building was now occupied by the protesters. the nice thing about this is when the administrators came to work, they politely asked the protesters to leave the building , otherwise the police would be called. the protesters were polite back then. they left the building and nothing else happened. that is much of what i wanted to say. i wish there was no camping out on campus. what i see now is an

overextension of one's rights to camp out. those are private institutions not public. to camp out on those properties and interfere with the day-to-day operations of the college, it is not fair to the student or the people who work there. thank you to c-span for doing this. i hope this gets resolved amicably. host: we have time for one last call on the opposed line. caller: how are you doing? especially against the current administration because they are the ones who tried to help resolve this issue in palestine. i kind of perplexed. right here in georgia, they do not want the president to speak

at the commencement here because of this issue. but this is the president who is trying to do what he can to help the palestinians. if you turn around and elect the former president, he would care less about the palestinians. he is trying to get immunity so he can put soldiers on the street who can shoot a protester down. i do not so i don't understand this young people, how they come up with the opinion with the protests against them. who they vote for, it seems like they are just running amok, and they are going to vote amongst themselves, and then what are you going to do, when you have someone in office who does not care anything about your issues. host: that does it for the first

hour of "washington journal." still ahead, we will talk with two authors about their new books. next, we will talk with batya ungar-sargon and discuss her book "second class: how the elites betrayed america's working men and women." later, we will talk with bakari sellers and his book, "the moment: thoughts on race reckoning and how we can move forward now." ♪ >> tonight on "q&a," talking about surviving nazi germany as a jewish member of the hillary youth and how his mother was -- hitler's youth and how his mother was arrested by the gestapo. >> i saw them in front of the

building, and my brother and i decided that, rather than going in and going there with the gestapo people, we waited on the corner and watched it from there, and we decided to ask our mother what the gestapo was doing there, we would go our mother. welcome all of a sudden, to my surprise, it was my mother they were bringing out of the building, put her in the gestapo car, and he took her away. >> jack wurfl on "my two lives."

you can watch all of our podcasts on the free c-span now app. >> the house will be in order. >> this year, c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we have been your primary source for capitol hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government, health policy is guided, -- how policy is decided, powered by cable. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we are joined now by batya ungar-sargon, the "newsweek" opinion editor and author of "second class: how the elites betrayed america's working men and women." welcome come about yet. guest: good morning -- welcome, batya.

guest: good morning. host: what did you want to highlight as you went into this project? guest: well, it had become clear to me that a lot of the polarization that we have seen constantly, the fighting we see in congress and the fighting in the media was really a very much elite phenomenon. i became very convinced that the real divide in america was not actually between right and left but between an over credentialed , multiple degrees, college educated elite, and the vat american middle and working-class. i saw poll after poll that showed that americans were more united than denied it, and i would turn on my tv and see the division, that did not reflect where the average american was

cute i wanted to understand this phenomenon, i wanted to understand who is the american working class, and do they still have a fair shot at the american dream? that is what really led to "second class." host: who did you talk to for this book, and how did you find those people that you talked with? guest: it is such a great question. i wanted to talk to working-class people across the country, so i knew i was going to spend a year traveling around to different corners of the country come interviewing people of different races, different genders. and i wanted my interviews to be representative of larger trends. i knew there was going to be limit on how many people i could talk to, whether 70 people or 100 people, but i wanted the people i put in the book to be representative of larger trends, either of geographical trends, or trends of their industries. i went to a professor called joe

price, and his grad students will work with journalists like me who work in the softer scientist, and they will help you analyze data. i asked them to take the data from the american census survey from 2000 and 2020, so i can see the trends come and they gave me a data perspective, a bird's-eye view who is the american working class, where are they working, where they live, where are they more likely to be able to own a home? which working-class industries are more likely to have people become homeowners, and once i had this sort of data set, i could then go out and look at people who represented the largest groups and tell their stories, and those are the stories that you will find in "second class." host: so as you were talking with these people, did you come across any trends of what they wanted or how they defined the american dream, present-day? guest: absolutely. the definition i came across

most frequently of what the american dream is, people said the american dream is when you are able to cover all your bills, you own your own home, you are going to be able to retire with dignity, you have adequate health care, and your children have at least as many choices as you do. now, within the working-class, some people really are able to achieve the american dream, but some people are really not. homeownership is a big deal, buying your first home has become extremely unaffordable these days, but also, there are a lot of people in this country who work and work and are still poor, they are still teetering on poverty. so that kind of economic diversity within the working-class was a big feature. that said, despite this economic diversity, despite the racial diversity of americans working-class when i found really shocked me, and when it came to ideology, when it came to policy, they came to what

working-class americans thought would help to better achieve the american dream there was almost no difference between working-class americans who vote for democrats and working-class americans who vote for republicans when it came to what policies they supported. host: going back to talking about that american dream, i know you said that is something going into this book that you wanted to talk about, if it is still achievable. what is the consensus? working people and their definition of the american dream, is it something they can still achieve? guest:guest: so most of the people i interviewed had a very similar view on it. this is what they told me. they only people who work working-class who had achieve the american dream, but they save your hard work is no longer enough to guarantee it so you can do everything right, you can make every right decision, you can avoid all the vices, and it is still a 50/50 shot of whether

you will be able to make it into the middle class or whether you will be downwardly mobile and become part of the working poor. there are sources outside of their control, and of course if you make one mistake, it is almost impossible to get back on that track. so they felt that, you know, you can achieve it, but it is not completely up to you. i have to tell you, everyone i interviewed works so hard, and they took a lot of pride in their work. in the west, people tend to think of working-class people as, well, why don't we give them more welfare, why don't we give them affordable housing, why don't we give them vouchers? but the people i interviewed, whether they were democrats or republicans, they did not want handouts. what they wanted was for their hard work, which they work so hard, to reward them with the most modern version of a stable life, and that is no longer the case for many of the people i interviewed. host: probably a good definition

or understanding to have for your book and also the conversation is, how do you define "working-class"? who falls into that category? guest: it is a surprisingly hard thing to define. i talked to a lot of sociologists, historians, experts who have helped me come up with a definition, because i knew what i was describing. i was describing a class divide. if you have a college degree, you will on average make over $1 million more throughout the course of your career than somebody who does not have a college degree. if you have a college degree, you are much more likely to be able to own a home, your health is better, you live longer, and your life is insulated from the kind of precariousness and instability that plagues the working-class. that divide is very real, and it is entrenched in america, which used to be a country that we like to think of ourselves as a classless society. there is a class divide, so i

wanted to describe the people on the underside of the divide. it working-class person is somebody who works full-time in an industry that does not require skills you would learn in college but who has been locked out of the top 20%. the point of this clunky definition, i admit, is really what is happening in the course of america over the last 50 years is through multiple policies that were put in place, mostly by democrats, actually, the american dream has been set aside for people in the knowledge industry, people who have that college degree, and people who are working-class, who don't have that degree, have been increasingly left out of the cold, despite the fact that they work so much harder and that their labor -- we all rely on it in order to survive. host: we are talking with batya ungar-sargon about her book, "second class: how the elites betrayed america's working men and women."

if you have a question or comment, you can join the conversation. the phone lines are divided regionally, eastern/central, your line is (202) 748-8000. and, mountain/pacific, (202) 748-8001. batya, when we talk about the working-class, how has the environment, how has it changed over the past few decades? guest: so, back in the 1970's, which was the high watermark for working-class wages. they really stagnated after that, and then in really real dollars have fallen. the largest share of the gdp was in the middle. the middle-class presented the largest share of our economy. today, that has shifted upwards, but not to be billionaires the way that the people in the top 10% like to complain. the share of the gdp that is

controlled by the billionaires has not significantly changed since the 1970's. so where did all that gdp go? "second class"second class there was a middle-class -- well, there was a middle-class squeeze, so a lot of that gdp was squeezed upwards to the people in the top 20%, these people with multiple degrees who work in the knowledge industry. those people now control over 50% of the gdp, whereas a lot of working-class people were squeeze downward into the lower middle class and into the lower classes, to where they are now struggling. so back in the 1970's, if you were a college professor and you work in a factory, an auto worker, and autoworker coming probably made around the same amount of money. that is no longer the case because of that middle-class squeeze. how did that middle-class squeeze happen? it started with nafta appeared we took 5 million good paying jobs and shift them overseas to china and mexico, where they are

happily building up china and mexico's middle-class, even as we speak. president obama defunded vocational training, which used to be a very solid pathway to the american dream for the working-class. and we have a huge dearth of skilled trades folks, and that is a result of that funding, we gave $2 billion to colleges and $1 billion to trade schools, even though we are overproducing college degrees and under producing people who can fix things with their hands. the most important thing, perhaps, is mass immigration. in 1971, the high watermark for working-class wages, that share was going somewhere else, 4%, today it is 15% on a 16%, and the majority of those immigrants, especially the ones who came here illegally, worked

in working-class trees, where you don't need a degree, you don't need a commander of the english language, necessarily, so they are directly competing with janitors, landscapers, construction workers, and driving down their wages simply because there is a glut of labor available. and one of the only ways to raise working-class wages is to restrict the number of laborers. all of these policies together have contributed in a big way to the view that working-class labor is less dignified and less deserving of the american dream. that has been very much part of democratic policy throughout the last years. host: we have callers lined up to talk to you. we will go first to andrew in newark, new jersey. andrew, go ahead. caller: i think that the way that you present the issue is a little bit fake, you know? all americans get 12 years of

public education, paid by society, the same way in europe, everyone gets mandatory 12 your funded education as well. however, at the end of 12 years of public education in america, after 12 years, education, you go to medical school, whatever graduate school you want to. in america, four very expensive years of college, which is really just high school material, professors who you never get, you get the pa or someone teaching you. these four years are probably the most expensive years of your life. you don't have to pay for a masters or phd because you usually get grants or so on. a cost nothing to get a high school degree in america. it costs a fortune to get a college degree.

and what is a college be green? it is a finishing of high school. if you are going to complain about the working-class in america, keep in mind that most of them don't come and train for the jobs that they really want, and they into in the jobs of low education. so unless you make american high school education more meaningful, more educational, then it would be more like it is in european countries. this problem is going to persist forever. host: but? your response. guest: i agree with a lot of what you said, andrew. i have a phd, and i think there is a lot of chicanery, nico cooper read going on in higher education. -- nincompoopery going on in higher education. in high school, students already get funneled into three trucks, one truck goes to college, one

truck goes to middle-class education, and in one class goes to vocational training. already in highs will, students will come out of high school ready to take on a trade. it is unconscionable that we are not doing that. it is unconscionable that we have told young people in america that in order to achieve the most modest version of the american dream, you have to study algebra and shakespeare. come on! what are we doing here? we literally signal to students that if you don't go to college, you are a loser. it is such a mistake, because many of these trades folks, and what we are doing is devaluing working-class life. yet i think have in europe, and germany, again, is a wonderful example of this basic oral bargaining. you have a sector of the economy, service workers, waiters, baristas, people who stock in circle -- in supermarkets.

these people as an industry establish their own minimum wage, the protections of the job, the hours of the job, and this gives them immense powers to compete with corporations and to give themselves a strong footing from which to protect their labor and give themselves a living they have and something -- living wage and give themselves something to have. host: john in new york, go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. i really want to thank you come about yeah, for coming out and saying these things out. i have always 77. i taught school for almost 40 years. during that time, there was a decline in education. it was really disturbing. the administrators and

principals and teachers being more tolerant of people not working hard. the elites, especially in college, they were all liberal. they all indoctrinated students and some of "woke" miasma, so what we are seeing now is the students feel entitled. if you talk to them, and you given facts and pacific's, whether a cultural issue, an economic issue, they just toe the party line. they have no intellectual curiosity, so to speak. it is just frustrating to see all this. so the fact that you're coming on and exposing this -- let me make one last statement.

i have friends them and they are very successful, and because they are successful in one industry or one field, they feel entitled to pontificate and talk to people, talk down to people because of their success. i look at guys like bill gates, they have a masonic complex. they are going to socially near the world to make everything better, and they are the ones who could do it, whether it is zuckerberg or these people. it is very frustrating. i'm very concerned about the future of the country when i see this happening. so the fact that you are doing this and are exposing best, i hope people are listening. i hope they understand, because we have a great deal to lose. so, thank you for your time. bye-bye. host: batya? guest: i'm very humbled by that. thank you for your service, john, teaching our kids for so many years. you brought up a really interesting point.

this thing called wokeness, the other extreme view on race and gender that throws we the decision between drivers is wrong and instead and opposes the view between oppressors and oppressed, and the oppressed are inherently virtuous, this has trickled down into high school s, and it is the perfect smokescreen for the class divide i'm talking about. it allows them to masquerade as the side of the virtuous and on the side of "the little guy," while actually having immense amount of contempt for hard-working, middle-class people, and to show their distance from hard-working regular working-class and middle

class, they come up with an idea that is foreign, just at the time would average americans became totally convinced that dr. king was right, totally convinced and unified around the values that this great nation was founded on. thank you so much for the call, john. i'm truly humbled by it. thank you. host: batya, some of the things that you talk about in your book, you use the phrase " diploma divide," "diploma glass ceiling," "degree inflation," can you explain what some of those are and how they are connected to what you were just talking about? guest: absolutely. so, you know, we all remember the time that, you know, people like president clinton and president obama started saying, you know, these jobs are not coming back, like these manufacturing jobs, that somehow there was some sort of inevitability of creating a market and economy around everyone going to college, everyone will get new skills,

everyone will join the knowledge industry. and so what they did is they started to funnel a lot of this funding toward the college education, under the idea that this would widen the pathway to the american dream, create a larger middle-class, but what it actually did was the opposite. it narrowed the past because, you know, only some people are going to excel at college, only some people will be able to enjoy that setting and be able to do well in it. only some people are going to be able to come out of that college degree and find a job that requires a college we are already overproducing college-educated americans, so 50% of americans who have a college degree are what is called under employed. they are working a job that is not require any skills learned that college, right? there are too many people like that, and meanwhile, there are a whole bunch of jobs that still need doing that our society will always require -- truck drivers,

people working in health care, looking after the elderly, people working in the service industry and hospitality. we are always going to need people to do those jobs, but this view of "everyone has to go to college to get the american dream" ended up devaluing those jobs some both spiritually and economically, to where now if you are a waiter, now if you look after the elderly, now if you are a truck driver, you can know longer for the homework save the american dream. why is that fair? and it was the result of intentional policies. i think that is the important thing to keep in mind, which may have started from a good place but may have ended up justifying the content that college-educated people have for people who work with her hands. the diploma divide, if you have a college degree, like i said,

on average you will make $1 million more throughout the course of your life. it is not because your work is more valuable, it is just because of the way they have divided the economy, whereas jobs who don't require college, randomly require a college degree, simply in order to cater to that elite and to give them more money into squeeze more of the gdp in their direction. that is the diploma divide. if you get that degree, even if you are not using any skills you learned in college, you will make more money. and if you don't have that degree, you won't even get an interview, because the corporation is using its software to funnel out applicants who do not have that degree. and that is really unfair. host: we will go next to jim in virginia. go ahead. caller: yes, hello. , again,? -- batya?

i think i'm saying that right. guest: yes. go ahead. caller: i appreciate what you are doing. i started in the 1980's, like exec in a working-class guy, i did not go to college at all. i made my way can i build my own house with my own hands, i build another house, and i moved along, i was making a pretty good, especially when reagan came in, that is when everything started commanded everything turned, you know, like flatlined. and then trump came in and it is like someone clicked a light switch for working people. you could make money, you could actually work with your hands and make enough money to survive and take care of your family you cannot do that with joe. it is like every time you go everywhere, everything doubles, triples, quadruples, it is ridiculous what is going on. i live through jimmy carter, who was a nightmare. i don't know how i made it back

then. now it is like right back to the same thing. and you are exactly right. everything that you are talking about is what is happening. young people are so disheartened, especially young man, they just can't work hard enough to make it come and they cannot afford to take care of their family. i don't know what happened with young people. i'm trying to teach my grandkids to be smart now, but, you know, i don't know what's going to happen. i appreciate everything you are doing. that's all i've got to say. guest: thank you so much, jim. thank you for your call. i think what you said is very important for people to understand. when i was interviewing working-class people, i traveled around the country, spoke to about 100 people, definitely very divided in terms of party they voted for, but they were not divided about which president had put money in their pocket, and i spoke to a lot of who had voted for joe biden who admitted to me that truck had

put money back in their pockets. i think there is this view among democrats and on the left that the way to help people who are working-class is to sort of raise taxes on the ridge and then redistribute it. and then the pretrial gop, the way you help people who are struggling is no tax, tax cuts, and it will trickle down as the rich get rich enough, and the truth is neither of those work for where working-class are out here what they want is for the fruit of their labor to deliver a dignified wage. the way that they think, the best way to do that is somewhere between the middle of the two parties. they don't want other people's tax dollars, they don't feel entitled to them, and they feel insulted at the idea of handout, but they also don't like a culture that size with corporations against the little guy and only cares about tax cuts for the rich. what they want is a trade

policy, and immigration policy, a housing policy, a health care policy that speaks to the little guy who is working with his hands and working very hard. honestly, in many ways, the policies that were put in place by donald trump in terms of immigration and in terms of trade, really spoke to working-class people, whether they were white or black or hispanic or even democrats or even gay. i interviewed a gay certified nurses aide from florida, and she told me again and again that truck had put money in her pockets. by the way, she was married to a woman who voted for trump, because her wife felt that trump was a person who could not be bought. and her wife's mother respected their choices and one of her daughter to be happy. the american working class is so not polarized about the issues that are polarized among the elites, who are on the extreme. host: we will go to pat in new

york. pat, go ahead. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i want to say, first of all, the u.s. as a nation is a nation driven more so by profit and controlled by powers of finance. education is an industry here, just like so many other ones, pharmaceuticals, etc. i want to say i worked as a quality assurance representative for the u.s. government, department of defense. in the 1980's, when i started working, most of the companies i visited -- and i visited hundreds of them. i worked and audited them, worked with them. i noticed that their employees had more benefits, they had more pension, 401(k)'s, they had a lot of other things that today, after retiring, i noticed a lot of these new workers in the same industries are basically working from week to week on a salary. so, you know, things have

changed. the middle class has been squeezed. i had only a two-year community college business degree, but i was able to get into the government. i was able to have this job. i was able to take it overseas for many years. i was a representative for our government. i chaired meetings with nato, many countries in germany. i had an amazing job, meeting with the embassy, it all i had was this two-year degree. i was awarded by admirals, generals. so the education that i had, including my military technical education, was enough to propel me to higher levels without having, you know, the ribbons, this is to, cetera while i was in europe, i also met students from russia who were telling me they were forced to go to college in their country to learn some kind of trade commit if they were not good enough in the medical field, they had to take art or music or something. and this education was given to them for free. in europe, the students in

europe could afford it. it subsidized, so they are all able to get university education. the point is, the school should be free from students. it should be provided for them, because you don't know what you can make out of a poor population who can't afford to go to school, what can come out of the population? incredible people, if they are given the opportunity to learn. the other thing is the type of learning. i believe senator bernard said it before he died if i the senate that our education system has changed, it is not concentrate anymore on social sciences, sociology, history, civics, political sciences. they develop the human mind, create thinking people as opposed to just technical sciences, so they can learn computer or engineering trades to make a profit for the factory. the drive has changed. there's always things that have to be taken into consideration.

i believe amy goodman set on "democracy now," the american dream used to be owning our own house. today it has been trying to get rid of your debt. this is the situation we have been put in. it is all driven by money. we don't have moral drivers anymore. look at the campuses now. host: we got your point, pat. let's get a response from batya. guest: thank you so much, pat. i agree with you, the 1970's, the high water mark of the working-class wages. 29% of the economy was in manufacturing. when you had working-class people making things like cars for working because american consumers, so their bosses had a vested interest in making sure there workers were well played, because they are -- their workers were well paid, because

they were there consumers. you had americans producing in americans consuming. the gdp would go up every time you made a sale like that. it was a really balance economy. today, the largest sector of our economy is in, speculation, financial invasion, arbitrage, corporations by another corporations them and then they can to skimp, down to the penny. go back to the certified nurses aide, she told me after the third time the nursing home she worked at was sold, there was a big premium on, they spend one dollar a day to feed ph of the elderly people in a nursing home. one dollar a day could you can imagine what the food is like they are. -- there. the bosses are not beholden to americans, they are beholden to the shareholders. it is so immoral. the example of feeding the

elderly on a dollar a day, can you imagine working your whole life in this country, paying taxes, and you are 88 years old, you are confined to a bed, and they are feeding you this garbage? it is so immoral. so i totally agree with that. yeah. host: batya, something you mentioned earlier, and pat just mentioned it, not needing a four year degree to get ahead, you mentioned the difference in government investment between higher education and vocational or trade school. why is it that big of a difference, and what impact is that having? guest: it is a direct result of the idea that, you know, the future of our economy was going to be in college. everyone was going to be in college. so president obama defunded vocational training. so that money was sent to places where you get a four-year degree. it made no sense at the time, right? we will always need plumbers,

electricians, truck drivers. there are parts of our economy that will never go away. we are always going to need waiters. we are always going to be women who clean hotel rooms. and actually there are people in places in the country where these people are paid a living wage. if you look at las vegas, the average woman who cleans a hotel in las vegas makes $22 an hour. that is a solidly middleweight in some parts of the country. las vegas itself is sort of a test case for whatever economy look like if we had a secured border and immigration policy that respected the labor of working-class americans. if you think about a place like harvard that has a $40 billion endowment, why are we giving taxpayer dollars? how does that make any sense? and the students come out of these colleges with immense debt, they are very unhappy

about it, but, again, when you hear president biden say "we are going to pay off that student debt," imagine how that sounds to working class americans we will take taxpayer money, you did not get to go to college, you do not get the benefit of a college degree, we will be making $1 million over the course of your career, but we will pay off their debt. it is an upward transference of welcome and they are not happy about that. host: we will go to mike in aurora, colorado. hi, mike. mike, are you with this? we will try one more time. we will go on to paul in new york city. caller: hi. how are you doing? not that i disagree so much with the presenter here, but she is fairly coming in from new york city, which is where i am from.

people who make a decent amount in new york city pay a lot in taxes. so the idea that is number one. the idea that college makes you an elite come on looking at the internet here, and something close to like 46% of the population has either an associates or bachelors degree. you are saying half of the population is delete? that sounds -- elite? that sounds a little hard to swallow. i do agree with a little of what you're saying, but just to circle back to the first caller, and that is, what happens in education -- the reason why these businesses and would have you are going for people with college degrees, when that is not really required for the actual job, is because it is a sorting ability, but it does

provide some sort of guide to the employer that the person has gone through a bunch of boring courses and what have you and has been able to gradually, they are able to do it because there are so many people who have. that goes back to the problem of 12 years of k-12 where basically people are not being educated very well. despite the amount of money that is being spent, k-12 in the united states, pursed, we spend more than most european countries, like luxembourg might spend more, but the reality is, the results are much worse. and eric adams, who is the mayor of new york city, has identified that as a problem in new york city, how much money is being spent has increased, yet the results are quite bad. and i think, again, you have to go back. i appreciate your book, but i tend to have a little disagreement here.

i think it is hard to say that obama was the only reason why there is less spending on vocational training. there was not much before hand, either. guest: thank you so much. great questions. i agree with you. it is always great to get a few moments of disagreement and debate. i'm a big fan of that. thank you so much. all right, let's start with the elites. 33% of americans have a four-year college degree. of them, 20%, the top 20%, they are overrepresented in that top 20% in the knowledge industry. of course some people get a college degree and omega. 11% of people in service industry jobs have a college degree, right? service industry jobs are a very difficult way to achieve the american dream and america.

that top 33%, that upward squeeze from the middle, those people control a lot of what happens in this country, a lot of the political decisions are aimed at them. there is an entire party now that is catering basically to the top 20% of over credentialed college elites and the dependent poor. that is the democrat party now. their base used to be labor, for now it is the two extremes, people who can't work or don't work, people who depend on government welfare, and the top 20% who are extremely well-off compared to working-class americans. so i agree with you, you know, yeah. you cannot call 46% of the country elite. i'm talking about that top 20%. and it is not like the aristocracy, top 1%, but that is the argument i'm making, is really the top 20% who is hoarding the american dream for

themselves, and honestly, i think he's right that the taxes are much higher in blue america, but to me, that is a little bit like an indulgence that the rich are willing to pay in order to maintain their status and their standard come and they really do not distinguish between a dependent poor and the working class, because they are so much better off. it is not really like charity, it is more like an indulgence. what are they buying off? they are buying off a system that rewards them with a system that is leaps and bounds ahead of their cleaning lady and their landscaper and their construction worker in the truck driver who brings the groceries to their house and all of these people whose labor they rely on to sustain themselves. host: batya, along that point, "the carolina journal" has a headline study can only 2% of state lawmakers come from the working-class. and from the "washington post" opinion, a recent piece points

out that if members of the working-class were proportionately represented in congress, they would make up 60% to 70% of lawmakers instead of the 2% to 5% that have historically won seats. so, if they were proportionately represented, what impact would that have on these policies? guest: that is such a great question. i will tell you about this sort of wonderful middleware i found, like, the vast majority of working-class democrats and republicans agree on issues. you will hear how different it is from the party platforms, ok? most of the people were extremely pro-gay, they had maybe a gay person in their life or were very tolerant and wanted gay people to be treated with respect. they were very worried about the transgender agenda, about, you know, bathroom situations, about sports, trans women competing

against women in sports, they were very worried about, you know, inappropriate books in schools and children being exposed to sexualized material, that was whether they were democrats or republicans, right? the republicans were very pro-gay, and the democrats were worried about the "transgender agenda." they were worried about people skimming off the system while they work hard, both the republicans. but also, they were not against raising taxes on the rich and corporations. they were very excited about how much mass immigration there has been to this country, and they could see in their bottom line how it impacted their wages into very direct way, but they were also very upset that health care is unaffordable, that people have medical bankruptcy, that they had worked so hard with their bodies and yet have deductibles that are $5,000 a year that you have every penny that they are able to save. so which parties today vote for, right?

the democrats will talk about health care but really believe in, you know, decriminalizing illegal border crossing, as we saw an 2019 in the debates. republicans believe in securing the border, but they will never talk about health care. so it is a total crapshoot which party they vote for. these, you know, 98% of legislators who have a college degree, they come out of college and come out of the university very much believing that whatever the party platform agenda is, that is there sort of spiritual, political truth. working-class people don't have that at all. if they were in charge, what you would have is, you know, universal health care, basically a total moratorium on immigration, you would have very strict trade policies, tariffs on many imports. you would have, you know, very strongly pro-gay marriage but very against trans women in women's sports come in bathrooms. parents would have total say over what kind of bugs are allowed in their children's schools. there is a radical moderation to

this man is somewhere in between. neither party is really speaking to where these people are at. the person who comes closest to this set of policies that i laid out is donald trump. host: we will go next to nancy in houston, texas. hi, nancy. caller: hi. i stopped watching your program a long time ago, because you never had anybody on there that made any sense to make of it was all these "washington post," "l.a. times," all these papers and newspapers that, you know, are so for the democrat, democrat, democrat. never anything republican. and if you did have a republican on there, oh, my god, they got slammed. this woman, i was going through the menu when i got up, this woman absolutely hit a chord with me. this is what i have been saying

for years could i remember going to looking for jobs come and if you do not have a college degree, you were left out like you were a worthless piece of crap, and they would not hire you. always the person who had the college degree, i have been a college for four years and i got a ba and all this, i'm self-taught and i worked my finger to the bone my whole life, but i was looking on as less than. and this woman hit it on the nail. it is all about how colleges -- if you went to college, oh, you were out there. if you did not go to college, you were nothing. thank you so much for finally having somebody on your program that makes total sense to me. host: batya? guest: wow. thank you so much for calling in, nancy did i really feel your pain. it is something i heard a lot when i was interviewing people.

just, you know, to be looked down upon when you are working yourself to the bone at a job that this country would fall apart without, it is so wrong, it is wrong morally and spiritually come of it is also wrong economically, and if you care about democracy, you cannot treat the majority of your citizens like garbage. you cannot have a stable democracy without a strong middle class. and what we have done is we just squeezed that middle class, we have an oligarchy of the credentials on one side and then the working or on the other, and it is almost impossible to make it now if you are somewhere in the middle, just based on your hard work. and i so feel your pain, nancy. thank you so much for calling in. host: glenn in newtown, pennsylvania. hi, glenn. caller: hi, how are you doing today?

i seem to have a different recollection of what people did come and i started out in the 1960's. in the 1980's, ronald reagan said what as wrong is having stuff made somewhere else, to make it cheaper for the average person. but with all the electronics moved out of the country and moved to japan, the steel mills started closing up. then we had his vice president, bush senior, he wrote nafta and bill clinton signed it. at that point in time, i said nobody is for the working man. these parties don't care about the working man, so i voted for ross perot. now, the horse is out of the barnyard. is never going to be like it was coming i really don't know what these young kids are going to do for a living. that is about what i've got to say. i know she's not going to agree with me, but that is the way it was when i work through it. thank you. guest: i totally agree. [laughs]

to me, this kind of -- the move away from manufacturing toward college is very much a democrat proposal, but i think before trump, the republican party obviously did not care about the working class at all, and, you know, people on the left will often say, you know, trump is all bluster when he talks about supporting working people. there is a lot of bluster there, but he has a very strong record. and if you just look at trade, you know, the caller's right, there was a handshake agreement on both parties on trade that we should ship all manufacturing overseas and in exchange we will get cheap products. it is not matter that americans will no longer have a home to put their flatscreen in, because they will be able to get a new flatscreen every year for $75, right? that was what both parties believe clement trump really took -believed-, and trump took

an ax to that and said, that is garbage. we will have a trade war with china, what about that? steel and aluminum, the average steelworker who works in the south, in right to work states, so nonunionized, makes $80,000 a year, solid wage. he slept 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum. this stuff really works to we had a caller from virginia who called in and said he thought of money coming back into his accounts. i really object to the view that a person living on a shoestring budget does not know which present policy is better for them. they have no cushion with which to do -- when you have two feed kids and get them to school and back and fill up the car with gas, you know how much everything costs, and you know which policies are helping you and which are hurting you.

policies should reflect where we are, and i agree with the caller , there is a sense that both parties but abandoned the working class. by the way, president biden kept a lot of trump's trade policies in place muscle when the caller said the cow is out of the barn, i do think something has shifted, and at least on trade, there is a new view in washington that you cannot just shift good american jobs overseas, and it is time to start bringing them back. i think that is taking hold on both sides, which is a great thing to see. host: we will go to matt in wisconsin. hi, matt. caller: hi. i agree with everything the guests said. i washed over the years, having changed a lot. i remember reading in the milwaukee journal sentinel and the late 1960's how we were going to turn this country into a service society, and they

had done that. they were bragging about it on the front page of the newspaper. in the same thing about how the south would rise again, it was from the civil war, they would take all the jobs, move all the jobs down south, with no unions involved. and i agree, both parties have had a big hand in this. when you talk to this legislatures, they really don't understand. they keep passing more laws and more laws on top of us, which hurt everybody. they need to make less laws, go through what they have come and get rid of these laws. the tax policies, the same way. the rich people and the corporations get all the tax breaks. that is why you will never see the tax law change, because if they made it simple, the government would have no power left, and it is the same thing at the state level. and i've been involved and i've been involved in my have 40 years of research on public schools at home.

i know when it started and how long it has taken to get here. the interesting thing is we had over a 100-year plan, and it does not matter when it gets in place, it is when the openings occur, we take advantage of it. and it hurts the public. guest: yep, i agree with everything that caller said. host: we will go on to ramona and georgia. hi, ramona. ramona, are you there? one more try for ramona. we will go on to michael in connecticut. hi, michael. caller: yes, hi, thank you very much. i'm sitting here stunned listen to this woman promote, literally promote the end of education, end of democracy, as she hypes donald trump over joe biden. that is essentially the message she is going out of your. i want to point something out.

during the trump administration, when he raised tariffs on china come it was the first time i noticed the chinese raising prices, and we were seeing all kinds of higher prices, under the trump administration. the mishandling of the pandemic by donald trump, which thrust us into a shutdown that was so unnecessary, but that was donald trump who did that. he mishandled the pandemic. we were thrust into a horrible situation, and then the follow to that was he mishandled and bungled the rollout of the vaccine, which created more problems for this country. and by the way, joe biden was the one who would finally straighten that stuff out. i thought i was going to listen to a woman here he was going to take on a real issue for this country. instead, she takes a plebiscite with a guy who can't stand democracy and wants to become a dictator.

shame on you for what you are doing. it is disgusting! thanks. guest: i know that trump brings out a lotta very strong emotions in people. i'm not meaning to take sides, i'm bringing what i found when i interviewed people across the country, to explain maybe wide trump is polling at 35% of black men, working-class hispanics voted for him, why the multiethnic working-class coalition that used to be the democrats base has completely defected and abandoned the democrats for donald trump. and it is because the democrats abandoned them first. but of course the caller is entitled to his opinion could i know donald trump evokes a lot of strong emotions in people. i spoke to working-class people that felt the way about

trump that the caller does, and they are planning to vote for hand, because of the economy. i appreciate the caller so much. host: we will go to david in california. hi, david. caller: thank you for taking my call. i wanted to ask results on the connections of crime and the strata has on the working-class americans. and gentrification on blue states. and i want to say that rfk is one of the candidates that is addressing helping the working class. and if i cook them i would vote for him one million times in every state. -- and if i could, i would vote for him one million times in every state. guest: thank you. crime this proportionally impacts the working-class and poor people. it disproportionately affects black people. they are 70% the victims of

violent crimes. it is atrocious that democrats, in order to cater to their rich, white progressives -- i don't understand how this is ok. of course when your life has been impacted by crime them especially as a child, this has a huge impact to achieve the american dream down the road, just like being born out of weblike for a child is the most devastating thing that can happen for a child and can represent downward mobility. these things are horrifying. it is almost like both parties have decided "this is not our problem," and i find that to be really on a separable. that's really on acceptable -- really unacceptable. they should be fighting to protect children. host: batya ungar-sargon, author of "second class: how the elites betrayed america's working men and women." we really appreciate your time. guest: thank you so much for having me.

god bless all of your viewers, thank you. host: of "washington journal," we will be talking to another author, bakari sellers, discussing his new book, "the moment: thoughts on the race reckoning that wasn't and how we all can move forward now." ♪ >> this week the house and senate are in session the house plans to take up legislation to combat anti-semitism. the senate will consider a f.a.a. reauthorization bill to extend the programs past the may 10 deadline. tuesday nasa administrator testifies before the house science space and technology committee on his agency's 2025 budget proposal. united health group's c.e.o. will testify on sooner security in the health sector first tuesday before the senate finance committee and wednesday before the house energy and

commerce subcommittee. it marks the first time the united health group c.e.o. testified before congress since the rain some aware attack. then the interior secretary test before the natural resources committee on their proposed 2025 budget. watch this week live on the c-span networks or c-span now and head to c-span.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand any time. your unfiltered view of government. c-span now is a free phoeb open with your unfiltered view of what is hang in washington. keep up with the biggest events with live streams the floor proceedings and hearings from congress. white house events, court, campaigns and more from politics

all at your fingertips. you can stay current with the latest episodes of "washington journal" and scheduling information for c-span tv networks and radio plus a variety of podcasts. it is available at the apple store and google play. visit our website c-span.org shrars c-span now. c-span now your front row seat to washington any time anywhere. >> "washington journal" continues. host: joining us is bakary sellers author of "the moment thoughts on the race reckoning that wasn't: welcome to the program. guest: thank you for having me again. this is my second time. host: we are happy to have you back. can you tell us why you wrote the book? guest: i had an opportunity to interview cicely tyson before

she passed away and asked her about writing an autobiography when she was over 90. i wrote this book because it was a burning feeling that we had an opportunity as a country to have somewhat of a reckoning or reconstruction even post covid, post george floyd and maybe it was my naivety. i thought we were on the path but we missed that mark. i wanted to highlight the reasons why we missed the mark and do something most books don't do. a lot of books on race highlight the problems and manifestations of structural or institutional racism but don't get into the prescriptions of how to get us out of this nadir. i tried to offer solutions. hopefully we can tkpwaoeplt off the sidelines and have

constructive conversation on how to move forward together. host: you started book by talking about this photograph that your dad is in. we are showing it to our audience. tell us about the photo and why it is significant. guest: first of all, there was some bad news in that but that is my dad and stokely and john lewis. it includes sidney poitier and harry bellefonte and others. it is a cross section of black intelligentsia grassroots activism. wealth, entertainment. pop culture. it is tan after harry bellefonte and sidney poitier had these members from being arrested after protesting apart height and they went to rikers. it shows in order for us to have progress and to make strides it takes a cross section of

individuals. it takes everybody. my father and i began to have this conversation as we kick off book about individuals all pitching in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's and he doesn't necessarily see that now. one statement my father made which jumped to many readers and i pushed back and it stems from this picture. but my father believes as a country we are back in 1954. when i put that in the book i didn't think it would be such a startling moment for a reader. however, many readers have said for them having someone like my father who has gone through so much say this country is back in 1954 was a sobering reality and check on the struggles we are in. i disagree with my father on that notion, not objectively or statistically because there are

statistics such as black home ownership is the same as 1960's. there are metrics whereby he is absolutely correct. but i cannot say jimmy lee jackson and medger evers and others the heroes and heroins gave the last measure of devotion. i can't say their lives were in vain so my somewhat conclusion is we have made a great deal of progress in this country. we just have yet a ways to go. host: you talk about the progress what are some of the factors of why or why not it hasn't progressed? guest: for particularly black folk the price of progress is extremely high. we don't have -- you don't have political success or political progress in this country without black blood. i know some viewers are what are

you talking about. you don't get to 1964-65 voting rights and sweet the evan pettis bridge. that showed white folk what was hag in the south being blue jayened by batons, dogs, hoses and gave them a reason to pass. you don't have the fair housing act without the assassination of dr. king. you don't have a conversation about criminal justice reform until you have george floyd with a knee on his neck for nine minutes. crying out for his mother on video during covid. for me one of the better examples we don't take down a confederate flag without nine people being murdered in a church. so you ask about progress. the cost for progress for block folk is -- black folk is extremely high and one of my jobs as an active participant is

drive down the cost of change. the blood tax we have to pay for progress is something i want to be able to drive down one day. host: we are talking with bakary sellers author of "the moment, thoughts on the race reckoning that wasn't and how we can move forward now: you can call in our lines are regional. that is eastern and central and 1-202-748-8201. when you were working on this book what were you looking at in terms of research or who were you talking to? guest: one of the more fascinating people i talked to and wish he had an opportunity to speak to your last guest, but reverend william barber. he talked about bringing this country together through the lens of economics. his argument is one i find to be

extremely valid. but i said if you pitch a message of quality healthcare and first class education and lifting individuals out of poverty to the white people in appalachian and west virginia you will find out how much you have in common with black folk and mississippi and maybe we can come together. he was an interesting person to talk to. my chapter on black men and untapped power i talked to antoine seawright who is one of the inside the beltway kind of d.c. people. we were talking about it is generational and he is younger than i. we were talking about the reason you are seeing slippage in black men is decades long just lack of attention to the needs and hearing the issues and attempting to solve problems for this particular demographic which is the second highest in terms of voter turn out for democrats. i talked to my brother in the

ministry about the black church and what has become of it. tkpwarl i spoke to garling about covid under the leadership of gretchen witmer is michigan and he is the lieutenant governor. his story was unique that he actually lost over 20 people due to covid and we try to unpack that. so we have some unique voices in this book. it is a combination of these interviews, a combination of memoir when i bring on the legacy of my father and snick and learning those lessons with julian bond and marion barry and judy richardson tying in with the interviews and prescribing a message to go forward. host: you mentioned reverend barber. he is somebody that c-span knows well. he has 25 videos in our video so

you can go to our video library to hear more. we will can go to richard in brentwood, maryland. hello. caller: good morning, mr. sellers. congratulations on your new book. i once in a chance encounter with you on the east-west highway but you were on the phone. do you ever think you will run for political office again? and i always felt that you should have been part of obama's administration because of your political strategy, your analysis and your strategy offering support that analysis and i thought that mr. obama was be lacking a word you used once i used it before i heard you use it is tepid. i thought you could have helped him overcome his tepidness to be a more effective president. did you cover him in the book in

terms of with the expectations we had many things fell short. thank you to your answers for the host's first two or three questions that were informative, eloquent and states that you had that strategy that he should have had as a political strategist over valerie -- nothing personal she was green -- you could have been that bump he needed to get back but he just resolved to the fact that he wasn't going to fight to get the house back and i felt you could have helped him do that. i'm a fan of your work, congratulations and hopefully i will see you strolling down h street again and book pick up the conversation. be well. guest: man, thank you so much. next time you see me on the phone tap me on my shoulder and let's have that conversation.

i try to be warm and welcoming on the street to don't ever hesitate to interrupt me just to say hello. you never know what people are going through and sometimes in this business it is overwhelming. so your kind words can be something it lifts,a spirit so i look forward to seeing you. in terms of my political future or ambition, every day that goes by people ask me in south carolina will you ever right hand for anything again. i served in the legislature in south carolina and eight years i was the youngest state legislator in the country. i got there when i was 21. i have donta work from within that system. people ask me will i run for the sixth congressional district in south carolina which is currently occupied by jim clyburn when he retires. today i would tell you the answer is yes but each day that goes by a lose a little bit of that interest. for me, how many times do you

intentionally go to a job where you work with people you know you will dislike. i have no burning desire to work with matt gates or marjorie taylor green is that is something i will have to pray about. in terms of barack obama i did get offered a job with the obama administration in 2008 in the document of agriculture che i was still a young legislator. i wanted to be -- i didn't want to necessarily tie my political future to foreperson and i wanted to be able to chart my own corporation. i'm very close with the 44th president and i do think he could have done some things different. i a state i would rather be compared to julian bond than barack obama and that is not a knock on barack obama. i still speak to him regularly and somebody adore but julian bond came from an organizing background who had a different understanding on how to meet

people where they were and implement a policy to move forward. so, i think that the obama administration as you look back on it throughout history will be looked upon more kindly day by day. it is like the affordable care act and how that has grown in popularity since its implementation. just how consequential he was as a president. did we want more? of course. it is very difficult when you work with someone like mitch mcconnell who say their entire goal is to make you a one-term president. that makes it pretty differ. host: we go to tony in florida. hi, tony. caller: good morning. good morning, mr. sellers. i have lived here less than 60 years but i have been visiting and vacations in the united states since the 1950's and i'm distressed because there seems to be a cabal of people

including julian bond and our current president who keep reaching back into the past selectively to keep us feeling aggrieved and angry in a method to control us and we can never move forward. i know what it was like in 1968. do you? or have you heard about it? i know and i think it is a disgrace that black people are being used and two years because of the congressional elections they winds us up and push what i called our black button and people can remember -- they can't remember 1919, they can't remember 1964 but we can we can remember 1619. you are not doing anybody any

good. people spoke about people like you. it is just -- stop it, please. i'm really tired of it. guest: well, you know, that is an interesting opinion. i actually talk about individuals like yourself. i think the letter to the birmingham jail was probably ridden to people like you. dr. king will a very, a lot of thoughts about simply ignoring or selectively forgetting or not remembering. you asked me a question do i remember x year or did i just hear about it? so i would share with you the fact that february 8, 1968, my father was shot with 28 others by south carolina state troopers on the campus of south carolina state college. three men were killed. lawmaker actually went it trial and they were found not guilty.

they arrested my father because he was in snick and he got incarcerated. he was found guilty of rioting. he was the first and only one man riot in the history of the country and had a felony until was pardoning in 1990 so my family when you have a father with a felony you know how difficult that can be to make ends meet so not myself per se but my brother and sister probably grew up under different circumstances because of injustice so my father still has hat scar on his shoulder from where he was shot and that arrest. so when you ask about the lift and do i know or just read, no, i know. i live with it every day. i talk to history every day. i think that is the problem that individuals who want us to forget about or history or not live with it is not a black button. it is something i talk about in this book and in the moment that

is missed. so the history you want us to forget with the black button you don't want to push which i think is silly pan fesses itself with -- i grew up in a food desert it is institutional racism where you don't have access to fresh fruit and vegetables. we lost our hospital because we refused to expand medicaid. man tpelgs of the institutional racism. we don't have access to clean water because our pipes are rusted and destroyed. they put a chemical in the water which proves to been suitable and make the water less potable in flint, michigan. when you take these factors, lack of access it fruit and vegetable and you you have support disease like diabetes. you don't have access to healthcare and you are not drinking clean water and overlay it with a pandemic, it should be no surprise black people are dying at higher rates.

so i'm not highlighting a pain for the sake of highlighting pain. i'm not highlighting the plight or illuminating structural racism for the hell of it. what i'm saying is we missed a moment to deal with some of the underlying causes of that structural racism. so while you want to forget that in florida, you don't want to acknowledge 1619 or me 191968, if you don't want to acknowledge the contributions of julian bond that is on you. ilk focused on trying to remedy these issues that we have never dealt with so my son and daughter who you met in the background watching cartoons or eating breakfast can have a better tomorrow. we may disagree on that and as you echoed to me i would echo back to you, stop that. host: we will go to ruby in ohio. hi, ruby. caller: hi.

hello bakary. i enjoy all of your commentary whether on c-span or otherwise. i wanted to ask is the book going to be on audio? and could you point out to us which one of the men is your father on the picture and have the post beautiful day. guest: he is the tallest one with the afro. he looked similar to me. tall and thin so he is the tallest in the picture. the book is you can get it anywhere backs are sold out last tuesday on amazon, et cetera and it is on audio and i read it. i don't know if on c-span you delve into this much but doing your own audio book is one of most difficult processes one ever goes through. not only is it tough on your throat because you read so much, you really sometimes it is almost like you forget how to read.

it is a weird thing because you are reading words that usually you only write, you never enunciate them so you stumble over words and phrases an miss words because you are trying to speak in a colloquialism so it is a tough process but it is audio book. i hope everybody gets it in any fashion, shape, form, from local book sellers or amazon and barnes & noble. i will just ask you it keep me in year prayers. host: how long did it attack you to do the audio recording for your book? guest: three days and half day of pickups and this book took me two full days so i was in the studio a total of 16 hours but you take breaks so it was a hefty -- and the book is only 200 pages so i can imagine people reading 400 and 500 passenger books. i don't know how -- page books.

host: next we go to pat in pensacola, florida. hi, pat. caller: how are you today. host: doing well, thanks. caller: i have a couple statements to mr. sellers. first off, to me he is nothing but another racist. but let me just say that as a black spokesman where don't he address the fatherless homes in the black communities and why don't he address the 70% of abortions young black women have every year? he says that blacks can't get ladies but you have the civil -- ahead but you have the civil rights act in place 60 years. what are you going to quit making excuses, have fathers in the homes, support your own children, get off government assistance and these young block

guys need to be machine and move on with your lives and quit blaming whitey for everything in your life. host: do you have a sponges. first thank you for calling in. they are so pleasant when they start. first of all i'm not a black spokesmen and people get in trouble when they think they speak for all african-americans. i leave people who have the audacity lake stephen a. smith to their own devices but i'm actually in my home right now with sadie ellen sellers who is a five-year-old and stokely sellers who is a five-year-old named after stokely carmichael. one thing i like to do you talk about a generation of fatherless children. i think you have to acknowledge or ask why that is the case and how we had a criminal justice system when you were, when we

were going through the early 1990's and had the war on drugs that took a lot of black fathers out of their him for decades. now as we had to crack the epidemic in the 1980's and 1990's it was treated with such harsh criminal penalties but we have an opioid situation and you can deduce why that is the case but you have to ask fatherless homes, the why. you bring up points about abortions and toes types of things -- those types of things and young generation of black men need to step up and you do have a young generation of black men stepping up and attempting to overcome and move forward. one of the most amazing things you articulated, pat i think it was pat, was that we got the several rates act in the 1960's. so there you said it.

african-americans have only been full citizens in this country since the mid 1960's. so, that is kind of difficult to catch up with when you have 300 years of slavery and another 100 years of jim crow and state sanctioned oppression then you get full citizenship in the 1960's. so we have catching up to do. whether or not you want to be part of the solution or not i'm going to work hard to do it so my children can overcome people like you. host: something you talk about in your book is building wealth and that ability to get ahead. california is one of the states has the reparations as a way of rectifying that. do you agree that reparations are a solution? guest: yeah, i'm a proponents of reparations. my question if you ask me a yes

or no question the answer is yes. if i can respond deeper i say what does that look like because i do not believe -- i like to believe in political practicality and i don't believe i will walk out to my mailbox and get a $180,000. that is not reality but structurally what can we did. we have seen like biden administration even though the obama administration at a certain point do things like try to make usda payments it block farmers for example for the decades of generation they have gone through. i think that a g.i. bill for an equivalent to a g.i. bill for african-americans students allowing them to go it state supported institutions for free. i think something along those lines creatively would have to be something that is looked at but right now i would argue we are actually be reaggressive and take a -- regress seufr --

regressive right now. host: we will go to lawrence in st. paul, minnesota. caller: thanks for the opportunity and mr. sellers i will start by saying i appreciated your comment about people that are organizers yet keep the glue in the moments bass i think that is -- because i think that is important. i want to go down the path of concern for me and i apologize -- not i apologize but the guy that talked about family and in the wrong manner. the urban league issues a report each year on the state of black america. that never includes the importance of family and the issue of the lack of fathers in families. i don't want to put you behind

the eight ball it respond, but i do think that needs to be an emphasis throughout black america to get or act together -- our act together so we can build like you're doing. i will hang up and listen. i appreciate what you're expressing. guest: thank you for calling from st. paul. i'm in minnesota a great deal i represent a family there and i actually love the community and love how you guys come together it overcome from st. paul to minneapolis. your points is not wrong. i was attempting to articulate that to the person from florida. we understand that there are a lot of children that grow up in single family homes. we have to ask ourselves the question of why first and then after we ask why we have to begin to do things like make sure that we can, we have to

make sure sadie is talking to me in the background, we have it make sure we did everything we can to make sure that the kids do not grow up alone. and while we are saying this and having these discussions something else we must do is for me in particular my father was somebody who did there as well, we have to stand in the gap. that is what we call it in the black $and be there for young people that do not have fathers. we have to make sure we are breaking that cycle because we have generational trauma and we have fatherless homes that have become cyclical and we have to break that by giving good examples, showing good examples, participating in schools, being there for these young people and when they are out of school, after school, summers and there's so much we can do individually. sometimes we lose track of that because of our daily tasks and you are right, we have to do more of that. i would encourage everyone

listening to make sure they participate in their kids's high schools and elementary schools but not just for their kids but those that may not be as fortunate as those we are raising in our individuals homes. host: chuck in syracuse, fork. caller: it is unfortunate but mr. sellers he is a father, homeowner on "washington journal" is engaging in the politics of perpetual victim. he mentions food deserts which are in democratic run cities and he is not talking about lake people of dr. ben carson. the reason is just two months ago one sentence out of the poll says the democratic party is wide leads over republicans and black americans has shown by nearly 20% over the past three years during the biden administration. instead of talking about

grievances why don't you talk about despite your father's difficulties you are successful and you are standing up in front of us but telling other people it is not going to happen. stop with the victim stuff and start with the perseverance stuff. guest: it is kind of hard having conversations with people who do not want to hear truth. so i'm not playing victim. i'm just talking about giving a sobering reality of where we are. when i talk about growing up in a food desert there is not democratically run about south carolina. one talking points these big blue cities with the poverty and one thing we see and even dr. william barber talks about this that is not accurate. the pofrplt we are talking about where you have lack of access it care and hops are shutting down that is mississippi, alabama, georgia. that is south carolina. that is louisiana.

that is oklahoma. where we are talking about this level of poverty. i'm not talking about baltimore. i was raised in denmark, south carolina where we had the same series of leaders say for jim hodges the past three decades so you are talking points are wrong and we are talking about the poverty that is there. and i'm not dealing with anything in the past. what i'm saying is that the papgs has to be reckon -- past has to be reckoned with because it manifests itself today in these systems of unjustice and i would dare ask you in syracuse or pat from florida where are black women three times more likely it die in childbirth than white women. you cannot answer because you refuse to acknowledge that the systems of impropriety exist and you continue it turn a blind eye i will make sure black folk don't have to continue to try to

survive. i want to get to a point where we can thrive. that is my number one focus. that is why i don't just talk about the past. i talk about where we can go in the future and how we can get there. host: where are some of the biggest racial disparities that we are seeing today? guest: some of the biggest racial disparities are access it quality care, access to first class education. many times when you look at the public school systems in south carolina and throughout the country dare i say they are funded on a three legged stool. you get the federal government funds, state taxes and local property tax. when i was a legislator one thing i realized is that i couldn't recruit industry because my schools were bad. my schools were bad because i couldn't recruit industry. so it was somewhat of a double

edged sword. but i think if you look at those two factors in particular, just lack of access to quality care particularly in the south. look at phps and how many counts don't have ob-gyns or hospitals. or south carolina is the same way. that lack of access to care. then you have schools violently miseducating our children and it is a recipe it keep people -- to keep people in the socioeconomic situation they are in. >> we go to michael in garners, north carolina. caller: good morning. thank you for your guest today. i believe that we are in the reconstruction. the first one died in wilmington. the second was when king was murray would. the third one is now.

guest: i don't disagree. i actually that is one of the reasons i wrote the book. i think we had an opportunity to make more progress than we did and i think that period of growth is over. i think that periods of growth -- we are in a nadir and in that dark period of post eras of great success. we are in that very dark periods where you see the eregulation of our rights and many policies that we are so used to having being repealed and toes policies we fought for. the voting rights of 1964-65 has been gutted. the only hope that i have is that king said once only when it is darkest can he see the stars so i take hope am seeing the stars. host: we will go to ron in new hampshire.

ron, are you there? caller: can you hear me? host: there you go. caller: thank you for tacking my call. i think one of the biggest drivers today of racism is hollywood. the way that black people are portrayed in television and particularly film used to be more blatant. now it is a little more subtle, more insidious. for example, black person is more likely to deliver bad news to protagonist or show a room of people the position of black people are in the back or margins of the fringe. how do we address racism in hollywood? is it enough to call out the filmmakers for what they are doing or do we need to do more? guest: first of all, that is a brilliant question. that is a keen observation. i think that you have a lot of black studios and film makers that are attempting tackle that. so, one of the things i would

say is that black hollywood has to have its own reckoning and they have to get those opportunities. i speak to a lot of black actors and they will take on those roles and do those things. but i have programs like abbott elementary which has just been an amazing series that just got signed on for more time. you have to appreciate the fact we have given the opportunity you can have some success. i think individuals in hollywood just like other places in corporate america have to diversify. i believe there's a great value in diversity and you will be able to see that reflected on screen. that is a really good question. host: we will go to denise in holden, maine. caller: hi. first of all, there's been a lot of history where black people have been ruined and that has been in the past. i grew up outside of fort dix

one of the two bases in the 1950's and 1960's where racially blended couples were allowed to live. so, my high school was very integrated. what happened was as those integrations happened we became more blended. and i have a racially blended family now. and when you bring up -- i agree, there's been racism integrated and i have seen that. but as society and as we more blend together that is starting to erode. i remember being young and my grandmother saying that bad word and we going up to her and

educating our older relatives. that is no longer acceptable. and, you know, so, being my family is racially integrated, and we all get along, the in-laws, cousins, everybody, our christmas eve dinner is a blend of blacks and puerto ricans and whites and asian. so, i think as this country continues it -- to grow we will become more racially integrated and this should fall away. so, when i hear all the time it is so bad, it is so bad, in certain areas of this country like new jersey and connecticut and other places where we are all integrated.

we live the same experience. host: bakary, do you have a response? guest: i think that there is a certain level of confusion and something i definitely of -- i definitely i'm not dealing with the manifest nation where people call you nigger and i really don't care about that. i'm not talking about that. i'm talking about the manifestation of racism that find ourselves in systems in this country and the issue we are still dealing with. i do believe we have made a lot of progress and i'm thankful for people like you. we may not vote alike or agree on the issues but you and i being able to have tease conversations are the way we move forward so i applaud that. but i think we also need to realize that no longer are people wearing, you know, sheets

with their eyes cut out and burning crosses in front of my yard. instead they are able to talk about the great replacement theory in a prime time cable news slot on fox. when you are able to have those conversations that are 900th in such racial animus we have to be willing to call that out. so, i think that is one of the things i'm trying to do is make sure we can unravel these decades that we have had of racism and the way it is manifesting itself in these systems. that is first. second, i would push back and say this. i remember in june of 2015, when i got a phone call that my good present clemente pinkney was killed in a church, he was murdered with eight other people.

this didn't happen in 1950, this didn't happen in 1940. this was 2015. i remember when he was shot in the neck during bible study in the basement of motor e -- mother emust not and the reason is because of the color of his skin. i know buffalo, the grocery store where another young person had more hate in their heart than bull connor and lester maddux. so i don't necessarily want to forget about the fact that racial violence still exists in this country and we have to be willing to have that conversation. host: who needs to be involved in that conversation? who should be involved? we tacked with somebody had says she is trying it educate and help people but who else has to be involved? guest: she needs to be at the table because we may not align

politically but that is not the conversation we have to have. she needs to be at the table with many and many others. i think there's room at this table for everyone. our elected officials certainly, our church leaders and pass fors because i post few late that there -- postulate until white male evangelicals want it to change. we have to take the message aware hearing and i -- we are hearing and i hope she takes the message back to her home and i will take the message of fatherhood back. it -- this is not a random conversation. it is how to move the country forward. host: we go to timothy in mississippi. caller: i'm timothy and i'm from mississippi. host: did you turn your television down in the

background? caller: i want to know how you feel about our reparation? do we think we deserve money not just to say people that were slaves and ancestors but during the jim crow era and civil rights where we were denied access to libraries and had it pay taxes to libraries we couldn't go to. i want to know what he thinks of reparations. i feel like every black person should get at least $50,000 for reparations. that way they can buy land, they make themselves equal. guest: it just reminded me of the fact governor reaves i believe we are still in april, he has declared mississippi that this is confederate memorial

month, confederate history month. so, people like to talk about the progress we have made and we have paid some but here we're in mississippi they are celebrating confederate memorial month. people like to talk about this like i'm talking about something that happened ever so long ago or far away in the past and i'm reminded not only of my father's struggles but my motor was part of -- my mother did he go segregated schools. i listened to the gentleman from mississippi and he is talking about not being able to go it likes or having the same public accommodations. we are not talking about something that happened a century plus ago. this is still a generation of individuals still alive contributing it society today -- to society and fighters who are the reason who show. so for people it talk about i'm talking about something so far long ago is a misrepresentation. reparations, yeah, i agree with the premise of reparations but i

said yes we deserve but they are not going to mail you a $50,000 check in the mail so we need it figure out ways we can ensure in creative ways through policy that there are race specific solutions for race specific problems. host: we will go to james in akron, ohio. caller: hi. a couple things i want to say before i get to what i wanted to say. the last man called about reparations. that is not a problem for america. you can give every black person and family in america a $1 million and not spend $1 billion. it is giving something it black people, period. i think something that is going on right now and let me say this, you talk about white

supremacists. i had an uncle beaten unrecognizable to death in 1948 and two cousins in their 20's killed in 1966 both in alabama. in troy, alabama the place mr. lewis is from. but just those couple things. let me say there. the last 24 years the republican party made a considered effort to get black people it stop believing in religion and not it vote for the lesser of two evilless but when we have no options but those two options. as long as 94% of all printed media, news media and tv and radio is owned by conservatives so they control the narrative. that has been an effort they have making. as long as away stop believing in religion and ourselves we will never get the truth. it is like they used to say the

truth that you hear will never be the truth that you believe as long as you don't go back and find out who is telling the truth. that is a problem. so if the truth is given to you by somebody that is wrong you are not getting the truth. that's it. guest: you brought up two things. i cover both in the book. i talk about this silos that we have in the media today where being have these thoughts and opinions and then they are just cycled and reinforced. i gave the great replacement theory that tucker had. i think a few people have called with it feeling. but white extreme si is beinequality was lake oppression. so i'm not asking for black folk to be treated any differently but be treated equally. if that feels like oppression to you, then you probably have a

problem and we need it fix that for you. the black church i would say i don't necessarily blame it on the g.o.p. i think the black church has -- this is a harsh overgentlization but relatively stale. there's a generation of people that don't feel welcomed in that particular institution. i'm episcopalian. they call me back it saint phillips and my grand father was a baptist minister, my brother was in the ministry and we have seen a lot of black churches that are and were the foundation of our -- communities become institutions of prosperity and gospel teaching and phrafrd away from building community. those are some issues we deal with in the book and i think it in the words of will farrell it is provocative and keeps the

people going. >> we will go to james in collins, mississippi. caller: good morning, sir and how are you doing. >> i'm goods. host: let me say this i believe that this is the women's time it step up and speak out. i believe that if the women -- because the majority of what the women do i'm going to do. i'm going to votes because of what the women say and how they predict because we talk about black men, hispanic men but this is the women's time to stand up and i would hope that you would have the women before this election come go to washington and have you speak out and tack it -- talk about how person it is to vote. if they don't stands,for what they believe in it is 2024, it is over.

for anybody that is being suppressed. another thing, when they talk about racism or the word woke, the word woke to me is no different than the bible where it says awake. it means the same thing woke means but they don't want to tell you and they say they don't understand doing that suppression time when it feels time for the people it come out of slavery, they turn around and put those people back in office. they put them back in office and gave them back positions and not only that, they only had the ones that was retained to be in the jim crow era. so i'm asking yo -- hello. host: we have it, james. guest: he actually articulateed a good point that this is, this

election season will be about women. you saw that in kansas, you saw that in ohio, seeing it in arizona with the how they passed the 800 abortion -- the abortion law from the 1800's. you saw kansas put abortion on the ballot and how resounding. same in ohio. i think women particularly when it comes to reproductive rights will play a huge role. there's a role for minnesota -- for men to play it help women make decisions about their own bodiment particularly those who believe you have to provide for your family and make sure they are taken care of. i think that there's a relevance for us to play as well. host: we will go to willie in

katie, texas. hi, willie. caller: i'm 60, i was born in new york and found my way it south carolina graduated from college down there. listening to you, mr. sellers, people like you continue to force black people to i guess flow with -- folks said it but black americans nowadays we have were better opportunities now than ever before. and i think individually to keep moving forward is the key. but you have black kids for example i don't know if you have seen any of these videos learning it be victims and lashing out at anyone who they think might have dissed them in some sort of way. two things really quickly.

you categorize black talking to another caught -- caller as unanimous citizens prior it 1960 but these people will believe you based on your emotional content. the next one is, question is you said black women are more likely to die than white women. if you could give me the medical reason not that access to quality care and all of that but give me the medical reason why you think black women are dying more so than whites. i will hang up. thank you. guest: first of all, i don't think that black women are dying at higher rates than witness women during child birth. that is an objective fact. i would urge you to google it. second i lived with that my wife lost seven units of blood giving

birth it our twins. so with it is my family or serena williams or somebody on medicaid, many black women struggle that and become a statistic. you asked why is that. usually what we've found in the medical research and i would urge you before you go out public and push back look at the medical research because there's this implicit bias in our healthcare delivery system that black women in particular are more toerant of pain. so they are less likely to be believed by their providers. in my wife's case we had it yell and scream when she say she was not feeling well and there was nothing but blood. i had to be her number within advocate at that time. so, bush number one advocate.

so before you say there is a thought or not true, research it. second is you pushed back on my articulation that we were not full citizens before the civil rights act and voting rights act. i don't understand. how can you being a full citizen when you can't vote, when can't participate in democracy, when you can't have the same accommodations, we you have to sit in a separate restaurant. we you have to drink from a different water fountain or go to the same schools. so, i don't know -- i would encourage you it not just reads my book but flat out read and also you mentioned you went to school in south carolina. i acknowledge we made a great deal of progress. i'm just trying toen raffle the system -- to unravel the system. the number one cause of black

children or children period in south carolina underperforming is hunger. hunger. that is the number one cause of children underperforming it schools of south carolina so my push back is why is that the case. let's unravel the structure so we can make sure we are providing kids in this 21st century an opportunity to succeed. host: we have time for one more call, gabrielle in durham, north carolina. caller: thanks so much. there is very interesting and thanks for all your work you do on this. i'm an independent and i have always kind of been in the center on a lot of the issues. i think the left is very extreme and right is extreme. but when i look back at things i was taught early on and want to focus on one central thing that i think you have with with a framework of what you're

alluding to is that how do we mention better? how do we reach out it people to -- out to people to help them understand the truth but at the same time how do we builds,almost -- how do we build an effective strategy for communicating the things we need to communicate. because when i look at fox news, i'm not saying -- what i'm saying is that they are very intentional about how they make a monster, how they push a message and they are effective in reaching a conglomerate of people that are energized. and i feel the nature that quite often perpetuates the left is much more willing to kinds of -- if you're reasonable on the left and they are extreme on the right you end,settling between the extreme and reasonable and that just sort of cuts on the wrong side. i didn't even learn -- there is

the last thing i will say -- i didn't learn about reconstruction and all the failures that happened until i went to law school. i was taught by a constitutional attorney that was certain pro right so i knew it was the real deal. it was not a liberal at duke that feels -- was teaching me. thomas payne the king was not the most worrisome thing. but it was the conciliatory person had turns a blind eye it the injustice and put your finger on what you would do to change that narrative. guest: you bring up a good point. one thing i try it do is tell the truth and often that truth is left out of these conversations. but i always like coming on to this particular show because you

get varying opinions and while there are some who probably never want to be in a room with me, i am heartened by the caller from new york who talked about her family and talked about how she wants us to be and believes we will be in a different place in the future. all we have to do is persevere. you are right about messaging it or own community and communities around. there's some places where i might have the right message but i'm not the right message is if there is a message tack -- take back it your community that is best. >> bakary sellers, how week move forward now. -- how we can move forward. thank you for talking with us. guest: thank you and 150eu78 sorry for sadie and stokely joining us. host: no, we are happy to see

them that is it for "washington journal." we will be back tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. eastern, 4:00 a.m. pafb. of -- pacific. until then enjoy the rest of your sunday.