so this our roundtable focuses on the impact of race technology and the media and how they all and impact the way we look at we

look at our schools and education at our communities, at environment. so our talk will focus on that. i will ask a series of questions and then each speaker will after answering the questions you'll have an opportunity to ask questions of them. but first, let me begin by introducing our speakers. begin with with emily rapp of who's here on my left emily raboteau. all right, at the intersection, social and environmental justice, climate change and her most recent work is lessons for survival. mother against the apocalypse a memoir on race, climate and environmental justice. her previous books are searching for zion the winner of an american book award and a

finalist for the hurston wright legacy award and the cult novel the professor's daughter. she is a contributing editor at orion magazine and, a regular contributor to the new york review books. apatow's essays have appeared and been anthologized in the new yorker, the new york times, new york magazine, the nation best american science writing. that's american travel writing. elsewhere, her distinctions include an inaugural climate narratives from arizona. arizona university, the deadline club award in feature reporting, the society of professional journalists, journalists, new york chapters and grants and fellowships. the new york foundations for the arts the bronx council on the arts. the robert b silvers foundation, the lane art foundation and yaddo. she is a full professor at the city college. sister of new york and cuny, and she lives in the bronx with

husband, the novelist victor and her two children. welcome emily raboteau thank, dr. greene. okay, thank you. we next have christina greer here, i'm sure that you have seen her in on our news network news networks, christina greer is an associate professor of political science at fordham university lincoln center. harris research and teaching focus on american black ethnic politics, urban politics and quantity native methods as well as new york city and congress, i'm sorry, as well as york city politics professor. greer's book, black ethnic race, immigration the pursuit of the american dream, investigates the increasingly diverse populations the united states from africa

and the caribbean. she finds that both ethnicity and a shared racial identity matter and also affect the policy choices and preferences for black groups. professor greer is currently on a manuscript researching the history of all african americans who have run for executive in the united states. her interests also include mayors and public policies in urban centers. and her previous work has compared criminal activity and political response in. boston and both baltimore. she is the host and producer of the aftermath christina greer and she she received her b.a. from and her m.a. and ph.d. in political science from columbia. welcome christina greer. and dr. bettina love.

dr. bettina love is the william f russell professor at teachers college columbia university and the author of the new york times bestseller punished for dreaming how school reform harms black children, how we heal. and 2022, the kennedy center name dr. love. one of the next 50 leaders making the world more inspired and, inclusive and compassionate. a co-founder of the abolitionist teaching network whose mission is to develop and support teachers and parents fighting within their schools and community. she has overseen over. 250,000 and grants to abolition lists around the country. she is also the founding member, the task force that launched the program in her hands. one of the largest guaranteed pilot programs in the united, which has distributed ready more

than $15 million to black women living in georgia. dr. love is a sought after public speaker on a range of topics including abolish and is teaching anti-racism, hip hop education black girlhood queer youth educational reparations, art based education to youth civic engagement. she is also the author of the best seller. we want to do more than survive. dr. love has provided commentary for various news outlets, including npr, pbs, washington, the washington post, the daily beast, the guardian and the atlantic constitution. atlantic journal. constitution. welcome dr. love. okay are these powerful women? yes.

and leaders. okay so let's begin. i'd like to begin by we always say the personal is political. so you can just spend a few moments reflecting on how your background and experiences engaged you in the work do around racial and social justice. and let's begin with you and emily. thank you. it's an honor to be here on the stage with all of you. i'm. i guess i. i would begin to speak as a mother. i'm mother of two black sons, their age. 11 and 12 years old. i had back to back babies. and this been a a very, uh, trying decade in which to raise children.

i'm. i have a new book out. it's called lessons for survival mothering against the apocalypse. as you mentioned. and i want to say, you know, because this panel is also focusing on technology, social media and the fight for for racial and social justice. when my boys were two and four years old, i'm. trayvon martin's killer was acquitted and there was an explosive moment of anger that felt cyclical. and i was reminded. the l.a. uprisings that happened when i was in high school. the sort of cyclical anger. my own grandfather was lynched in 1943 when my father was in utero. this happened in bay saint louis, mississippi.

so that kind of anger that came up again, that felt both historical and personal, so overwhelming. i remember talking my husband about how would and when we would talk to our boys, how to protect them from the police, when to give them the talk they were still so little. and this time, the writer jesmyn ward was so angry herself that she decided to collect a number of writers essayists, in particular in a volume in anthology, she wanted it to feel like thinkers that she admired sitting around a dinner table. she wanted to gather people who could help her be in community. in this moment of anger. and so she extended a few of an invitation to write for an anthology. some of you may be familiar with called the fire the fire this time an extension of james baldwin's essay collection from

1963. the fire. next time i. i was. thankful to receive that invitation felt honored. and i also felt like i don't know how i don't know what to say i don't know what to write. and in the midst of that feeling of writer's block, walking my boys to their daycare in washington heights, i encountered a mural around 175th street. it's no longer there, but it was part of a series of murals called. the know your rights murals. and i had never noticed it before. but was as if it were had been gifted to me in a moment where i didn't know i didn't know what to say or do. and it was a beautiful it was it was painted in all shades of blue. and it had bits of the fourth amendment, and it was painted for the people of our neighborhood where there is

inordinate police brutality to kind of educate us about how to protect ourselves from from police. and as it turned out, it was one of a series of murals across, neighborhoods new york, most plagued by brutality. and so i decided i'm going to photograph all of them because i know this is street art. it's going get painted over. it won't it won't always be here. i'm going to document it. i'm going to witness i'm going to use that art to work through my feelings. and so i wrote this photo essay that became a pattern of. kind of walking and thinking through social justice and eventually environmental justice issues in the city affecting my kids. so writing from a very personal place of motherhood about issues that are so large, it's almost hard to address doing so intimately. and in terms of community. that's kind of how i started about justice issues as a a as a concerned mom who wants her sons to thrive in the world. thank you, professor professor

crear. thank you for having us. am i on? okay. i always tell people i'm pretty basic. i to think cities and black people and and those are the two things i really care about. i've lived in cities almost my life, except for three years of high school. during my fathers, i call them the norman rockwell years when we were in northern illinois, near the border of wisconsin and illinois. the great time for me as difficult as it may have been, because i make this argument as a political scientist that all states are red states. it's just or not. you live in a blue city in your red. and that was three years of very formative years, living the red part of the state. and i think i'm a better political scientist because of that. i started grad school at columbia, septem ber 10th, 2001.

i was in class september 11th, had class september 12th, and we never talked about 911. mm. one class we talked about for a few. never. so that was the first time i realized that political science politics aren't the same thing. and i'm interested in politics. but i was in grad school to get a political science degree, so i'd have to have a tight for both of those. in that first week of grad school, i met with the dga, which is the director of graduate studies, and i told him i had done this amazing work in boston, baltimore, baltimore is my favorite u.s. city. all my students to have two favorite cities, one u.s., one international. baltimore is my favorite u.s. city. we can get into another panel. and he says cities are dead we don't do cities here. so i said well first of all you just said 911. second of all, how can cities be dead if of black people live in cities and there are only two

things that you need to know about me. i love cities and i love black people. so maybe it wasn't the best fit, but we we endure. so i realized my professional would this institution would not be able to focus cities. i have to go through a back door and. that back door is race and it obviously i wanted to use cities to talk about race in a in of a trojan horse. i was a classics minor in college. so i want to do like a trojan horse type dissertation. so instead i just did a dissertation head on which was my entire life people had always said, oh, you're so smart. which one of your parents is caribbean? you know, oh, your sister's at harvard. so you're caribbean. that was it. no. and so i like i'm a jb just black. and so, you know, it's like, oh, you know you're so well traveled, you're so well-spoken, right? you're so articulate. where are you from from? and so led me on this path to talk about coalition building amongst black americans

caribbeans in africans in the united states and not a capacity of who's better, who's smarter, but in how do we focus on white supremacy and work together to move policy forward. so that's that was the book but i still care about cities and i live in one of the most dynamic cities in the world even if it isn't my favorite city. so has led me to the work where i talk about new york city because in so many ways new york city is the canary in the mine for what happens to other cities in the country. in so many ways, black women are the canaries in the mine too. what happens to the rest of? this country? and if i care about black people, i have to know going on in cities. and so this where my personal and professional. but cities just people and buildings and transportation which is my favorite thing they talk about it's also a lot of nature we've talked about and so how do we incorporate our

landscape and work with our parks and, our waterways and our birth? and so really think about a city. a holistic way is kind of the direction i'm going in and writing about these days. it's interesting how these are all related. yes, professor love or dr. love, not degree. what's up, everybody is really wonderful to be here. i guess my story starts hating this city. i apologize apologize, but i'm an upstate new yorker and right. there you go. right. so i'm saying why? we got a lot. that's all we got. you know, we walk around a chip on our shoulder in upstate new york because you don't know where we're from. right. when you say upstate, the furthest you can go is like westchester. westchester. and then if you push albany. so i'm from rochester, york, born and raised. thank you. and so i tell people all the time canada just to be clear, so

they know where we're coming from. and the two stories i will tell. that really got me into thinking about education, educational policy is i think it started when i was 17 years old so i went a large high school in new york. i went to vocational high school so big we had a plane inside high school are electric fence, cosmetology, masonry, you name it. we had all you know we were coming out with jobs and it's about 2000 kids at my high school, my freshman class was about 800 kids. wow. and we graduated 84. oh, so i means we had a graduation rate of almost like 10%. and i, being 17 years old, walking that stage and asking myself, where is everybody? i remember us. i remember us at 14. i remember being loud and young and rambunctious and thinking we knew everything. and we were kids.

and we were doing what kids running around, getting trouble, skipping class. what would you do? you 40. and i've always been curious about what happened to my generation, what happened to those 700 kids that were my friends. i go off on a basketball scholarship to one of the top schools in the country to play. let me be very clear. love to write books. but i can play. i can i can that. thank god. basketball, that's love. you put that book to the side but right now right now like it's march right now and women's basketball the best women's basketball the best ticket in town. and so i go and i'm at the number two school in the country. you can't tell me nothing. the wnba is just happening. so i'm thinking to myself, wnba is cute. i'm probably going to the nba. like that's how cocky was at this time. and by my sophomore year, i

realized not going to play, i can't put on a pound. i'm staying the ground every day. every time they set a pick, i'm falling down. i said, i can't play. so i had this epiphany and i realized that all my class i was with all male athletes and i had never i had never understood that. i just thought that's what it was. and so i went back and i asked my other teammates. what classes are you? oh, journalism, pre-med chemistry. i can't look like one. they got all these classes. you ask. what was i taking? okay, i was taking first day in college. i was taking indoor, and then i took outdoor recreation. like, what are we doing here? how many ways can you put on band-aid? i was just confused. first generation college student, you know, didn't go to college. so i'm trying to figure things

out. so i go to my athletic who's in charge of academics, and i tell him, you know, i want to do something else. i don't think i want to take these classes. i would like to take the class that the other girls are taking on, the basketball team. and he simply turns to me and said, you are from the inner city you went to an inner city school and you here to play basketball. oh, i said, well, make it play. i say, what? you just at that moment from what i knew walking across that stage to where was now two years later in college, i kept saying to myself, did everything you all asked me to do, how am i in this situation? how am i being pigeonholed? i cannot even major in what i wanted to major in. and you told me i was going to college for free. you told me that i had made it, that this the dream. and so it really put me on a path of trying to understand education and education policies and reform when it comes to black and brown children. it really put me on a path of

trying to understand what happened to eighties and nineties babies. right. we are the generation. what you would call the post-civil rights generation. we are the hip hop generation. and we were a generation of young folks that labeled thugs super predators and crack babies. and so my work really looks at the last 40 years of education reform and how these labels of class morality and criminality not only was in our streets, but also became parts of our schools. and so my book, punishment dream in, i think is a book i've been trying to write since i was years old, really trying to understand how educational policy is the root cause of many of educational outcomes that we see for black and brown children today. thank you, professor thank you. so so just continuing with that thread, you've identified what you as the most pressing issue for you write about why don't we

continue with you professor rapaport? what is the most pressing issue when you look at what's happening around social and environmental justice. for me, it's become the climate crisis and environmental issues and the ways that there in equitably distributed depending on what neighborhoods we live in what part of the world we live in, what are classes, what are races. so i mentioned being gifted this insight, this series of murals. the know rights murals. and then i was gifted similarly some more and. glimpses of i would care from another series of murals we were talking about burning a little bit and i became like a backwards birder through this audubon. mural project. that's that's uptown. i don't know if any of you seen in harlem.

washington heights is, like, gorgeous. i find them gorgeous. murals of birds, dozens of them. when the project is finished, there will be over 300. and that is the number of birds expected by the year 2080 to be extinct because of climate change. and the project is named after john james audubon. who who lived in the neighborhood and is buried there. but i couldn't help but wonder, you know, this is this is a that is supposed to be about and beauty. but also unfolding a neighborhood where. there are all kinds of other endangered ants that seem not to be part of the story that audubon audubon society is telling when they think about conservation meaning you know through forces of gentrification these neighborhoods are really changing changing. nevertheless the people who

there for a really long time were suffering deleterious health effects because of poisoning infrastructure here frontline community. you know my boys have like a third of the kids in the neighborhood because we in a in a place encircled by highways and where there's a you know, there's bus depot and a wastewater treatment and so interestingly this this like beautification project conservation and birds, it became another thing i wanted to document my camera. i knew that those murals would owing to time and the forces of the city and grit, grime and the fact that they get tagged over would disappear and in an act of witnessing memorialize ation, i wanted to dwell on those birds, document those birds, witness those birds. but write about the neighborhood which those birds are appearing and and the other that are

endangering people. there. that kind of led me into thinking about, you know, what it means to live in a front line community and also to think about what it means, live in a coastal city. during the time of climate crisis, the ways that we are threatened by the rising sea and we sort of had a widening aperture of. interest in levels threat. so yeah, for me, i've been i've been i've been writing and dwelling on environmental crises and, thinking through that. thank you. let's see, i think about use the term i think climate refugees. yeah, we have climate refugees and professor. greer yes. yeah. well, fun fact mean. i always remind my students that the bronx is the only one of the five boroughs that's attached to mainland america restaurants, which is a little island like we are right now.

so for me, i've dedicated my entire professional to figuring out how black people fit into america in a political spectrum. and i think the danger is our politics right now is george washington warned us in his farewell address about the polarized of the two parties, but also the threat of foreign interference. we're at that moment right now. he wrote about it pretty cogently. the fact that there's real voter apathy and disdain amongst black people between and i we're talking really quickly before we came out here about diversity, ideological diversity of black people. but we're sort of we have this capture where roughly 90% of black people identify democrats. and we know why. and there's been party. but in the past 50 years, black are solidified by and large 90% in the democratic party. the republican party has chosen to cast their lot with white nationalists and, white supremacists and anti-black

agenda by and large. but what do you do with all that ideological diversity? right. so for me, someone like eric adams, total sense, right? we know that black most black people have that black person in their. yes. and if we meet them at the cookout or reunion or thanksgiving or every night when you go to dinner. and so we have a moment right now where seems as though there's a growing faction of black americans are tired of being captured in one party but the nature of american politics that we always rest in a two party system. parties aren't in the constitution, but that's just how we've organized ourselves from the beginning. when we have a third party, one of two things happens. either it subsumes of the two dominant parties or one of the two dominant parties subsumes the third party. we always end up with this kind of balanced equilibrium. so in this moment, we're growing of black people seem to be frustrated and don't want to engage that is of great concern

to me as a political scientist and that's on local, state and federal level. we focus on the federal level, but obviously in new york, you all know we have roughly 17% of people who bother to show up for municipal elections across new york and the number of african is pretty, pretty, pretty low. so what happens when we try to inspire young people and they can tell you all the people and the real housewives of nowheresville bill but they can't tell you who their state legislator is or their city council member or who their two u.s. senators are, who their member of the house is. and that's that's i'm trying to inspire people to not just run. there's so many different ways that you can be involved in politics without being an actual as well. thank. so we know that part. what's also happening is is when you look at technology and social media is impacting how people are responding from whatever perspective from the aged politically in our school

those in an environment what you say are the pros and cons of technology in our you have the rise of of the ai that's impacting all of us you have the the chat what what have been the benefits and the cons against technology from your perspective in the work you're why don't we professor love. yeah i'm you know i when it comes to technology we have to see it as a tool it not to say all be all it is not in the beginning is just a tool but for me there's always the divide of the tool so i'm looking at right now of colleges in this country. and we just saw i think it's dartmouth, yale, say that they're going to put the sats back in.

so the last two years since college, they didn't use sats. now they're going to put their sats back in. so that means pretty much to creative writing side of those students who may not have had the best. a sat score going to be gone because they feel like, you know what, these kids are writing college essays anyway. there's just you. then. so what we're going to do is just say scores, test scores, test scores. and so try balance where the creative city, where the arts were folk who don't do well on standardized tests. how do they get into these places? how do we use ai to solve some of our most critical issues but not rely on a.i. as a way to solve all of our issues? so for me, technology has to be used as a tool. and the biggest thing about technology, me as an educator and just tell a quick story, you take someone like, bill gates, right. if you read the book by malcolm

outliers, the cool book, the way he tries to situate that have to have 10000 hours to be good at anything. and what he does, he tells the story. bill gates and bill gates, this goofy white kid in somewhere in connecticut and the mom group had the foresight to just get a computer. now, mind you, back then, the computer as big as this room, right? it was huge. it wasn't a little laptop. you just, you know, just bring around. they bought one of these huge things. so bill gates and his friends, they began get to play with this technology before really most american eyes knew what this thing was. not only that they would leave a door open to the to the window, sneak in to the school at night so they can keep coding. now, if a black child did that, that wouldn't be called just coming into school at night. they would call the police and that extracurricular activity you were trying to do would be. so what happened was that the

idea a computer became big. bill gates was like 19 year old kid and had worked spear hands with programing that any grown person could because he's been doing since he was in high school. so he got to play with the technology and think too often we think the technology should tell us what to do instead of us telling, the technology, what to do and. our kids would have an opportunity to just play it, to create something new with it, to see what it can do, not just for a job, not just for this how can they create and use this technology to help solve issues. and we don't let children play technology like that. we have to they have to they have to be doing it for a job. and they're not doing it for a job. they playing around and you're not serious? no. let them play. let them find out what's new. you know, the three people in our society we talk of as

geniuses did not create anything. elon musk did not create tesla. he bought it. he did not create it. yes. mark zuckerberg stole it from his friend who right. and bill gates bought everybody. these are the three people that we we call geniuses. eight make nothing. you think about instagram. what is instagram? you can make a picture bluish grayish top. yeah they sold that they were $50 million. and all it does is take pictures. but what i'm arguing is that think about what is the ground was when first started out when it was just playing around these three white boys in their basement in their moms and basements. you got to give kids time to play with it. you got to give them time to, experiment with it and too often when it comes to black and youth, we don't have time to experiment it. we don't have time to what we

would call fail. and when you don't have time to fail technology, then you won't ever at the cusp of what's next. so if it's a i, if gpt or whatever is next black youth brown you need an opportunity just to play with it and to explore with it. so they have an opportunity to build is next and any safety to do that thank you. did you want to comment on that. yeah. mean i agree 1,000%. i think that the sort of dovetails into this kind of movement where it's not not just stem but there's arts involved in it. and i think part of what i hear you saying is it's not just about when it comes to technology, but i advocate for play period. and, you know, i come from a household where, you know, there's an expectation of excellence, there always was academically. but i will say my parents were

sort of i did have freedom. now, this is a class conversation as right. but i had freedom to kind of explore not as much as my my white boy friends, boyfriends, friends, but but there is a certain level of freedom that black and brown people tend not to have in this country. so there's there's kind of like the tracking that happens in school. there's also the tracking that happens in our society because we know that we we don't have the same wide berth that others do. i think when it comes to technology, for me it's like in produces garbage out. so i was at a lunch a few weeks ago explaining to white colleagues that when i go to the bathroom, try and wash my hands, depending on the sink, i can't get any water or stuff right. they'd never heard of that. and i was like, ask any black person, i'm literally getting toilet paper and like pushing it

underneath the sink so i can get the sink to turn on or just asking white lady like hi, nice white lady, will you run your hands under here? so can get some soap and some water and they heard of it and i said, so this is also a divide in the conversation of technology where, my lived experience with technology incredibly frustrating in this new thing that's so great because it does you know produce waste in the bathroom. but there's a whole segment of the population that doesn't know that black people and people color are excluded from it. and so the people who program it don't think about it and you know, american auto, which is a short lived nbc show the pilot episode is hilarious because it's a self-driving car that doesn't people of color. so they're just so excited about this new product, but it keeps plowing down black people and so they're like, wait, is the car racist? it's like, no, the people who program the car only practice this car on white people, they never thought that black people might be the street. and so like, yes, it's a comedy.

yes, it's a sitcom. and we can laugh off. but this is actually what's going on in these non-diverse settings where we are not at the table. we are not in conversation, folks. and so then they create this amazing product for everyone. but we've had no discussion in the in the building of it and we are sort of not just recipients but sometimes victims of it. and so that is of my political concern with technology. yeah. thank you. so, professor rapaport, you are creative writer as well as a nonfiction writer and, the writers very often create fiction that allows us to look at reality in a different way in this time and moment how does fiction or how can fiction be used to address some these issues in this moment that we're in? and how have you used that in your work? i in recent years i've been i've been really compelled to write

non fiction more so than fiction. and maybe i'll turn to fiction again. but like i said, since in the last since having kids, i have felt it's been really imperative. i felt drawn to about social and environmental justice in the form of essays the writer that i that i really look to and admired the most. who kind of did it all in terms of genres? james baldwin, who i mentioned already just a lodestar in terms, i think being able to handle social justice issues in fiction as as in essays and i guess i just wanted to touch on also this sort of technology question, the social media piece and how it connects to justice. i it is since the advent of social media we haven't had all that long. right. but since its advent really ordinary, people have been

sparking grass roots movements and change by uploading and sharing video. right. like capturing. youtube, facebook x formerly known as twitter instagram. we have now. and that's part of a really long of citizen journalism, which has always been used as a really effective tool when have eyewitness testimony to abuses of power i. i didn't want to leave that unsaid. you know i'm thinking. diamond reynolds you know live streaming on facebook as her boyfriend philando castile was bleeding to death because he'd been shot and she had the presence of to use what was at the time a very new technology live streaming on on on facebook just to demonstrate that injustice. just still thinking through

summer 2020 that uprising summer and you know how witnessing george floyd's murder connects back again to angry moment of of what happened to rodney king. so you know we've been talking about technology as a as a as a place of play and insight, of potential. but also the social media arm of technology continues to be a really vital place for, you know, both bystander and citizen journalism just to stare grim asymmetries of power in the face and i can't leave it unsaid where we're seeing this now in gaza, it's just it's intolerable to us to witness. children losing their lives, crying, losing their parents and our understanding, you know, the moral imperative, our understanding of what's going has so much to do with what

we're seeing right just feeds of what we're seeing. and not not unlike, you know what my parents generation were seeing with the vietnam war and turn it turning their opinion against that. yeah thank you thank you for insisting and adding that i think that that is a very critical period. we'd like to hear from you. i like you to go up to mic, which is i think this just one in the right hand. if you come up to the mic and we are going to spend some time, there are two i couldn't see. you can go up to either mic. we'll spend time taking questions and then as you come to the mic, this is from for anyone in the group given these these times given given what we are with with environmental racism and and the social justice issues and the impact of technology, how do we move forward, open that up to all of you so we come and get ready for

our questions. did you okay. so how do we move forward given where we are at this time, how do we move forward? i mean, for me, just one simple word reparations. i, i don't we have to be very clear at this moment as we watch as we're seen the idea of teaching history be banned, as we're seeing the idea that our very existence be banned. and the one thing about the one thing about banning the curriculum is that the curriculum tells you who's important. the curriculum tells you who this country believes is important, has contributed to this country, who will be our future. but the curriculum banning black folks from the curriculum also means that you never have to apologize because you did nothing wrong. because we're the record of that. so for me, you know my book ends with a detailed examination of

what educational reparations would be. and i work with economists and policymakers for a year. and we looked at just my generation, the last 40 years of education reform in a very conservative amount that is old to black people of my generation is $2 trillion. and that's a very concise purgative number. but the thing about reparations, to be clear, is that we just don't want to check. we do on our check. yeah, but what we also want is the policies to change is for atonement is for a real apology that these are some type of strategies and system and structural changes. so you're not just cutting me a check. i don't want you to do the same harm to my grandchildren and great grandchildren. and so we have to be advocating for repair, not more data. i think we live in a country. what thinks that because give you the data of the harm that do into you somehow that's justice because you, me, what you've done doesn't mean there's justice because you have been

trans parent about what you have done. that doesn't mean that's justice. and so i think as a country, a folks and brown folks and indigenous folks, we have to start getting very clear that we don't want just the i we don't just want more policies that are lay in anti-blackness. so that's why these policies never truly work what we want is actual reparation. what we want is actual repair the harm that has been done. and so you have to name your president, you have to document what your president has done, and then you have to come together as a community asking and demanding for what know is right. and i'll just end by what? what know what robin d.g. kelly says. d.g. kelley says any monetary money given to black people is not a gift. it is a down payment on what is owed to us because of the violence, the exploitation that has happened to us. and so what we have to be arguing is that are we not worthy of the investment is already our money.

so what we really want is what owed to us. so they're not giving us anything. it is what is owed us. and i think we all have to be having a conversation that really starts and in my opinion ends with reparations. thank you. thank you. thank you. can we just really quickly for q&a since there is quite few, there are quite a few people and we have very limited time. can we make sure we are heavy on the queue? that is the question and not the prolog to said question. thank you, professor greer. yes. why don't we start here? we're not just alternate my questions for dr. lowe. and so that's a little i would the comments it's just me and i'm curious if there are examples of institutions that are educating our children in a manner that you think that they should be? well, i mean, we have a history of afrocentric schools in this country that, i think do a pretty good job. we have a history of these schools not being, you know, funded and not having proper. but i think they do a pretty good job.

we also have a history of what we would call like saturday schools, and we have ella baker schools that are really amazing. but i also think we can never not talk about and run the data on hbcu, right? hbcu, you know, when you think about black doctors. okay, hbcu does represent about 50 to 70% of black doctors. when we talk about stem education, 25% of all stem teachers come lawyers. dennis, all of them. now, these numbers seem like, oh, my god. but if you think about it, we're talking about 30 to 40 schools producing. 50 to 70% of these black professionals. we have to be asking ourselves, well, what are the other. 3000 schools doing that are taking our black right? howard university medical school just last year had 9000 applications for about 150 slots. so when we about, you know, the

examples, we have so many amazing that are the examples of what we are doing we have so many folks who come out of hbcu that are examples of what happens when can nurture black excellence nurture black talent and then give them a space to be black and it grows. so i hbcu i think is the best example and also look at these white schools, these pwi guys and say you're taking our money, know you have this legacy you somehow deserve that i don't see the receipts for particularly when you are you know the 3000 pwi is in this country and there's 101 hbcu and look at data so for me i mean i've already told my children i got to i'm only pay for hbcu now if you want to go somewhere else that's fine with me. but where my money is going and hbcu because i can see the value of my dollar from how they nurture black folks right. just as as as i point, i call

them h.w. schools that pwi is because hbcu were set for the production and cultivation of black knowledge and h.w. schools were set up for. the production and cultivation of white knowledge. and we just happened to get in where we fit in. there you go. there you go. who? i'll tell that. who went to a whole bunch of h.w. c. okay, so i'm going to because of the time, i'm just going to ask everyone to just give their question and then we'll, we'll have any one of the speakers respond. so why don't we just give us your question? my question is very specifically for that. greer i'm from. so i wanted to know why was that like this great city for you. i've lived there for 30 years and i needed to go it quick. okay. okay. know, i want to get all the questions. the question. yes, hi. how do you guys respectively navigate utilizing social media to inspire our youth to get involved in our social, political, education, national

issues without, the false like how are you navigating our youth and avoiding people just jumping in? it's trending. thank okay. we'll go to you. yes okay. let me try to focus here as a social media addict. right. i've been doing social media since 2006 and there is so much out there. but there's also much noise. and as a creator and i think everyone should be on social media if they're not, because it gives you a voice that you you just you can be on any public. but we on social media people find you from all over the world. but how do you focus your voice and focus your on the things that you want to to put out there? i think that's just the question how do you focus it? how would you go about it? thank you.

yes, dr. bettina love. thank you for representing rochester. we know how to thank new york. frederick augustus bailey, washington is smiling down. my question, dr. what is our call to action? what are two things? we the sons and daughters of the diaspora. you're in this wilderness that is north. what can what? two things can we do before march is all going? thank you. and the last. yes. greetings. my name is claudia joyce vance and i wanted know if you have some idea about what it is that people of african descent, no matter where we live, what in the us, we can cross the divide that divides us. so whether we're an immigrant from the caribbean or from africa or from latin, how can we

begin to see that we're really one and working with common goal? thank. thank you. so why don't we begin with why. listen, i'll be fast. baltimore super black city to hbcu coppin and morgan. right there we go. as birder. okay, you got the orioles. you got the ravens. is the water. architecturally, it's of the most fascinating cities. if you're interested in buildings and cobblestone streets. at one point in time, it was compact, like a competitor to new york city. new york with finance, baltimore with shipping, new york one. but it has, i think the accent beautiful but it has this northern southern feel as a city. and so, you know, if you like good food. sure. allergic to crabs but like that old thing to. but you can feel like you're in like a charleston or savannah at the same time.

you can feel like you're in like a philly or new york, depending on what neighborhood you're in. so it's it's a magical place. it's called charm for a reason. thank you. okay. so for the next question and this is for anyone, any of our speakers. how do we get our youth to navigate social media? what are some strategies we can use with our youth around social media? i've work really quickly. i don't fight with strangers on social media. right? these are people just like in the ether. and so that old mark twain quote the, words attributed to mark twain, it's like, you know, don't with people in the street crazy people in the street, passers by won't know the difference. and so there's a lot of misinformation, disinformation also on the web because or in social media, because it's free and we know that as we put up more and more barriers to real journalism, more people are going to places where they can just get free information and not all of it is accurate. and so i think sort of making sure young people know sort of how identify something if it seems outlandish, then do a little digging right.

you know, we sort of pass around these stories quickly and it's like take a beat. like does that really make it make sense to you? and to spend a little time to of verify your sources, to make sure. but i think also there's a lot of people who hide behind anonymity. and so i'm quick block my i don't i don't engage with people who aren't in positive intellectual space. i hear that yes, i hear that. the question was asked about a to action. i'm going to ask each of you respond to that. what is call to action, doctor love started with you, but from your perspective, in your own work, what's the call to action? i think really quickly we have to get involved on a school level. we have to get involved in school boards during covid. we saw people come to school board meetings who were saying, i don't want my time. i'll vaccinated, who were saying, don't want this, i don't want that. what we know is that many of

those folks were political actors, they were paid actors come at school board meetings. so we have loud you an insurgent to make seem as though the country is moving towards this and it is not we have a lot of small group of people who are very wealthy to create a system for, even smaller group of people to change the democracy of education system. so we have to get involved. we have go to school board meetings and i would say, as you were saying earlier, run for school. the folks who are going to our superintendents, we need to be very clear about who they are. superintendents in this country, we have about two and a half year span and then they're and they're gone. they have no even to make any positive change before. they students, they say the word diversity, equity, reparations court, irrelevant pedagogy. these superintendents are out. so we got to get involved on the local at our schools and the policies that are happening at our schools. thank you. i'll add another action item is actually about climate change.

there's called climate silence, which is the distance. it's a gap between the number of us who are appropriately frightened about the crisis and the amount of us who are talking about it with any degree of regularity, if at all. and so there's a climate scientist i deeply respect, dr. katharine hayhoe, who has said one of the best things we can do, just talk about it in our communities, because if we're not talking about it, our policymakers don't know what matters to us. thank you, professor greer. i think these bridges in both things and the the last all politics is local. and i think we need to build coalitions, like minded people. they can be short term or long term, but a lot us have a lot of priorities. we can't hold them all. al sharpton, this sort of famous visual he uses where it's like, listen, when you're fighting something, you are that head, goose, bird and other people are sort of in your wake. but you can't do that the whole

time. right, because we know that a lot of people in the movement don't last very long. you need to also take a break, fall back and, let someone else take the head, win. and so when you're in a coalition, you can actually fall back because else has your back too. like to do the work that needs to be done. thank you. and talking about coalition and i'm going to go to the last question around from the african diaspora. are people across a groups? the question was how can we work more together as a community from the caribbean, from africa, the united states? what are some strategies to have more cross? cross alliances? i'll just say really quickly, you know, in organizing spaces for me, what really breaks down on is when i've been organizing spaces, we're having a good conversation around race, everything around race. we are on it. as soon as we get to a gender analysis breaks down, we talk about as soon as we get to a clear analysis, it breaks down

as soon as we talk about the lives of trans women or can't go anymore. and so for me, it's really about trying to think about how do we have conscious nations where we can hold those that we have and we can discuss those things so we can move forward. but when in spaces with folks that seems be the tension is that we are here about race but when i want bring in the different facets my life the different facets of what it means to be black and black folks are diverse as we've been talking about then the conversation down and then we are and back where we were so really have to start to have thoughtful or meaningful and. these conversations can be tense, right to be human means to in conflict because we're human we don't all have to agree but. how do we move past that conflict to really have a thoughtful conversation about where we all can go together, even if you don't like my guess, how can we move towards that?

and i think that is what gets unstuck each and every time is the homophobia, the transphobia, the islamophobia, the fatphobia we just get stuck there and we can't to move past that, to really talk about coalition building and really and a really powerful way. yes i think we can it at that. okay i think that was that a good way to close let's give a warm hand to all of our our speakers professor love professor greer and professor rappaport,hi. good afternoon. how is everyone? i know we are a bit happier and brighter to be in this of medgar evers college at the