Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm at Higgins and this is Solvable. Interviews with
Speaker 1: the world's most innovative thinkers working to solve the world's
Speaker 1: biggest problems. My name is Mitchelandrum from New Orleans, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: and I am trying to solve the problem of racial
Speaker 1: reconciliation in the United States of America. Mitch Landry was
Speaker 1: sworn in as mayor of New Orleans in two and ten,
Speaker 1: back when the city was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: It was five years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina,
Speaker 1: and it was the midst of the BP oil spill.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, he was voted America's top turnaround mayor
Speaker 1: in a survey of mayors that was compiled by Politico,
Speaker 1: and Mitch gained national prominence for his powerful decision to
Speaker 1: take down four Confederate monuments in New Orleans. Mitch has
Speaker 1: written about the entire process in his New York Times
Speaker 1: best selling book, It's called In the Shadow of Statues,
Speaker 1: A White Southerner Confronts History, and in it he recalled
Speaker 1: his personal journey confronting racism, and he also tackles the
Speaker 1: broader history of slavery, race relations and institutional inequalities that
Speaker 1: still plague America today. You'll hear more in this conversation
Speaker 1: with Malcolm Gladwell, and you'll also hear how things are
Speaker 1: developing with his organization. It's called the e Pluribus Unum Fund,
Speaker 1: and he founded it to bring people together across the
Speaker 1: American South around the issues of race, equity, economic opportunity,
Speaker 1: and violence. And he does that by convening diverse community
Speaker 1: members to listen to and learn from one another. What
Speaker 1: is it about this problem that attracted you? One of
Speaker 1: my thirty years of experience, sixteen years as a legislator,
Speaker 1: six as lieutenant government, eight as the mayor of the
Speaker 1: City of New Orleans. Being in a position of having
Speaker 1: to solve problems, it became fairly evident to me that
Speaker 1: it just got much much more difficult because people could
Speaker 1: be torn apart when they were hungry or cold or
Speaker 1: afraid by race, and it made it impossible for people
Speaker 1: to work together. You see this actually permeating not just
Speaker 1: the United States of America now, but the rest of
Speaker 1: the world, and it's manifesting itself not only a long
Speaker 1: race but class ideology, nation of origin, sexual orientation, all
Speaker 1: of those things, and I think that's exactly wrong. I
Speaker 1: think we ought to in the United States be purposeful
Speaker 1: like they were in Germany and in South Africa, to
Speaker 1: try to heal a lot of the divisions that continue
Speaker 1: today that slow us down and stop us from seeing
Speaker 1: finding common ground that matters and news as a very
Speaker 1: interesting and distinctive racial history different from other areas in
Speaker 1: the American South. What was unique about New Orleans which
Speaker 1: was different from some of the other slaveholding areas, was
Speaker 1: that we were a port city through the Mississippi River.
Speaker 1: Right now in New Orleans south of our city, we
Speaker 1: have cumulatively one of the largest ports in the world.
Speaker 1: And as a consequence, many different kinds of peoples and
Speaker 1: goods came from all over the world. And if you're
Speaker 1: in a port city, it is by nature diverse, and
Speaker 1: there were free people of color. Of course, the slave
Speaker 1: trade was as robust as it was anywhere else, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the economy, actually all of the economy
Speaker 1: pre Civil War, was as a result of the individuals
Speaker 1: being forced to work in the fields and to produce
Speaker 1: cotton and sugar cane and things of that nature, which
Speaker 1: formed the basis of the economy New Orleans back in
Speaker 1: the day was one of the largest cities. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, in nineteen sixty if you jump forward
Speaker 1: many many years, New Orleans was bigger at that time
Speaker 1: than Atlanta and Houston. What I'm interested in, so you
Speaker 1: in kind of understanding the racial landscape of New Orleans
Speaker 1: when you take over His Mary in twenty ten, it
Speaker 1: is you've You've inherited it quite a It's a mess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Were you aware of just how messy it was when
Speaker 1: you took up? Oh yeah, yeah, no illusions. The reason
Speaker 1: why I went walked me through how one goes about
Speaker 1: repairing the kind of psyche of a city. We had
Speaker 1: lots going on at once. The city was on the
Speaker 1: verge of bankruptcy. When I ran for office, I ran
Speaker 1: honestly on asking people to make a sacrifice so they
Speaker 1: the people of New Orleans, we were hurting so badly
Speaker 1: that you know, we were kind of at the point
Speaker 1: where we would try anything. And I knew that in
Speaker 1: order to stabilize the city, I had to stabilize the finances.
Speaker 1: So I mean I kind of went about, you know,
Speaker 1: finding a great team of people that were completely committed.
Speaker 1: And when I say completely, I mean twenty four seven,
Speaker 1: three sixty five, and what started to happen was New
Speaker 1: Orleans got themselves into it, just a giving spirit. You know,
Speaker 1: the whole world gasps, but the possibility that we would
Speaker 1: be lost, and that gave us a kind of a
Speaker 1: renewed sense of pride. And when I came in, my
Speaker 1: job was to try to corral all of that energy
Speaker 1: and moving in a positive direction. And one of the
Speaker 1: ways you do that is that you touched skin in
Speaker 1: the skin every day with as many people as you can,
Speaker 1: so they can see you, touch you, feel you, hear you,
Speaker 1: understand you, and then hopefully begin to trust you. So
Speaker 1: I started having a lot of community meetings, and a
Speaker 1: community meeting looked something like me walking into a room
Speaker 1: of a thousand people who are frustrated and angry in
Speaker 1: the neighborhoods that have hit the hardest, and making sure
Speaker 1: that me personally as well as my entire team was
Speaker 1: there and available to listen to the community here what
Speaker 1: it is they had to say, and then somehow try
Speaker 1: to form it into a coherent governing policy where we
Speaker 1: started to put money where it needed to go. It
Speaker 1: wasn't all honky dowry. We had lots of starts and stops.
Speaker 1: The police department had a zero level of confidence in
Speaker 1: the African American community. But I invited the Justice Department
Speaker 1: to come in and to work with us. There was
Speaker 1: a sense of openness and a real sense of commitment
Speaker 1: that we were going to do what is necessary to
Speaker 1: change the city. And then people helped. I mean people,
Speaker 1: everybody just kind of got their hands really dirty. We
Speaker 1: were in such a desperate situation that people actually stopped
Speaker 1: seeing the differences between us. We were in such bad
Speaker 1: shape that we all realized that we had to stop
Speaker 1: fighting and we had to choose common ground. The police
Speaker 1: aspect of this is an interesting one. So you have
Speaker 1: a you inherit a situation where you say, the level
Speaker 1: of trust between poorer communities and the copses as low
Speaker 1: as it can go. That is a profound problem in
Speaker 1: a city where the police voices becomingly needed from the community. Well,
Speaker 1: I remember Katrina was August twenty nine, two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: and some police officers after Katrina left their post. Now,
Speaker 1: most most police officers, first responders were miraculous after Katrina.
Speaker 1: I need to be clear about that. It was an
Speaker 1: incredible thing to watch everybody lifting everybody up, but we
Speaker 1: had some very dark moments. Historically, the police department in
Speaker 1: New Orleans from at least nineteen ninety six through until
Speaker 1: I took office, the police department had deteriorated in terms
Speaker 1: of its relationship with the community pre and post Katrina.
Speaker 1: So I knew that the only way that we could
Speaker 1: heal is by, as me the leader of the city,
Speaker 1: acknowledging that we had a problem, committing to change it,
Speaker 1: and then actually inviting the Justice Department to come in.
Speaker 1: That was an acknowledgement that we were going to do
Speaker 1: everything we needed to do to reorganize the police department
Speaker 1: and to make it go in the right direction. Now,
Speaker 1: it was a rocky road with the Justice Department because
Speaker 1: they live in Washington, they don't live on the ground,
Speaker 1: and sometimes people that are not on the ground miss
Speaker 1: essential components. But it was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: It sent the right message to the community, and then
Speaker 1: we asked the community to actually help us. I created
Speaker 1: a community advisory board to actually help me hire my
Speaker 1: first police chief, and they made recommendations to me, and
Speaker 1: I actually took the recommendation. The first recommendation. So you
Speaker 1: do that, you build trust over time, you keep putting
Speaker 1: resources where you say they need to be, you keep
Speaker 1: demanding some level of accountability. And then we were the
Speaker 1: first department in the country to put body cameras on
Speaker 1: police officers because I thought it was important for them
Speaker 1: to be real transparency. So now when there was an
Speaker 1: officer involved shooting, the community knew exactly what happened because
Speaker 1: we released those tapes within a reasonably short period of time,
Speaker 1: pending some kind of veto by the district attorney or
Speaker 1: the US attorney about whether it was going to compromise
Speaker 1: the prosecution in a particular case. And those little things
Speaker 1: began to restore levels of credibility. But if you do
Speaker 1: that over and over and over again, and you began
Speaker 1: to walk the walk and not just talk to talk,
Speaker 1: the public starts to say we're good to go with
Speaker 1: what you're doing. And on top of that, we actually
Speaker 1: started to reduce the population in the prison and moving
Speaker 1: very far ahead a criminal justice reform, and we built
Speaker 1: a new use study center. So we were operating on
Speaker 1: a bunch of different fronts. And I had a massive
Speaker 1: initiative to reduce murdered death on the streets of New Orleans,
Speaker 1: which I talked about every day. So the accumulation of
Speaker 1: all those things I think gave the entire community confidence
Speaker 1: that we were goodhearted and right minded about that approach,
Speaker 1: and it helped a lot. Wow, how long, but too
Speaker 1: the time you took office, how many years in did
Speaker 1: you feel like you had turned the corner with that? Well,
Speaker 1: you never feel like you're doing well enough. But I
Speaker 1: think it took us about three, three or four years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was a bit. It was a bit,
Speaker 1: and it was a long. It was a real deep dig.
Speaker 1: You were a two term there, I was to term.
Speaker 1: I serve for eight years. If you had been a
Speaker 1: one term mayor, would it have worked, That's a good question.
Speaker 1: Probably probably not. You know. One of the actually challenges
Speaker 1: that we had was Mark Morio, who is known he's
Speaker 1: now the head of the National Urban League, was the
Speaker 1: mayor of the city back in the nineties, and he
Speaker 1: turned the police department around when he was there, and
Speaker 1: after he left it went back to where the lowest point.
Speaker 1: So when I took over, one of the things that
Speaker 1: was rolling around in my mind is that we had
Speaker 1: tried this before, but we hadn't never institutionalized and the
Speaker 1: consent decree would be necessary to do that. The city
Speaker 1: actually is still under the supervision of a federal consent
Speaker 1: degree because the federal judges they won't let you out
Speaker 1: of it until they now see the institutional rules and
Speaker 1: regulations put in place, which we were very aggressive about.
Speaker 1: So I expected in a short time it'll be done
Speaker 1: and the institutional changes. But you have to be vigilant
Speaker 1: every day. Everything that we talked about, you've got to
Speaker 1: repeat every day over and over again. Walked me through
Speaker 1: the whole issue of the statutes and what you learn
Speaker 1: from that, particularly what you learn from that for the
Speaker 1: book you're doing. Now. What I learned is that we're
Speaker 1: not as far long as i'd hope would be, and
Speaker 1: that saddens me as the mayor of the city. Remember,
Speaker 1: we're in the midst of the recovery. We're rebuilding the
Speaker 1: whole city. The physical spaces of city inform how the
Speaker 1: city lives and breathes and works and interacts with each
Speaker 1: other every day, and it's really important, and many mayors
Speaker 1: in America spend a lot of time with this, and
Speaker 1: I was too. I had the benefit of a blank
Speaker 1: or landscape because of this terrible catastrophe and so I
Speaker 1: had a responsibility to make sure that it was built
Speaker 1: back that right way, and so public spaces were in
Speaker 1: my mind and big picture. Remember we were rebuilding hospital, schools,
Speaker 1: We're building a brand new airport, rebuilding the riverfront. A
Speaker 1: lot of opportunity and hence a lot of responsibility. And
Speaker 1: so when I was doing that, I'd always had this
Speaker 1: fetish for circles. I loved circles. I loved the circles
Speaker 1: and washing you see. I loved them in Europe and
Speaker 1: New Orleans being such rich history and architecture, it always
Speaker 1: thought it was curious that we never had more circles.
Speaker 1: We only have one, and it's the most prominent spot
Speaker 1: in the city of New Orleans. It is the space
Speaker 1: that all the autogra parades right on. It's on the
Speaker 1: main thoroughfare in the city, and there's a statue there
Speaker 1: of Roberty Lee, who is the general that led the
Speaker 1: Confederacy in an effort to destroy the United States of America.
Speaker 1: And so as we were building the city and I
Speaker 1: was thinking about how to keep the city still energized
Speaker 1: to keep doing really big things. I wanted to use
Speaker 1: our three hundred anniversary as a framework for the city
Speaker 1: to finish its reconstruction projects and to leave a legacy,
Speaker 1: much like a city would leave a legacy after they
Speaker 1: built for the Olympics or built for the World Cup.
Speaker 1: So I had asked went mor Salis, who was a
Speaker 1: childhood friend of mine, who I considered to be besides
Speaker 1: being a great musician, I know that the horn and
Speaker 1: the music is just his meeting his messages democracy and
Speaker 1: freedom in history. And I said, when I want you
Speaker 1: to help me curate the three hundred anniversary, which is
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen. This conversation took place in twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: because we had a long window. And he said, I'll
Speaker 1: do that, but I want you to think about something.
Speaker 1: And I said what he goes, I would like you
Speaker 1: to think about taking down that Confederate monument. Well, it
Speaker 1: really never occurred to me that I would take that
Speaker 1: monument down. That statue really never played a prominent part
Speaker 1: in my life. And I said to him, why would
Speaker 1: I do that? And he said, well, Louis Armstrong left
Speaker 1: here because of that monument, And he said, have you
Speaker 1: ever thought about it from my perspective? Well, when he
Speaker 1: said those two things to me, my brain really kind
Speaker 1: of exploded because when he said, Louis Armstrong left here
Speaker 1: for me, that was a really kind of a euphemism
Speaker 1: for the great my imgration after slavery, where four million
Speaker 1: of our fellow Americans left, basically the silence. They took
Speaker 1: all the intellectual capital, of the music capital, everything that
Speaker 1: they had, and took it someplace else and let the
Speaker 1: rest of the world see it, know it, and understand it.
Speaker 1: And I had known that, but I'd really never processed
Speaker 1: it quite like that. And he just said it in
Speaker 1: a real small statement. Lewis Armstrong left, and sitting in
Speaker 1: front of me was Lewis Armstrong's progeny now the greatest
Speaker 1: trumpet player in the road. So as soon as he
Speaker 1: said that to me, it occurred to me that that
Speaker 1: was really a symbol of oppression. He said, I want
Speaker 1: you to think about it from my perspective and what
Speaker 1: I think about when I have to look at that,
Speaker 1: and of course the immediate unfairness of it slaps you
Speaker 1: in the head and say, my goodness, I've been sending
Speaker 1: a message to went and Marcellus and every other African
Speaker 1: American that you're not worthy. And notwithstanding the fact that
Speaker 1: the wall was lost you or not welcome here. And
Speaker 1: so I told went that I would look into it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know at the time, just because I hadn't
Speaker 1: thought about it. Who owned it. Turns out to the
Speaker 1: City of New Orleans owned it, and it turned out
Speaker 1: that it was a mayor's responsibility. And so after good
Speaker 1: year and a half of a lot of legal research,
Speaker 1: because this was going to be a massive political fight,
Speaker 1: you know, I knew that I had to control over
Speaker 1: the property if I went through the right community process
Speaker 1: and got the city council to approve it that it
Speaker 1: was a city's responsibility taken down because in fact it
Speaker 1: had been put up by the Mayor of New Orleans
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties at the request of the Daughters
Speaker 1: of the Confederacy and a group called the Cult of
Speaker 1: the Lost Cause, and that put the Confederate monuments up
Speaker 1: for the purposes of sending a message to African Americans
Speaker 1: that even though the war had been lost by the Confederacy,
Speaker 1: the cause was never lost, and then they would continue
Speaker 1: to control the space. And the irony was which really
Speaker 1: took me off, is that Robberty League, of course, wasn't
Speaker 1: from New Orleans, had never been to New Orleans and
Speaker 1: New Orleans wasn't even a Confederate town, and so they've
Speaker 1: actually stole, they stole the most prominent space and told
Speaker 1: basically a historic apply and that if I was building
Speaker 1: the city for the future, building back the city not
Speaker 1: the way it was, but the way it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be, if we would have gotten it right, then
Speaker 1: that was a clear aberration and that had to change.
Speaker 1: When you explain those facts to people who would otherwise
Speaker 1: have been hostile to take in a statue down, they
Speaker 1: changed their minds. Not initially I knew I had a
Speaker 1: pretty good feel for what the city wanted. In the city,
Speaker 1: of course, was at the time I was mayor, sixteen
Speaker 1: to sixty three percent African American. The majority of the
Speaker 1: city supported what I did. I might have done it
Speaker 1: anyway if they hadn't supported it, because it was the
Speaker 1: right thing to do, had I been able to get
Speaker 1: the right authority to do it. But in fact they did.
Speaker 1: Now people who did not live in the city, and
Speaker 1: some white people that lived in the city, not all,
Speaker 1: were very hostile to the idea of taking it down.
Speaker 1: And what had happened was that Donald Trump became President
Speaker 1: of the United States and the issue of race and
Speaker 1: the issue of white nationals and white supremacy really kind
Speaker 1: of got new flavor. And the taking out of the monuments.
Speaker 1: Actually they started happening at the same time, so the
Speaker 1: temperatures were really hot, and people from around the country
Speaker 1: came to New Orleans with the idea somehow that they
Speaker 1: had something to say about what the city of New
Speaker 1: Orleans did with its own property. So essentially, and it's
Speaker 1: very simple form, this was just a property dispute. It
Speaker 1: was a city's property. They could do with it what
Speaker 1: they wanted. I could put an ice cream truck on
Speaker 1: it if I wanted it, and you couldn't stop me.
Speaker 1: But it was all caught up in the history and
Speaker 1: the ethos and people, and it was a very symbolic piece.
Speaker 1: But people were very against it. Now, not everybody, I
Speaker 1: have to say that was against taking them down was
Speaker 1: against it for racial, aggressively racial reason. Some people all
Speaker 1: they remembered was that physical space where their daddy took
Speaker 1: them to enjoy a wad to grow up rade. So
Speaker 1: for them, their history was a short history that had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with anything other than what they did
Speaker 1: when they were kids. But it was such an overtly
Speaker 1: racial monument that I don't think that you can argue
Speaker 1: that it was put up for any other reason. And
Speaker 1: if it was historically wrong to put it up, then
Speaker 1: it was my responsibility to correct that historical era. What
Speaker 1: did you put up in its place? Nothing? We took
Speaker 1: the monument off of it, and my dream was to
Speaker 1: take it down, to upend the entire circle, and then
Speaker 1: to put a really wonderful piece of public art that
Speaker 1: reflected our history, out riches in our culture. Because it
Speaker 1: took so long, and because it was so hard, and
Speaker 1: because it was such a security nightmare, and you can
Speaker 1: go back and look at the pictures it was, it
Speaker 1: was really hard. We didn't have time on the money
Speaker 1: to do it, so we actually left it empty. So
Speaker 1: the pedestal is there and there's nothing on top of it,
Speaker 1: which ironically has turned out to be quite an interesting
Speaker 1: piece of art because people have gone have now driven
Speaker 1: by it, and now they're projecting what it is they
Speaker 1: would put on time. We took down three other monuments,
Speaker 1: by the way, but robberty Lee was the most famous
Speaker 1: of them all. I think subsequent to taking them down,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who were against it came and
Speaker 1: their attitude was, well, I wasn't really for it, but
Speaker 1: I'm out as hostile against it. But I would say
Speaker 1: most of the people did not have not changed their mind.
Speaker 1: Most of the people that were against it initially still
Speaker 1: think that it was a mistake. I think they're wrong,
Speaker 1: and I think history will prove prove us right. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about what it means to take the lessons from
Speaker 1: your time in New Orleans as mayor to the rest
Speaker 1: of the country. There are lots and lots and lots
Speaker 1: of other cities all over America that have profound divides
Speaker 1: between racially and economically. You're now going there and trying
Speaker 1: to help them. What are you telling them, Well, a
Speaker 1: couple of things. First of all, just in terms of
Speaker 1: the xs and oos of governing, government is an organism.
Speaker 1: It's not a business, but it has to be run
Speaker 1: in a way that gains people's trust. It takes in
Speaker 1: money and it spends money, and it has to do
Speaker 1: it honestly. It has to do it openly, it has
Speaker 1: to do it ethically. In my mind, it ought to
Speaker 1: do it as precisely as it can by using data,
Speaker 1: and so, without being a techno geek, there is a
Speaker 1: beauty to running an organization well to make sure it's
Speaker 1: delivers to people what it is, and putting aside anything
Speaker 1: that we've talked about relating to race or inequity, whatever,
Speaker 1: you have a much better chance of solving all of
Speaker 1: those other big problems if you're not constantly getting beat
Speaker 1: on for running a government that doesn't deliver good services
Speaker 1: to the people where they are. Now, that's a mouthful,
Speaker 1: and that's a big thing. In other words, you've got
Speaker 1: to have the basics right before you ascend to talking
Speaker 1: about other things. You won't ever be able to get
Speaker 1: them done. If you can't manage a police department, you
Speaker 1: can't get the cars where they need to go, or
Speaker 1: respond to nine one one calls, they get the fire
Speaker 1: department to a fire, and then you've got no chance
Speaker 1: of doing anything because nobody's going to listen to you.
Speaker 1: So you have to be a good manager, and you
Speaker 1: have to be fiscally prudent, and you have to be
Speaker 1: thoughtful about budgets. So that's first order a business. Secondly,
Speaker 1: I would say the thing that Trainer really taught me
Speaker 1: is that in our darkest hour, when things are really
Speaker 1: really bad, that human beings have a reservoir of goodwill
Speaker 1: that I think we take for granted. And I think
Speaker 1: that when we get into our easy comfort zones, when
Speaker 1: we're not under tremendous stress from a catastrophic event, we
Speaker 1: tend to fall back into what I would call our
Speaker 1: more typical, selfish ways of thinking more of ourselves than
Speaker 1: of other people. I vividly remember, because I was in boats,
Speaker 1: rescuing people, no matter how much in despair we were,
Speaker 1: how I saw human beings who would not titled, are
Speaker 1: not entitled, would just run to each other and lift
Speaker 1: each other up. And the walls of separation fell, The
Speaker 1: walls that we fight about every day, being black, being why,
Speaker 1: and being rich, being poor, being conservative, being liberal, all
Speaker 1: that stuff went away because we had a common enemy
Speaker 1: that was going to kill us all, and it brought
Speaker 1: us together. And I saw it happened, so I know
Speaker 1: it can happen. I can testify because I saw it.
Speaker 1: It's not just a theory in my life. And that
Speaker 1: same ethos allowed us to rebuild the entire city of
Speaker 1: New Orleans in a very short period of time. So
Speaker 1: I actually rebuilt a government. So you ask yourself. One
Speaker 1: of the things I challenge other leaders about us. Why
Speaker 1: can't we keep doing that? Why do we have to
Speaker 1: have a catastrophe to take us to the point of
Speaker 1: sustained growth over periods of time? And the things that
Speaker 1: keep us away from that is fighting about money, fighting
Speaker 1: about race. And you got to try to organize your
Speaker 1: life in a way so that your choices are good choices. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there has to be a vision, and the vision can
Speaker 1: be a collective vision that you get from talking to people.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about my public meetings that I did
Speaker 1: was I did them all over the city. There were
Speaker 1: no few within five hundred people, and my community meetings
Speaker 1: and about a thousand, and I did a lot of them.
Speaker 1: After I did them all, it became abundantly clear that
Speaker 1: all of the people in the city one of the
Speaker 1: exact same things. So when you do that and you're
Speaker 1: that connected and you're hearing, and then you try to
Speaker 1: deliver what it is that they say, and you're working
Speaker 1: hard to do that, they then begin to give more.
Speaker 1: You make sure that you give what it is that
Speaker 1: they ask for, and then it starts to create a
Speaker 1: virtuous cyclist success. The juxtaposition on the national level right
Speaker 1: now is and it's a strategy. If I divide, and
Speaker 1: I keep people separate, and I keep people angry at
Speaker 1: each other. I win. That's the president's ethos right now.
Speaker 1: Not good for the country, but he succeeded at least
Speaker 1: for a four year period of time. I think the
Speaker 1: theory for the country now is well, now that you've
Speaker 1: seen what that looks like, and now that you've seen
Speaker 1: what that's gotten us, how is that working out for you?
Speaker 1: For some people, that's working out well. For most of us,
Speaker 1: it's not working out well. And the country is going
Speaker 1: to have to make a decision to either be find
Speaker 1: a leader, and leaders that seek and find common ground
Speaker 1: are people that are happy with separating. It's because that's
Speaker 1: a strategy too, and I think there's a choice to
Speaker 1: be made about that, and I think the country is
Speaker 1: going to have to make that choice. You had said
Speaker 1: it at the beginning that there were things that could
Speaker 1: be learned from the experience of Germany and South Africa
Speaker 1: in reconciliation and that could be brought to this country
Speaker 1: and we'd never gone through that kind of fomal process.
Speaker 1: What does that fomal process look like in the American sense.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting question because I think it can
Speaker 1: take a lot of different forms. The first thing it
Speaker 1: has to form. It has to take as a recognition
Speaker 1: by people that what happened was wrong, to formally say
Speaker 1: what happened was really really wrong. It did a lot
Speaker 1: of damage, and that damage lasts today. Whether that takes
Speaker 1: the form of a national declaration by Congress or mayors
Speaker 1: speaking individually, something structural that actually says to the world
Speaker 1: that this was really bad, and by the way, recognizing
Speaker 1: that things still exist institutional and they continue to exacerbate
Speaker 1: what the original sin was. So that's institutional racism. That
Speaker 1: word gets used a lot, but if you mapped it
Speaker 1: out for people, what does it really look like, Whether
Speaker 1: it's how we divide congressional districts, or how we segregate
Speaker 1: school districts, or how we handle redlining, how we deal
Speaker 1: with the mortgage crisis, that tons of examples of it,
Speaker 1: and then to acknowledge it and to say we actually
Speaker 1: now want to fix it, and here's a pathway towards
Speaker 1: fixing it. I'd like to build the National Institute for
Speaker 1: Racial Reconciliation that creates the space to have that kind
Speaker 1: of dialogue. It doesn't have to take place in that building.
Speaker 1: It can take place in communities across the country, but
Speaker 1: we ought to be having in the New Orleans. We
Speaker 1: borrow something from the William went to Institute of Racial Reconciliation,
Speaker 1: the white governor from Mississippi, and they have something called
Speaker 1: the Welcome Table where they actually invite people twenty at
Speaker 1: a time, half white, half Blaque, or whatever the racial
Speaker 1: mix would be, to get to know each other and
Speaker 1: spend six seven eight months to learning from each other,
Speaker 1: knowing each other, and befriending each other. Something as simple
Speaker 1: is that multiplied many, many, many times creates a relationship
Speaker 1: because it allows people to see each other, they know
Speaker 1: each other, and they have by put down any preconceptions
Speaker 1: they had and then work on projects together and build relationships.
Speaker 1: Something as simple and as loosely formal as that could
Speaker 1: be one of the pathways forward, as well as a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of other things that they used in both
Speaker 1: of the other countries that were referenced before. Are there
Speaker 1: kind of takeaways for those listening to this things people
Speaker 1: individuals can do to kind on their own to further
Speaker 1: some of the things you've talked about. Well, honestly, it's
Speaker 1: not going to be done unless individuals do it. Whether
Speaker 1: the government can organize it. The government is not a person.
Speaker 1: Government's made up of individual people. And so yeah, you
Speaker 1: can do everything. The most important thing is to begin
Speaker 1: to see other people as they are and who they are,
Speaker 1: as fellow human beings, and not see them racially, and
Speaker 1: not judge them according to race, creed, color, sexual orientation,
Speaker 1: a nation of origin. And to imbibe the notion that
Speaker 1: we all come to the table of democracy as equals,
Speaker 1: and we share opportunity and we share responsibility. That very
Speaker 1: simple way of living your life every day will changes
Speaker 1: the world dramatically. It just will. Thank you very much,
Speaker 1: You're welcome, Thank you. As William Faulkner wrote, the past
Speaker 1: is never dead. It's not even past. Spooky but true.
Speaker 1: It's funny, isn't it not funny? Ha ha, but funny?
Speaker 1: Weird that when you hear people talk about the importance
Speaker 1: of a collective reckoning with America's legacy of systemic oppression
Speaker 1: of black and brown people, those people are more often
Speaker 1: than not black and brown themselves. But they're not the
Speaker 1: ones doing the oppressing. They're not the ones responsible for
Speaker 1: this legacy or benefiting from it. Today. I'm grateful to them,
Speaker 1: of course, but white people need to take up this
Speaker 1: mantle if this country can hope to achieve the promise
Speaker 1: of equal opportunity for all. Like any other country, America
Speaker 1: needs to have a true understanding of her own history
Speaker 1: and the legacy of that history today. Solvable is a
Speaker 1: collaboration between Pushkin Industries and the Rockefeller Foundation, with production
Speaker 1: by Laura Hyde, Hester Kant, Laura Sheeter, and Ruth Barnes
Speaker 1: from Chalk and Blade. Pushkin's executive producer is Neia LaBelle,
Speaker 1: Research by Sheer, Vincent, engineering by Jason Gambrel and the
Speaker 1: Great Folks at GSI Studios. Original music composed by Pascal
Speaker 1: Wise and special thanks to Maggie Taylor, Heather Fine, Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Carly Mgliori, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about solving Today's biggest problems at Rockefeller Foundation dot org,
Speaker 1: slash solvable. I'm Mave Higgins. Now goost solve it.