WEBVTT - Criminal Justice Reform and The Abolition of Prisons 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:26.276 Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show 0:00:26.356 --> 0:00:29.316 where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news. 0:00:29.756 --> 0:00:37.316 I'm Noah Feldman. There's no more pressing question facing the 0:00:37.396 --> 0:00:40.396 United States today, or really at any time, than the 0:00:40.436 --> 0:00:46.076 relationship between race, crime and incarceration. Today, one in every 0:00:46.116 --> 0:00:49.996 three young African American men is locked up. That's a 0:00:50.036 --> 0:00:52.956 moral crisis, and it's one that has troubled leaders in 0:00:52.996 --> 0:00:55.236 the United States, white and black for most of the 0:00:55.276 --> 0:00:59.076 last century and a half. To talk about this crucial question, 0:00:59.356 --> 0:01:03.276 I'm joined by Khalil Jiubran Muhammad. He's professor of history, 0:01:03.396 --> 0:01:06.636 race and public Policy at Harvard and he's the author 0:01:06.716 --> 0:01:11.236 of a deeply insightful and prize winning book called Condemning Blackness. 0:01:12.076 --> 0:01:14.076 He's one of the leading thinkers in the United States 0:01:14.436 --> 0:01:17.676 on the deep causes and potential solutions to what he 0:01:17.756 --> 0:01:21.636 sometimes calls the carceral state, the state that puts people 0:01:21.676 --> 0:01:24.876 in prison. Khalil, thank you so much for joining us. 0:01:25.076 --> 0:01:29.236 Glad to be here. So, Khalil, you're a historian. Your 0:01:29.636 --> 0:01:33.276 major book really a field changing book that came out 0:01:33.316 --> 0:01:37.476 almost a decade ago. Not quite No, that's a that's 0:01:37.476 --> 0:01:39.276 a good thing. I mean, when you transform a field, 0:01:39.276 --> 0:01:41.876 you know, it takes time for it to spread to everybody. 0:01:42.476 --> 0:01:45.276 The book's called The Condemnation of Blackness, Race Crime, and 0:01:45.316 --> 0:01:47.916 the Making of Modern Urban America. You showed in the 0:01:47.956 --> 0:01:52.676 book that this phenomenon of white people in the white 0:01:52.676 --> 0:01:57.556 power structure thinking of African Americans as criminals to be imprisoned, 0:01:58.436 --> 0:02:02.516 goes back way beyond that period. That there is no 0:02:02.596 --> 0:02:07.036 idyllic picture of nineteen fifties and sixties. The idyllic picture 0:02:07.516 --> 0:02:10.716 never existed in fact at all. With respect of these questions, 0:02:12.076 --> 0:02:15.956 you take us back to the period immediately after reconstruction 0:02:16.036 --> 0:02:18.836 or the failed reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War. 0:02:20.116 --> 0:02:23.476 Tell us a little bit about your core story there, 0:02:23.556 --> 0:02:30.356 about what fundamentally didn't happen after the end of slavery. Yeah. 0:02:30.396 --> 0:02:35.356 So the easiest way to think about the origin story 0:02:36.196 --> 0:02:41.636 is that for most of the last fifty years, Americans 0:02:41.676 --> 0:02:44.916 have been thinking about a racism in our criminal justice 0:02:44.956 --> 0:02:50.396 past that ran through Southern lynch mobs and convictly sing. 0:02:51.356 --> 0:02:55.796 And if you sort of pull the average white American 0:02:55.876 --> 0:02:57.996 on the street, they would say, yeah, that was a 0:02:58.036 --> 0:03:01.316 bad time in American history, even the Marchicket. Anyone to 0:03:01.316 --> 0:03:03.356 speak in favor of lynching today. Yeah, Like even the 0:03:03.396 --> 0:03:06.556 most red meat Republican you know is proud of the 0:03:06.596 --> 0:03:09.276 civil rights movement and it uses that moment and it 0:03:09.356 --> 0:03:12.036 is precisely a break point to say that in everything 0:03:12.076 --> 0:03:16.796 that happens now is about individual responsibility. But it turns out, 0:03:17.476 --> 0:03:19.716 because of the work that many historians have done looking 0:03:19.716 --> 0:03:22.676 at the South in particular, we know that that was 0:03:22.716 --> 0:03:25.236 an era when the criminal justice system did the work 0:03:25.356 --> 0:03:29.036 that chattle slavery once did. So people who had been 0:03:29.436 --> 0:03:32.996 enslaved and forced to use their labor on behalf of 0:03:32.996 --> 0:03:36.996 white slaveholders get arrested for petty or significant crimes, doesn't matter. 0:03:37.436 --> 0:03:40.516 They get put into chain gangs or prisons, and those 0:03:40.596 --> 0:03:45.276 become the kind of second rebirth, as it were, of slavery, Yeah, 0:03:45.316 --> 0:03:49.036 to use that metaphor. But more particularly their labor and 0:03:49.076 --> 0:03:52.436 their new civil rights, in particularly the right to vote, 0:03:53.356 --> 0:03:57.276 become contested to reign for their own autonomy as economic beings. 0:03:57.356 --> 0:04:01.676 Like do you actually get to own land and negotiate 0:04:01.716 --> 0:04:05.156 contracts that are mutually beneficial or at least fair to you? 0:04:05.396 --> 0:04:07.676 They answer kind of is no, because the more that 0:04:07.796 --> 0:04:11.556 you demand an autonomy and agency as a black Southerner 0:04:11.796 --> 0:04:14.916 one step out of slavery, the more likely you were 0:04:15.156 --> 0:04:19.356 to face the wrath of white property owners, which essentially 0:04:19.476 --> 0:04:22.316 was regulated by the criminal justice system. They just simply 0:04:22.356 --> 0:04:24.116 called the sheriff and say this person is a vagrant, 0:04:24.196 --> 0:04:26.596 arrest them, and then you might be subject to a 0:04:26.636 --> 0:04:28.956 sheriff's auction and sold back to the same person you 0:04:29.036 --> 0:04:32.236 were just negotiating a labor contract with as now a 0:04:32.276 --> 0:04:34.436 convict who has to work off their fine, and you 0:04:34.516 --> 0:04:36.956 might never work off that fine. So a really important 0:04:37.036 --> 0:04:39.156 part of that story that I think is not known 0:04:39.236 --> 0:04:41.836 to a lot of people who do understand that there 0:04:41.916 --> 0:04:44.636 was an era of segregation and Jim Crow laws that 0:04:44.716 --> 0:04:48.396 followed the failure of reconstruction is the component that involved 0:04:48.436 --> 0:04:51.236 taking African Americans who wanted to assert their rights that 0:04:51.276 --> 0:04:56.476 they in theory had and literally imprisoning them and through imprisonment, 0:04:57.116 --> 0:05:01.756 returning their labor to white landholders, to the white power 0:05:01.796 --> 0:05:04.876 structure of the South. That's right, And even something like 0:05:04.916 --> 0:05:08.596 felony disenfranchisement laws, which we just saw in Florida for example, 0:05:08.636 --> 0:05:11.636 come down out off the books, were born in this 0:05:11.756 --> 0:05:15.956 era as a way of again controlling the political autonomy 0:05:15.956 --> 0:05:18.156 of the black population that then was voting for the 0:05:18.196 --> 0:05:21.676 Republican Party and very much opposed to a lot of 0:05:21.676 --> 0:05:24.596 the most extreme forms of white supremacy that we're entrined 0:05:24.636 --> 0:05:27.876 in the Democratic Party of the One Party South. So 0:05:28.076 --> 0:05:30.836 there's no moment to your point, your initial point, in 0:05:30.876 --> 0:05:36.036 the post slavery period, when the notion of black criminality 0:05:36.276 --> 0:05:39.516 and the function of criminal justice are not deeply invested 0:05:39.556 --> 0:05:44.316 in controlling black freedom. So that's a story about Southern 0:05:44.396 --> 0:05:48.476 white control of mostly Southern African Americans. Not only is 0:05:48.796 --> 0:05:51.796 people's labor only momentarily given back to them an in theory, 0:05:51.836 --> 0:05:54.516 and then taken away from them through the criminal justice system, 0:05:54.556 --> 0:05:56.876 and I put them in quotation marks, but even the 0:05:56.996 --> 0:05:59.636 right to vote is then taken away on the theory 0:05:59.636 --> 0:06:01.636 that if you've been committed of a crime, you no 0:06:01.676 --> 0:06:04.196 longer have the right to vote. But your book is 0:06:04.276 --> 0:06:07.636 also really importantly a Northern story, a story about the 0:06:07.676 --> 0:06:11.316 part of the country where people like to tell themselves, 0:06:11.396 --> 0:06:13.796 or white people they like to tell themselves, well, that 0:06:13.956 --> 0:06:17.356 never happened. Jim Crowe did not exist in the Northern States. 0:06:18.756 --> 0:06:21.716 Tell us about what happens, especially as African Americans in 0:06:21.796 --> 0:06:24.756 larger and larger numbers begin to come north for jobs 0:06:24.756 --> 0:06:27.236 as part of the Great Migration. Yeah. So the reason 0:06:27.276 --> 0:06:30.476 why that backstory is so important is because it produced 0:06:30.876 --> 0:06:34.876 what I like to say, an artifact. And that artifact, 0:06:35.196 --> 0:06:39.276 that thing that came as a result of all this contestation, 0:06:39.356 --> 0:06:43.316 in all this criminalization of black Southerners, was a national 0:06:43.396 --> 0:06:46.756 census that pointed out that African Americans, who were only 0:06:46.756 --> 0:06:49.156 twelve percent of the general population, with thirty percent of 0:06:49.156 --> 0:06:52.716 the nation's prisoners. And so all of a sudden, overnight, 0:06:52.876 --> 0:06:57.756 you have this subjective fact, an actual fact that looks 0:06:57.796 --> 0:07:00.036 like black people have a crime problem because they're nearly 0:07:00.036 --> 0:07:04.556 three times overrepresented in the national prison statistics. And the 0:07:04.636 --> 0:07:06.276 question is what do we make of this? Why is 0:07:06.276 --> 0:07:09.156 this important? So let's really dig into this question of 0:07:09.236 --> 0:07:11.356 the census of eighteen ninety. You know, I'm one of 0:07:11.396 --> 0:07:13.556 those people who I've always been interested in American history, 0:07:13.596 --> 0:07:16.036 but when someone says the word census, my eyes usually 0:07:16.036 --> 0:07:19.436 glaze over. And reading your book, I was really hit 0:07:19.796 --> 0:07:21.916 that much like the upcoming census, which is much in 0:07:21.916 --> 0:07:25.996 the news because of the possible consequences of a citizenship question, 0:07:26.316 --> 0:07:27.836 the Supreme Court, in fact is going to weigh in 0:07:27.876 --> 0:07:30.116 on this sometime in the before at the end of June. 0:07:30.116 --> 0:07:34.116 I guess, much like the current census, which has real weight, 0:07:34.156 --> 0:07:37.996 real political controversy associated with it, the eighteen ninety census, 0:07:37.996 --> 0:07:40.796 which I myself had never heard of before. I don't 0:07:40.836 --> 0:07:42.556 think any of my great grandparents were in the country 0:07:42.556 --> 0:07:44.516 for that census, so I never bothered to look it up, 0:07:46.036 --> 0:07:49.756 really had a transformative effect on the way first scholars 0:07:49.756 --> 0:07:52.636 and the the general public thought about race and crime 0:07:52.996 --> 0:07:57.076 in America. So you mentioned this statistical result of the 0:07:57.116 --> 0:08:02.076 eighteen ninety census, disproportionate in theory representation of African Americans 0:08:02.676 --> 0:08:05.876 in prison right, African Americans twelve percent of the population, 0:08:05.876 --> 0:08:11.356 I think you said, and thirty percent nations prisoners. What 0:08:11.476 --> 0:08:14.116 was really going on there? There's there's a whole steep 0:08:14.196 --> 0:08:17.956 story here. Give us the essence of it. Yeah, the 0:08:18.316 --> 0:08:23.596 essence is that eighteen ninety was a perfect generational cohort moment. 0:08:24.236 --> 0:08:27.436 This is twenty five years after the end of slavery, 0:08:28.036 --> 0:08:32.356 and a lot of demographers, a lot of journalists, a 0:08:32.396 --> 0:08:35.916 lot of vested interest wanted to see how we're black 0:08:35.956 --> 0:08:38.836 people faring on their own. If you think of all 0:08:38.836 --> 0:08:43.636 the craziness that took place for wild eyed, radical white 0:08:43.676 --> 0:08:46.836 abolitionists to literally lay their bodies on the line in 0:08:46.916 --> 0:08:49.996 defense of black humanity for those who believed it. Others 0:08:49.996 --> 0:08:52.756 had other reasons. But nevertheless, if you take John Brown 0:08:52.836 --> 0:08:54.476 did exist, that's right, John Brown did so. If you 0:08:54.476 --> 0:08:57.876 take the purest motive of the abolitionist, they essentially argued 0:08:57.916 --> 0:09:00.476 that black people were no different than white people. And 0:09:00.556 --> 0:09:02.996 if you listen to Brian Stevenson today who says, we 0:09:03.076 --> 0:09:05.276 won the Civil War, but we would lost the narrative battle. 0:09:05.556 --> 0:09:09.036 In many ways, those wild eyed abolitionists lost the narrative 0:09:09.116 --> 0:09:12.676 addle eventually, because as soon as the eighteen ninety census 0:09:12.796 --> 0:09:16.356 came out, people look to that senses to then judge 0:09:16.556 --> 0:09:19.756 the health and welfare the fitness of the black population. 0:09:19.796 --> 0:09:22.156 They said, hey, well, sure, someone born in eighteen sixty 0:09:22.156 --> 0:09:25.076 six is now twenty five years old later, they're an adult. 0:09:25.156 --> 0:09:28.036 How are they faring. Oh, it looks like a third 0:09:28.076 --> 0:09:30.276 of the population of black people are now in prison 0:09:30.796 --> 0:09:35.516 as opposed to landowners or business owners, in other words, 0:09:35.516 --> 0:09:38.996 showing their productive capacity making a real contribution to America. 0:09:39.076 --> 0:09:41.836 And what that did is mask it masked all of 0:09:41.836 --> 0:09:45.276 that history on the ground that was happening that made 0:09:45.276 --> 0:09:49.116 those statistics virtually irrelevant. And I can just think off 0:09:49.116 --> 0:09:50.436 the top of my head, and you write about this 0:09:50.476 --> 0:09:52.116 a greater length in your book. Of things that would 0:09:52.196 --> 0:09:56.716 make those statistics highly misleading, even assuming they're correct, one 0:09:56.756 --> 0:09:59.196 that you talked about is length of prison sentence. How 0:09:59.236 --> 0:10:02.196 did that work? Yeah, Well, if as is true today, 0:10:02.236 --> 0:10:05.396 if Abrican Americans are serving longer time for the same crime, 0:10:05.716 --> 0:10:08.356 they're more likely to be in prison on the day 0:10:08.356 --> 0:10:11.476 a census, because the census is just a literal snapshot. 0:10:11.516 --> 0:10:13.556 It's supposed to be on one day, that's right, And 0:10:13.596 --> 0:10:16.316 so that's just one example. Or if a population over 0:10:16.356 --> 0:10:20.636 indexes for men, then their expected crime rates or in 0:10:20.676 --> 0:10:23.596 this case incarceration rate is expected to hire. Or if 0:10:23.636 --> 0:10:26.396 a population over index is for being young. So all 0:10:26.436 --> 0:10:29.036 those facts, and what about arrests, what about probability of 0:10:29.076 --> 0:10:32.436 being arrested? Well, every probably being convicted. You can imagine 0:10:32.476 --> 0:10:35.236 point after a point, every decision point within the criminal 0:10:35.276 --> 0:10:39.196 justice system, from police contact, to prosecution and to sentencing 0:10:39.676 --> 0:10:44.916 were all evident points for absolute discrimination being directed against 0:10:44.956 --> 0:10:48.076 black people. Now, the reason this has such an impact 0:10:48.196 --> 0:10:50.876 is partly that it's eighteen ninety and that's a kind 0:10:50.916 --> 0:10:55.836 of perfect storm moment for the birth of the American 0:10:55.956 --> 0:11:01.596 obsession with data with numbers, where we think the data 0:11:01.716 --> 0:11:04.756 say it, it must be true. I sometimes say that 0:11:04.796 --> 0:11:06.916 the words that make me most unhappy in English language 0:11:06.916 --> 0:11:09.556 are the words the three little words. The data shows 0:11:09.956 --> 0:11:13.436 that's right. So what was it about that moment that 0:11:13.596 --> 0:11:17.356 made people especially prime to say, well, hey, it's in 0:11:17.396 --> 0:11:19.436 the data, it must be true. Well, this is where 0:11:19.436 --> 0:11:24.996 your question about the North really matters, because one story 0:11:25.196 --> 0:11:28.116 of this period, in particularly the end of reconstruction, which 0:11:28.116 --> 0:11:30.676 happened with a presidential compromise in the election of the 0:11:30.676 --> 0:11:34.196 contested election of eighteen seventy seven, where miraculously Florida first 0:11:34.196 --> 0:11:37.076 shows up as a controversial state. Yeah, that's a that's 0:11:37.116 --> 0:11:40.956 a very strange one. The whole eighteen seventy six the election, 0:11:41.196 --> 0:11:43.796 Just in case you're wondering, the election was a tie, 0:11:44.276 --> 0:11:46.916 and then they figured it out by a very very 0:11:47.076 --> 0:11:50.796 complicated and strange political process with a special commission with 0:11:50.836 --> 0:11:53.516 Supreme Court justices and all kinds of shenanigans, and it 0:11:53.596 --> 0:11:56.676 ended up with Rutherford B. Hayes the first president ever 0:11:56.756 --> 0:12:00.756 to graduate from Harvard Law School. Not very memorable becoming 0:12:00.756 --> 0:12:03.396 president United State's. Luckily, our second president, Barack Obama did 0:12:03.396 --> 0:12:05.556 a little better for us. But go on, So going 0:12:05.596 --> 0:12:09.476 with your point. So this was an exhausting process, and 0:12:09.676 --> 0:12:12.796 one manifestation of this was what you might call racial fatigue. 0:12:12.836 --> 0:12:15.836 The North was kind of tired of the race problem, 0:12:15.876 --> 0:12:19.396 tired of dealing with Southerners, tired of worrying about black people, 0:12:19.436 --> 0:12:23.396 and so they sort of took their they firearms, and 0:12:23.556 --> 0:12:28.476 took their tanks and their presence and pulled out of 0:12:28.476 --> 0:12:31.756 the South. And so reconstruction ends and the North turns 0:12:31.756 --> 0:12:35.116 to the business of industrialization, leaving black people essentially on 0:12:35.156 --> 0:12:38.156 their own. And as a consequence, that was just the 0:12:38.196 --> 0:12:42.876 beginning of a process of what we call national reconciliation. 0:12:43.516 --> 0:12:46.396 It was a process where the South sort of began 0:12:46.436 --> 0:12:49.396 to rewrite the narrative of the Civil War first period, 0:12:49.436 --> 0:12:52.996 when monuments start to go up to celebrate the Confederacy 0:12:53.636 --> 0:12:56.316 and the North is kind of tired. We began to 0:12:56.356 --> 0:13:00.396 see early writings by Northern scholars that began to shift 0:13:00.436 --> 0:13:05.476 the conversation away from Southern racism to black pathology. And 0:13:05.676 --> 0:13:10.836 it's that moment where the North begins to articulate its 0:13:10.916 --> 0:13:15.436 own understanding of black people's inferiority, and mostly for them, 0:13:15.476 --> 0:13:18.236 it's a kind of temporal thing. It's like, well, of course, 0:13:18.316 --> 0:13:22.676 since they were slaves, now for now they need time 0:13:22.796 --> 0:13:25.356 to what they would often say, work out their own salvation. 0:13:26.076 --> 0:13:29.236 And they turned to crime statistics to kind of justify 0:13:29.996 --> 0:13:33.036 what we might recognize today as a post racial logic. 0:13:33.556 --> 0:13:36.556 And in their moment, the post racial logic was where 0:13:36.556 --> 0:13:38.516 what you mean by post racial? Yeah, well, what I 0:13:38.556 --> 0:13:43.356 mean is that to identify black people as more criminal, 0:13:43.596 --> 0:13:48.396 as more illiterate, as less capable of self governance for 0:13:48.436 --> 0:13:51.236 them in the eighteen nineties turn of the twentieth century 0:13:51.436 --> 0:13:54.676 was not understood to be racist. It was objective. It 0:13:54.716 --> 0:13:58.036 was historical because it was less racist than the old 0:13:58.276 --> 0:14:01.756 pre Civil War idea that African records are just inferior, 0:14:01.796 --> 0:14:04.316 Black people are just inferior. So then compared to that, 0:14:04.476 --> 0:14:06.636 it's post racial to say, what's not the black people 0:14:06.636 --> 0:14:09.276 are inferior, they just tend to be criminal. Yes, in 0:14:09.556 --> 0:14:12.636 a nutshell, because it still sounds I mean us now now, 0:14:12.676 --> 0:14:14.756 it still sounds completely racist. So it sounds weird. Don't 0:14:14.756 --> 0:14:16.276 think if it is post racial. Well, but you're saying 0:14:16.276 --> 0:14:18.076 it's a different form of racist. It's a different form 0:14:18.116 --> 0:14:21.116 of racism. But this is why the story of this 0:14:21.156 --> 0:14:24.756 early period matters so much to us today, because if 0:14:24.796 --> 0:14:29.236 we miss that logic, if we miss an understanding that 0:14:29.356 --> 0:14:32.276 for and I write a lot about liberals, if we 0:14:32.396 --> 0:14:35.516 miss that, what they're saying is it's not in their blood. 0:14:36.076 --> 0:14:40.276 It's not that they're incapable. They just need more opportunities, 0:14:40.676 --> 0:14:45.476 they need more education, they need more time to build 0:14:45.476 --> 0:14:49.876 their families so that they can adopt our values. And 0:14:50.116 --> 0:14:52.476 once they have all of this, they'll be able to 0:14:52.516 --> 0:14:57.476 participate fully. So it was a recipe for eventual inclusion 0:14:57.956 --> 0:15:02.116 and acceptance and full assimilation. But it was predicated on 0:15:02.156 --> 0:15:05.276 what essentially the South was saying, which is that these 0:15:05.316 --> 0:15:11.476 people are insufferable. If you've been high and mighty and 0:15:11.676 --> 0:15:16.436 taking the high horse and being righteous, self righteous about 0:15:16.476 --> 0:15:19.716 the North being free of slavery stain in the nineteenth century, 0:15:19.956 --> 0:15:22.156 will wait till they show up at your doorstep, wait 0:15:22.156 --> 0:15:23.916 till they move to your neighborhood. So you know, it's 0:15:23.956 --> 0:15:26.916 not a perfect comparison at all. But one interesting way 0:15:26.956 --> 0:15:30.076 to think about this for a contemporary comparison is the 0:15:30.196 --> 0:15:34.236 US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan to rebuild, and indeed 0:15:34.276 --> 0:15:37.316 reconstruct we even use that same word, believe it or not, 0:15:37.676 --> 0:15:40.036 societies that we had invaded, that the United States had 0:15:40.036 --> 0:15:44.196 invaded by creating new social norms, new social dynamics, and 0:15:44.276 --> 0:15:46.196 the US. I'm not saying this is the reason that 0:15:46.236 --> 0:15:49.356 the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan anymore than it 0:15:49.396 --> 0:15:51.956 was the original cause of the Civil War to liberate 0:15:51.956 --> 0:15:53.876 African Americans. It wasn't the original cause of the war 0:15:53.916 --> 0:15:56.116 for at least, you know, most of the advocates of 0:15:56.116 --> 0:16:01.196 the war. But at some point, just like the North 0:16:01.316 --> 0:16:03.796 in the eighteen seventies got as you said, fatigued or 0:16:03.836 --> 0:16:05.996 tired of the effort, you know, the United States gave 0:16:06.076 --> 0:16:09.476 up on its reconstruction efforts in Iraq and afghan Aniston. 0:16:10.156 --> 0:16:12.716 And now in the United States, to some degree you 0:16:12.796 --> 0:16:15.956 have a rise of anti Muslim sentiment, and in Europe 0:16:15.956 --> 0:16:18.116 you have a lot of increased anti Muslim sentiment. As 0:16:18.116 --> 0:16:22.436 people say, well, those people quote unquote, you know, that's 0:16:22.476 --> 0:16:25.756 just what they're like, quote unquote, we can't fundamentally make 0:16:25.756 --> 0:16:29.756 a change, and then that enables a kind of blame. 0:16:30.796 --> 0:16:32.556 And at least in Europe, the analogy is that you 0:16:32.636 --> 0:16:35.476 have lots of immigrants from the Middle East, a bit 0:16:35.596 --> 0:16:40.476 like African Americans migrating north from the South, and you 0:16:40.556 --> 0:16:45.316 have a big public fight about whether the new immigrants 0:16:45.316 --> 0:16:48.676 can be assimilated into the norms of the society. That's right, 0:16:48.676 --> 0:16:51.636 and who's responsible, I mean, who bears the burden? Becomes 0:16:51.676 --> 0:16:54.516 the kind of question that Europe is answering now around 0:16:55.276 --> 0:16:59.036 refugees and immigration from North Africa and from the Middle East. 0:16:59.316 --> 0:17:01.876 And that was essentially the same question Northerners said. Look, 0:17:01.876 --> 0:17:05.836 we fought a civil war, we supported reconstruction, we pass 0:17:05.876 --> 0:17:10.196 civil rights legislation, and now we have to deal with 0:17:10.236 --> 0:17:14.756 these people who are backwards and uncouth, and who bring 0:17:14.876 --> 0:17:20.156 diseases and inferior education. And the point is that the 0:17:20.236 --> 0:17:25.716 justification for what we would recognize today as Northern racism 0:17:26.676 --> 0:17:31.556 was crime statistics, illiteracy rates, illegitimacy rates, the whole package 0:17:31.916 --> 0:17:36.516 of disparity data that held whiteness as a norm against blackness. 0:17:36.556 --> 0:17:39.716 To say this is not about racism, this is about 0:17:39.756 --> 0:17:44.276 their inferiority and the numbers, that's exactly, or they would 0:17:44.276 --> 0:17:47.156 say the numbers speak for themselves. So you say, a 0:17:47.156 --> 0:17:49.276 fascinating thing in your book about this because you point 0:17:49.316 --> 0:17:51.796 out that exactly the same time that this is happening, 0:17:52.436 --> 0:17:59.756 you have South European, Italian, East European Jewish and Slavic immigrants. 0:18:00.676 --> 0:18:03.636 You had had Irish American immigrants over the previous fifty 0:18:03.716 --> 0:18:05.756 years who were still working out their issues, who we're 0:18:05.796 --> 0:18:08.836 still working out their issues, who still have high crime rates, 0:18:09.196 --> 0:18:12.236 who still are captured by a range of statistical measures. 0:18:12.236 --> 0:18:15.316 The most famous is that Eastern European Jews were ranked 0:18:15.316 --> 0:18:17.596 by the early inventors the IQ test as the lowest 0:18:17.876 --> 0:18:19.836 IQ group and were therefore you know, that was a 0:18:19.876 --> 0:18:23.756 reason to exclude them. And yet you point out there's 0:18:23.796 --> 0:18:29.716 a somehow a difference between how white thought leaders think 0:18:29.756 --> 0:18:35.356 about the crime, the backwardness, the limitations of these new 0:18:35.396 --> 0:18:39.396 immigrants who were not quite white but call them Whiteish 0:18:39.436 --> 0:18:43.196 and African American migrants. Yeah. To me, that's the most 0:18:43.396 --> 0:18:45.956 fascinating finding from this book. I mean, it's the thing 0:18:45.956 --> 0:18:48.316 that surprised me. It's not something I went looking for, 0:18:48.516 --> 0:18:51.676 nor did I expect to see it. It is amazing 0:18:51.716 --> 0:18:56.356 to watch some of the same criminologists, some of the 0:18:56.436 --> 0:19:00.636 same demographers, as you call them, white thought leaders, who 0:19:00.676 --> 0:19:05.156 are looking at Irish, Italian, and New York Jewish crime 0:19:05.156 --> 0:19:09.356 statistics through the roof. By comparison to their native born 0:19:09.356 --> 0:19:12.916 American counterparts, they have disproportionate crime rates across the board 0:19:12.956 --> 0:19:17.356 in many instances. And for one group of Americans prominent 0:19:17.396 --> 0:19:21.076 to be sure, called them eugenicists, called them social darwiness. 0:19:21.076 --> 0:19:24.316 These were people who believe that they were biologically inferior, 0:19:24.396 --> 0:19:26.876 as you've already described, and shouldn't be in the country, 0:19:27.036 --> 0:19:29.116 and we're advocating for closing the borders to it and 0:19:29.156 --> 0:19:32.396 successfully did. Yeah, that happened. That happened in nineteen twenty four. 0:19:33.356 --> 0:19:35.836 But at the same time, for the first time, we 0:19:35.876 --> 0:19:42.436 see this eruption of progressive activists and reformers, people who 0:19:42.516 --> 0:19:46.756 were we would recognize today as modern liberals, who believe 0:19:46.876 --> 0:19:50.796 that government had a role, that antidiscrimination was a core value, 0:19:51.316 --> 0:19:54.836 and they went to great lengths to push back against 0:19:54.916 --> 0:19:59.036 the eugenic tide. And they did it. Here is the irony. 0:19:59.116 --> 0:20:02.396 They did it on the basis of crime statistics. They 0:20:02.476 --> 0:20:06.036 read the crime statistics or interpreted them amongst the Irish, 0:20:06.036 --> 0:20:11.836 the Italians, the polls as evidence ass sdemic economic inequality. 0:20:11.876 --> 0:20:15.116 So let's talk about what that means updated to today. 0:20:15.596 --> 0:20:19.076 You know, here you have these wealth, you know, well 0:20:19.116 --> 0:20:22.836 intentioned people who say, well, you know, these immigrants will 0:20:22.876 --> 0:20:25.356 get over it. But African Americans, on the other hand, 0:20:25.356 --> 0:20:27.076 they're not so convinced we'll get over it. In fact, 0:20:27.116 --> 0:20:30.356 they start to imagine that there's some inherent criminality in 0:20:30.396 --> 0:20:34.076 African American culture, or maybe it's in the experience of 0:20:34.116 --> 0:20:37.676 slavery initially, or you know, they're not using racialized language, 0:20:37.676 --> 0:20:40.716 but they're still saying that it's unsolvable. How do you 0:20:40.756 --> 0:20:45.356 see that played out today in the context of observers 0:20:45.396 --> 0:20:50.716 of ongoing disparities in incarceration rates for Whites and African Americans. Well, 0:20:50.716 --> 0:20:53.636 the most obvious way is that there is no racialized 0:20:53.716 --> 0:20:57.116 language to describe white criminality today. I mean, I can 0:20:57.236 --> 0:20:59.836 use the term as a descriptor, but we have there's 0:20:59.836 --> 0:21:02.836 no conversation about it. The closest thing that we have 0:21:02.956 --> 0:21:05.916 to it is what has been defined as the opioid 0:21:06.036 --> 0:21:09.396 or heroin crisis, and before that the meth crisis, which 0:21:09.476 --> 0:21:14.756 breaking bad made more prominent and famous. But these crises 0:21:14.916 --> 0:21:18.876 among white Americans that include criminality, include violence, and obviously 0:21:18.956 --> 0:21:22.796 include drug addiction, are not understood to be a reflection 0:21:22.996 --> 0:21:26.556 of white people. They're generally understood to be some kind 0:21:26.556 --> 0:21:30.876 of public health crisis, often localized to particular kinds of communities, 0:21:31.396 --> 0:21:34.156 and for the most part, the nation respond to them 0:21:34.196 --> 0:21:37.996 with a sense that we have to do something about this. 0:21:38.076 --> 0:21:40.996 We have to find the origin of the problem in 0:21:41.236 --> 0:21:43.956 the community, in the environment, and something that's happening. So, 0:21:43.996 --> 0:21:47.956 of course big farmers paying a heavy price for prescription 0:21:48.036 --> 0:21:51.996 drug overdoses, but it's treated as an isolated problem though 0:21:52.036 --> 0:21:54.156 blame big Pharma. It's treated and I think of it 0:21:54.156 --> 0:21:56.156 as the battle of the TV shows. It's breaking bad 0:21:57.396 --> 0:21:59.836 show that's almost exactly the same astorical moment the Wire, 0:22:00.476 --> 0:22:02.716 which is just a brilliant show in many many ways, 0:22:02.876 --> 0:22:06.956 but one of its themes is the depressing impossibility. I 0:22:06.956 --> 0:22:09.916 don't think that's an overstatement of reform. The show shows 0:22:09.956 --> 0:22:13.036 people trying to reform, but it keeps on showing a 0:22:13.116 --> 0:22:15.276 series of failures. So it's different, and it's thought of 0:22:15.316 --> 0:22:18.436 as systemic, and there's a kind of okay, not sure 0:22:18.436 --> 0:22:21.556 what to do next theme, And it's also I mean, 0:22:21.636 --> 0:22:24.596 it leads to a number of the kind of productive 0:22:24.596 --> 0:22:28.316 conversations that progressives had a hundred years ago, they begin 0:22:28.396 --> 0:22:30.636 to have these conversations about, well, what's in the water, 0:22:31.596 --> 0:22:34.596 And I mean that metaphorically, so what's in our society 0:22:34.596 --> 0:22:38.476 that produces this level of alienation. One of the same people, 0:22:38.476 --> 0:22:40.996 Fredrick Hoffman, who sort of put in circulation this idea 0:22:40.996 --> 0:22:45.836 of black criminality time to crime stistics, was virtually a socialist. 0:22:45.876 --> 0:22:48.876 I mean, he was certainly in community with other socialists 0:22:48.916 --> 0:22:52.436 who were very clear about if we have high rates 0:22:52.436 --> 0:22:56.596 of crime and suicide and mental illness, then it is 0:22:56.636 --> 0:22:59.996 a reflection of something wrong in our society. But you 0:23:00.076 --> 0:23:02.676 hear those questions today, I mean, as you're saying, we 0:23:02.716 --> 0:23:05.276 don't really hear that about No one says white society 0:23:05.396 --> 0:23:10.156 is broken because of the opioid epidemic. People do say 0:23:10.476 --> 0:23:13.396 African American society is broken in some way because of 0:23:13.436 --> 0:23:16.756 ongoing rates of criminality. What conversation would you prefer to 0:23:16.796 --> 0:23:20.476 have us engage in, Well, the most the easiest way 0:23:20.476 --> 0:23:22.156 to say is we should be having the same public 0:23:22.196 --> 0:23:27.116 health conversation about rates of violence and drugs and property 0:23:27.116 --> 0:23:29.556 related crimes in the black community as we started in 0:23:29.556 --> 0:23:32.116 the progressive era and continue to have in the opioid era. 0:23:32.596 --> 0:23:34.956 In other words, there's a positive lesson there in the 0:23:35.036 --> 0:23:36.636 way they did it better. At one time, they did 0:23:36.636 --> 0:23:40.716 it much better. The other thing is the disparity between 0:23:41.316 --> 0:23:45.556 poverty and crime in rural white America is also a 0:23:45.596 --> 0:23:50.756 disparity of invisibility. There's a disconnect between the fact that 0:23:51.276 --> 0:23:56.716