Yale Psychiatry Grand Rounds: October 22, 2021

Transcript

• 00:00So as you likely know, over a year now,
• 00:04the department has been engaged in
• 00:07intentional work to address the legacy
• 00:09of racism in the United States and
• 00:11its manifestation in the department.
• 00:14It's very difficult,
• 00:16challenging and slow work,
• 00:18but we are doing it despite the setbacks in
• 00:22perfections disagreements along the way,
• 00:25we as a department remain committed to
• 00:28this work, and I want to thank so many of.
• 00:31You who demonstrate your passion and
• 00:33commitment to the work by raising your
• 00:36voice is expressing your opinions,
• 00:39acknowledging our imperfections
• 00:40as well as our progress.
• 00:42However, small incremental it may be
• 00:45and simply by showing up along the way,
• 00:48we recognize that we have all different
• 00:51levels of knowledge and experience about
• 00:54some of the fundamental concepts as it
• 00:57relates to race and racism in our country.
• 01:00And certainly.
• 01:01In our department and today,
• 01:03it's just one effort to educate our
• 01:07community and to really understand
• 01:10the concept of race and how it's
• 01:13manifested throughout our history
• 01:15and and in all of our institutions.
• 01:20So I feel like we all have a lot
• 01:23that we can learn, including myself,
• 01:25and which is why I am really excited
• 01:28to have our speaker, doctor Jacobson.
• 01:30Here today.
• 01:31So again thank you all for being
• 01:34here and thank you Doctor Jacobson
• 01:36for being here and I'm gonna turn
• 01:39it over to doctor design.
• 01:44Thank you Doctor Cruz to come for
• 01:46those wonderful opening remarks.
• 01:48I'll say I'll say a few words
• 01:52about Doctor Jacobson's bio and
• 01:53then a few personal remarks.
• 01:55So Matthew Frye Jacobson is
• 01:57Sterling professor of American
• 01:58studies and history at Yale.
• 02:00He is the author of seven books on race,
• 02:02politics and culture in
• 02:04the United States Odes.
• 02:05One grain of sand that historians
• 02:08eye photography history in the
• 02:10American president, both from 2019.
• 02:12What have they built you to do the
• 02:14Manchurian candidate in Cold War America?
• 02:17Gaspar Gonzalas in 2006 routes 2 White
• 02:21ethnic revival and post civil rights America?
• 02:24Barbarian virtues,
• 02:25the United States encounters
• 02:27foreign peoples at home and abroad,
• 02:291876 to 1917.
• 02:30Whiteness of a different color
• 02:33European immigrants and the alchemy
• 02:35of race that was those are all from
• 02:3798 to 2006 and special sorrows.
• 02:39The dice porque imagination of Irish,
• 02:42Polish and Jewish immigrants
• 02:43in the United States.
• 02:46In addition, he has also served as creator,
• 02:49writer and lead researcher
• 02:50for a long way from home.
• 02:51The untold story of baseballs desegregation.
• 02:54The film garnered a Golden Telly
• 02:56award in the category of general
• 02:58television documentary in 2019,
• 03:00and ongoing projects include
• 03:02Dancing Down the barricade,
• 03:04Sammy Davis Junior and the Long
• 03:06Civil Rights Era and **** Gregory,
• 03:08and the idea of political comedy.
• 03:10So these are it's giving you a taste
• 03:12of the breath of Matthew Jacobson.
• 03:15Work a long with Patty Limerick.
• 03:18He also hosts historians.
• 03:20Imagine a monthly webinar devoted
• 03:22to creativity in the historians.
• 03:24Craft his teaching and research.
• 03:26Focus on race and U S political culture,
• 03:281790 to the present,
• 03:30including US imperialism,
• 03:31immigration and migration.
• 03:33Popular culture,
• 03:34civil rights and the juridical
• 03:36structures of US citizenship.
• 03:38In addition to documentary
• 03:39studies in public humanities,
• 03:41I wanted to say just a few short words.
• 03:43In addition,
• 03:44I first met met met several years ago.
• 03:47During commencement and
• 03:48within a few short minutes,
• 03:50it was clear just how warm and
• 03:52welcoming of a person he is.
• 03:54He is a true gem at this university,
• 03:56a brave voice and a kind of voice.
• 03:59A source of support for those of
• 04:00us who may study such vexing topics
• 04:02as race and racism and a source of
• 04:05inspiration for all those who may
• 04:06venture onto the rocky roads of this world.
• 04:10In our first meaning meetings,
• 04:11it was evident how much he seamlessly
• 04:14embraces a broad perspective in his work,
• 04:16valuing multiple perspectives,
• 04:18approaches and disciplines.
• 04:20He made me feel welcome within,
• 04:22and I was.
• 04:23I was had just joined the faculty
• 04:26at that time.
• 04:27So and we here in psychiatry now have
• 04:29the pleasure of learning from him today.
• 04:33So take take it away. Thank
• 04:36you. Thank you so much.
• 04:37Thank you Mirage for the
• 04:39lovely introduction.
• 04:40I also want to thank Cindy
• 04:42Cruz to Trish Adaland,
• 04:44Chris Gardner for the invitation.
• 04:45I'm really happy to be here today.
• 04:47Let me take just one moment
• 04:49to share my screen with you.
• 05:10Oh, there we go.
• 05:14OK, are you seeing that slide? Yes,
• 05:17that looks great and you can hear me yes.
• 05:22So the title work today
• 05:23is race in US culture.
• 05:25The past is what the President is made
• 05:27of and I'm going to take you deeply,
• 05:29deeply into the past.
• 05:31But I promise to bring you back around
• 05:33to the President as best I can.
• 05:35Here's a brief.
• 05:41His speech outline of my talk today
• 05:42just so you have kind of a road map,
• 05:45I'm going to talk about the origins of
• 05:47race as an idea about human diversity.
• 05:49I'm going to talk about race in the
• 05:51context of democracy in North America.
• 05:54The latest talk about race as a
• 05:56cultural construction, a social fiction
• 05:58that has been made real by law,
• 06:01policy and layers of discrimina Tori,
• 06:03history and political life.
• 06:04What does it mean to say that the
• 06:07races is culturally constructed?
• 06:10And why bother saying that if we all
• 06:12know that we're kind of stuck with
• 06:14it and it's going to be hard to do
• 06:16away with in a society like ours,
• 06:17so I will talk a little bit about that,
• 06:20but just as a preface,
• 06:21I mean one of the ways that we
• 06:23know that it's constructed is.
• 06:24For example, in this country a white
• 06:27woman can give birth to a black child,
• 06:29but a black woman cannot give birth
• 06:32to a white child. There it is.
• 06:35There's the constructiveness
• 06:36of it right there and then.
• 06:39From there,
• 06:39I'll move on to think historically
• 06:41about the current moment that
• 06:42we're in quite a dramatic moment
• 06:44in our national life by moment.
• 06:46I'm really talking about the
• 06:47last ten years or so.
• 06:49And then finally,
• 06:50I'll come to rest here at Yale and
• 06:52talk about race and institutions
• 06:54and race and this institution.
• 06:57And I want to,
• 06:58I'm gonna be covering a lot so I'm
• 06:59gonna make sure to leave plenty
• 07:01of time for for question and
• 07:03answer and discussion at the end.
• 07:05OK,
• 07:06where does the idea of race come from
• 07:08between the 1400s and the 1800s?
• 07:12In the context of European empire building,
• 07:18conquest, Atlantic slavery,
• 07:20the building in the new World and
• 07:23later American imperialism and
• 07:25the conquest of the continent?
• 07:28I'm over those.
• 07:29The span of those centuries there
• 07:32there was a religious language of
• 07:36Christianity versus Heathendom that
• 07:38that framed those historic events,
• 07:40but there was a glacial slide
• 07:43to a more secular language of
• 07:45civilization and savagery,
• 07:47and that secular idea is really race.
• 07:50That's where race comes from.
• 07:52That's where that kind of biologist,
• 07:53notions of race first emerged
• 07:56as Patrick Wolff writes.
• 07:58Race is colonialism speaking.
• 08:02We used to think that there were
• 08:05these static races pre-existing who
• 08:07are out there in the world and they
• 08:10collided and had wars with each other,
• 08:12and they enslaved each other and.
• 08:16But they were racist to begin with,
• 08:18and what scholars like Patrick
• 08:20Wolf are now arguing is that
• 08:22that race is actually a process,
• 08:24and it's a process of that
• 08:27history of conquest.
• 08:28One of the ways that we can think about this,
• 08:30and we can see it.
• 08:32We think about racialization.
• 08:35In different peoples are
• 08:37racialized in different ways,
• 08:38so people who were racialized
• 08:40for their land to the native
• 08:42nations in North America,
• 08:44the way that race works in their case
• 08:46is that if there's any intermixing,
• 08:47they gradually disappear,
• 08:49and so in their racial identity is,
• 08:53is is queued to a blood quantum.
• 08:56And if they're over two or three or
• 09:00four generations of racial intermixing
• 09:02the the Indian disappears and the.
• 09:06The point of that,
• 09:07since they were racialized for land,
• 09:09is that in their disappearance they lose.
• 09:13They lose their tribal status,
• 09:15they lose their tribal claims,
• 09:16they lose their grip on tribal lands.
• 09:18So if you're racialized for land,
• 09:20you're being racialized
• 09:22in one particular way.
• 09:23If you're racialized for labor,
• 09:25it's just the opposite.
• 09:26The one drop rule was written
• 09:28into law under slavery.
• 09:29If you were black,
• 09:30you could never escape your blackness,
• 09:32no matter how much intermixture there was,
• 09:35and the idea was that.
• 09:37Race became a marker of of servitude,
• 09:40and so race became something
• 09:42that that in that instance could
• 09:44never be could never disappeared,
• 09:47could never disappear.
• 09:48It could never be escaped,
• 09:50and by custom I'm we don't have one
• 09:52drop rules on the books anymore,
• 09:54but my custom as a society we
• 09:56still function very much that way.
• 09:59That is why a white woman can
• 10:01give birth to a black child,
• 10:03but a black woman cannot give
• 10:05birth to a white child and most.
• 10:07Most people who have a mixed
• 10:10race identity will tell you that
• 10:12when they're out in the world,
• 10:14they read as black to most people,
• 10:17so that's that's a kind of a legacy
• 10:19of this kind of racialization.
• 10:21But the point is that the
• 10:22Racialization itself was a process
• 10:24that took place in the context of
• 10:27colonization and Atlantic slavery.
• 10:32Racial whiteness emerges in the
• 10:34same context a Johann Friedrich
• 10:36Blumenbach and a book called on
• 10:38the natural Variety of Mankind,
• 10:40written in 1795.
• 10:41He it was blumenbach who invented
• 10:44the term Caucasian,
• 10:45which is still with us and
• 10:47describing the Caucasian variety,
• 10:49he said, I I've taken the name of
• 10:51this variety from Mount Caucasus,
• 10:53both because it's neighborhood
• 10:54and especially at Southern Slope,
• 10:56produces the most beautiful race of men.
• 10:59And because in that region, if anywhere.
• 11:01It seems we are with greatest probability,
• 11:04place the attack funds the original
• 11:08forms of mankind, his Caucasian.
• 11:10He was a skull collector.
• 11:12As most natural scientists were
• 11:14in that period.
• 11:15And his most beautiful of skulls that
• 11:18Georgian skull is in the center,
• 11:21and by his right his typology.
• 11:24The beautiful Caucasian was the original,
• 11:27the original human and all other
• 11:30racial types were in some sense a
• 11:33degeneration from that idealized
• 11:35original type.
• 11:36So whiteness itself was conceived in
• 11:40racial terms in hierarchical terms
• 11:42and in the context of of the same.
• 11:46The same history of of conquest and
• 11:50slavery and imperial adventurism.
• 11:53So we have the colonization of the
• 11:55Americas from the 1490s to the 1890s.
• 11:58We have North American slavery and the
• 12:00broader world of Atlantic Slavery,
• 12:021619 to 1865.
• 12:04We have the Enlightenment or the age
• 12:06of reason from it's hard to date,
• 12:09but some people point to Descartes
• 12:11and the
• 12:121630s onward, but significant because it's
• 12:15it's this period of secular secularization
• 12:18and the rise of scientific thought.
• 12:21We have the American and French
• 12:24revolutions in the 17 late 1700s,
• 12:27the modern post Divine right nation
• 12:29state and the liberal political subject.
• 12:32And then we have scholars like blue
• 12:35bin Blumenbach and there are others.
• 12:37Many Cooper bufan.
• 12:41Representing the emergence of racial
• 12:44science in 1795 and the point here is
• 12:46that these all of these world events
• 12:48are deeply entwined with one another,
• 12:50one another,
• 12:51and there was nothing neutral about
• 12:53race as an observable natural fact.
• 12:56Race as an idea about human
• 12:58diversity was born in this moment.
• 13:01In these processes of conquest.
• 13:06So. The biologists will say race refers
• 13:10to a group within a species that is
• 13:14distinguishable morphologically genetically
• 13:15from others of the same species.
• 13:18A taxonomic category representing such
• 13:21a group often considered equivalent
• 13:24to a subspecies races human difference
• 13:26rooted in biological heritable traits,
• 13:30and that's pretty much the popular
• 13:32understanding of race right now.
• 13:33If you went out on the streets of
• 13:35New Haven and just randomly asked
• 13:36people what they thought race was,
• 13:37you would get some.
• 13:39Version of this you would get
• 13:40a lot of confusion.
• 13:41Some people might talk about genes.
• 13:43Some people might talk about blood.
• 13:45Some people might talk about phenotype
• 13:47or physiognomy or skin color,
• 13:48or but in a general way you're going to
• 13:51get some kind of answer that has to do
• 13:53with human difference rooted in biological,
• 13:55heritable traits.
• 13:56Historians, meanwhile,
• 13:57and this is happened across
• 13:59across many disciplines,
• 14:01but historians now regard race
• 14:03as originating as the vocabulary
• 14:06for describing human diversity in
• 14:08terms of who is capable of what,
• 14:10who is deserving of what,
• 14:12who is fit or unfit for what a
• 14:16hierarchical typology developed in a
• 14:19context of unequal power relations,
• 14:21or the answers to these questions were
• 14:25already being decided and enforced.
• 14:27Race is colonialism speaking.
• 14:32OK, so how do we?
• 14:33I mean, that's that's a pretty deep history.
• 14:35How do we come?
• 14:36Come to our own place and time
• 14:39with these with these broad.
• 14:41Ideas, here's one way in,
• 14:44and this is part of what I mean
• 14:46by the the the past is what the
• 14:48president is made of.
• 14:49This is a photograph I took at an
• 14:51immigrant immigrant rights rally in 2010.
• 14:53As you probably remember this,
• 14:56this was right after the Arizona
• 14:59became known as the papers please
• 15:02law was passed SB 1070 required
• 15:07granting authority of St Level law
• 15:11enforcement beat COPS sheriffs to
• 15:13insist on seeing the citizenship
• 15:16papers of anyone for probable cause,
• 15:19and critics of that of the law were saying,
• 15:22well probable cause at the end of the day.
• 15:24It's going to boil down to race and
• 15:27maybe language or race and language,
• 15:29but the law is going to imperil citizens
• 15:31and non citizens alike and it became quite.
• 15:34It became quite controversial law.
• 15:37Similar laws were passed in
• 15:39places like Alabama soon after.
• 15:41So do I look illegal,
• 15:42became a kind of slogan and rallying
• 15:44cry for the immigrant rights community?
• 15:46That's in 2010.
• 15:49But illegal dates to 1924.
• 15:53The idea of an illegal alien did
• 15:56not exist until the Immigration Act
• 15:59of 1924 created a quota system that
• 16:02left certain people out and therefore
• 16:04their migration would be illegal
• 16:07with the exception of Chinese who
• 16:09immigrated during the exclusion era,
• 16:11it was impossible to immigrate
• 16:14illegally before 1924,
• 16:16so you'll hear often in our
• 16:18immigration debate so.
• 16:19Sure, people say,
• 16:20well,
• 16:21my my grandparents came from Italy
• 16:23or Ireland or Russia and they came
• 16:25legally and they they abided by the law.
• 16:28Well they came at a time when
• 16:29there was no
• 16:30such thing as illegal immigration
• 16:32and speaking for my own Gran Father
• 16:34who escaped conscription in Russia.
• 16:36If his only choice was to come illegally,
• 16:40he would have the point here
• 16:42though is do I look illegal?
• 16:44Is speaking for 2010,
• 16:45but it's rooted in a history
• 16:48that is structured in 1920.
• 16:50Or does it mean to look illegal?
• 16:54Where does but when looks
• 16:57like and citizenship,
• 16:58how do those two things come together?
• 17:00And for that we need to go
• 17:02all the way back to 1790.
• 17:05When the 1st Congress sat down
• 17:07to decide who was eligible to
• 17:10become a naturalized citizen.
• 17:12They landed on the term
• 17:15white free white persons.
• 17:16This is the the First
• 17:18Naturalization Act of 1790.
• 17:20That's that's why we're looking
• 17:21at 1790 in this context.
• 17:23Looking looking illegal,
• 17:24looking like a citizen or not.
• 17:27All free white persons who have or shall
• 17:29migrated to the United States and shall
• 17:31give satisfactory proof before a magistrate,
• 17:34by oath,
• 17:34that they intend to reside therein,
• 17:36and she'll take an oath of allegiance,
• 17:38and she'll have resided in the
• 17:40United States for one whole year,
• 17:42shall be entitled to the rights of citizens.
• 17:44So whiteness and American citizenship
• 17:47were were written in together.
• 17:51Whiteness was was at the very center of
• 17:55the idea of American citizenship in.
• 17:57In the early Republic,
• 17:58the first Congress deciding
• 18:00so there are many things.
• 18:02This is in some ways the most
• 18:04portentious law in in American history,
• 18:06and I should say this was a law that
• 18:08was on the books for 162 years.
• 18:11The white persons clause was still on
• 18:13the books in the decade that I was born,
• 18:16so this was on the books from 1790 to 1952.
• 18:19There were a couple additions along the way.
• 18:22People people of African descent was
• 18:24added after the Civil War Chinese.
• 18:27Persons was added during World War
• 18:28Two and it was kind of embarrassing
• 18:30that we were aligned with China,
• 18:32but we were excluding their citizens,
• 18:35but the free white persons clause
• 18:36was still on the books until 1952,
• 18:38and it was one of the framing principles
• 18:40of American citizenship up to that point.
• 18:45So.
• 18:45The the the debate over this
• 18:47is really quite fascinating.
• 18:49When the Congress we don't
• 18:50have the transcript,
• 18:51but we have a accounts of the the
• 18:53Congressional debate and when they
• 18:55first entertained the question of who
• 18:56could become a citizen in the New Republic,
• 18:58they turned it upside down
• 19:00and backwards every which way.
• 19:01They they asked whether Catholics
• 19:03couldn't could become citizens.
• 19:04They asked whether nobles or foreign
• 19:07aristocrats could become citizens.
• 19:09They asked whether people who
• 19:11held property in foreign lands
• 19:12could become citizens.
• 19:14They wondered whether.
• 19:15They should the the petitioning,
• 19:18the petitioning person should
• 19:20have someone a witness,
• 19:22speak to their good character.
• 19:24Could Jews become citizens?
• 19:26They turn this every which way the
• 19:29word white was never questioned.
• 19:31It was deeply at the level that so
• 19:33deeply at the level of presumption
• 19:35that it was never.
• 19:36It was never part of the debate,
• 19:38it was just assumed from the outset.
• 19:41There are a couple of reasons for this.
• 19:42One, the word white had appeared in colonial
• 19:46statutory statutory law before it wasn't.
• 19:49This wasn't the first time whiteness
• 19:51appears in law in North America.
• 19:53Whiteness had framed.
• 19:54Who could who could take
• 19:55part in an armed militia?
• 19:57Who could marry whom?
• 19:59Who could own property and
• 20:01who could be property?
• 20:03So this wasn't altogether new, but it's
• 20:05it's immensely important that it was.
• 20:07It was presumed that only white
• 20:09person could become citizens.
• 20:10And this.
• 20:11Unfolds really on two different levels.
• 20:14One one is just the practical
• 20:16matter of what democracy is going
• 20:18to mean in a settlor environment.
• 20:20So just from the practical,
• 20:23what this policy is going to be is
• 20:27a holiday for whom the duties of
• 20:30citizenship are are going to include,
• 20:33almost in paramount fashion.
• 20:37Participating in Indian Wars and
• 20:40participating in potentially.
• 20:41Putting down slave rebellions
• 20:43so in in practical terms,
• 20:45in the new nation,
• 20:46the idea that the citizen was
• 20:48was going to be a white person
• 20:50was just as a practical matter.
• 20:52It was just assumed.
• 20:54And there's a deeper level to this
• 20:56that is is more philosophical,
• 20:57and this has to do with enlightenment,
• 20:59thought.
• 21:00And that's why I put the age of
• 21:02reason on that scheme of important
• 21:04global events that that frame race.
• 21:09The the philosophy put in motion here is that
• 21:13democracy is a really fragile experiment.
• 21:16If you're taking the powers of the monarchy
• 21:18and you're kind of turning it on its side,
• 21:20so authority is not running downward
• 21:22from the crown anymore, but it's it's
• 21:24moving horizontally among the people.
• 21:26Then, for this experiment to work,
• 21:30the people have to have certain traits.
• 21:32They have to be virtuous.
• 21:34They have to be wise,
• 21:35they have to be for berent.
• 21:37But I have to be far seeing they have.
• 21:39Have notions of the public good.
• 21:41They have to have all kinds of
• 21:44qualities that in the context of
• 21:4718th century Europe and Euro America,
• 21:49these were already raced from the
• 21:51beginning and it has to do with that
• 21:54discourse of civilization and savagery.
• 21:56That reason was something that was
• 21:59only possessed by white people,
• 22:01that was that was the presumption.
• 22:03So and as was virtue and and all
• 22:06sorts of other positive traits.
• 22:09So if this experiment is going to work, then.
• 22:14Only a certain.
• 22:15This democracy isn't just
• 22:17for any chance comers.
• 22:18Let's put it that way,
• 22:19it's going to have to be a very
• 22:21particular kind of quality to
• 22:22to make this experiment work.
• 22:24So both at the practical level and
• 22:26at the philosophical level it was a
• 22:27foregone conclusion that when we're
• 22:29talking about who can become a citizen,
• 22:31we are already talking about
• 22:33free white persons.
• 22:35I said this is the most pretentious
• 22:37law in American history,
• 22:38and I think it's pretentious
• 22:39for a number of reasons.
• 22:40One, literally, what did it portend?
• 22:44It was this law that allowed for
• 22:46the massive waves of migration
• 22:48that followed from Europe.
• 22:50So if your family history is
• 22:52refracted through some version
• 22:53of the Ellis Island story,
• 22:55you are like I am a legacy of
• 22:58the 1790 Naturalization Act.
• 23:00We are.
• 23:01My grandparents came into this
• 23:03country as free white persons.
• 23:08This is the law that kind of paves
• 23:11the way for Chinese exclusion in
• 23:12the late in the late 19th century,
• 23:14because the Chinese were not
• 23:16deemed to be free white persons.
• 23:18They were ineligible for citizenship.
• 23:20They could come as laborers,
• 23:22but they couldn't become citizens,
• 23:23and therefore they were uniquely
• 23:24vulnerable to the attacks of
• 23:26the anti Chinese movement.
• 23:27There wasn't a politician on the scene
• 23:29who had to worry about them as voters,
• 23:31they couldn't testify in court,
• 23:33they were they were powerless and kind
• 23:35of at the mercy of their white neighbors.
• 23:45Matt, you're muted.
• 23:47Is that happened?
• 23:48How long have I been muted?
• 23:50Have I been muted for a long time?
• 23:51No no. OK, I'm so sorry saying that
• 23:55the Chinese were uniquely vulnerable
• 23:57to the Chinese Exclusion Act,
• 23:59and that is because of their status
• 24:02under the Naturalization Act of 1790.
• 24:03Fast forward to World War Two.
• 24:05Same thing with Japanese American internment
• 24:08of Japanese internment in in the 1940s.
• 24:11They are uniquely vulnerable for exactly
• 24:14the same reason because they are aliens
• 24:18ineligible for citizenship under the.
• 24:20The Act of 1790 so so the act is
• 24:23portentious in that way and what it
• 24:26portended for later American history.
• 24:28It's pretentious because we think it's it.
• 24:31It should frame our thinking
• 24:33about identity politics.
• 24:34We think about identity politics as being
• 24:36a kind of post civil rights era phenomenon,
• 24:39but actually the Naturalization Act of
• 24:421790 is identity politics, par excellence.
• 24:45And not only is it a kind of
• 24:48identity politics of whiteness.
• 24:50But it's it frames all future identity
• 24:54politics in a very particular way.
• 24:57In creating a we we,
• 25:00the people that is built on
• 25:03racial patterns of inclusion.
• 25:05For the we,
• 25:06the people and exclusion for
• 25:08all the others who are who are
• 25:10on the outside of that circle.
• 25:12For the people on the outside.
• 25:13The choices for arguing that
• 25:15they belong inside.
• 25:17We the people is they can either
• 25:19make an argument from sameness,
• 25:21you have it all wrong.
• 25:22We aren't different from you or
• 25:23just like you let us into the
• 25:25circle of we the people and we will
• 25:26show you we will be fit citizens.
• 25:28We will show you we will be
• 25:30a benefit to the Republic.
• 25:32Or they can make the argument from
• 25:34difference and we can say you're right,
• 25:36we are not like you were different from you.
• 25:39You're wrong about the hierarchical piece.
• 25:41Though we're we're equal to you,
• 25:42but we are different and our difference
• 25:45will be a benefit to the Republic.
• 25:48That's basically the assimilationist
• 25:50argument and the pluralist argument.
• 25:52It's basically the Booker T.
• 25:54Washington and WEB Dubois argument.
• 25:57It's basically the argument
• 26:00within American feminism over.
• 26:02Gender and citizenship,
• 26:03both in the 1920s and again when the ERA
• 26:06was being discussed in the 1970s or women.
• 26:10Would women be equal because they are
• 26:12the same as men or because they're
• 26:14different as men and and it's it's a.
• 26:16It's a discussion,
• 26:17a political discussion that has taken
• 26:19place in every immigrant community.
• 26:21I know anything about,
• 26:23but that's it's a structured identity.
• 26:26Politics.
• 26:26It's not just identity.
• 26:28Politics dates all the
• 26:28way back to the beginning,
• 26:29but it's the Naturalization Act of 1790.
• 26:33Structures identity politics in a very
• 26:36particular way that we are still living with.
• 26:39This law is.
• 26:40Pretentious because it's telling us
• 26:42something very important about diversity.
• 26:44We think about, I mean,
• 26:46our two favored A2 favored metaphors for
• 26:48American diversity are the melting pot.
• 26:51On the one hand,
• 26:52that's the assimilationist argument,
• 26:53or the mosaic,
• 26:55or the potato salad.
• 26:57Or they're all kinds of hideous metaphors,
• 26:58but basically the pluralist, right?
• 27:00So we all jump into the melting
• 27:02pot and we all become the same,
• 27:04or will never be the same.
• 27:06But you know, won't we make a beautiful
• 27:09a beautiful mosaic or wonderful?
• 27:10Symphony or whatever.
• 27:12The important thing that the the
• 27:15Naturalization Act of 1790 is reminding
• 27:17us is that both of those metaphors,
• 27:21as different as they are,
• 27:23share the quality of having bleached
• 27:26the entire narrative of the power
• 27:29relations that are at its core.
• 27:31We don't jump into the melting
• 27:33pot on equal grounds.
• 27:34We don't.
• 27:35We don't celebrate our pluralist
• 27:38identities on equal grounds.
• 27:41We all entered this policy on
• 27:42very on a very different basis.
• 27:45Some of us as as voluntary migrants,
• 27:48some of us as involuntary imports,
• 27:52some of us as immigrants with with.
• 27:56No rights to citizenship.
• 27:58Some of us as occupants
• 28:01of conquered territories,
• 28:04and these are these are very
• 28:07different legal juridical standings.
• 28:09And so when we talk about
• 28:11diversity we have to be really.
• 28:12We have to understand that
• 28:14we're not just talking about
• 28:16language or the arts or foodways.
• 28:20We're talking about different.
• 28:22Power relations and different
• 28:25a different status.
• 28:27Different relationship between a
• 28:29people on the one hand and the state.
• 28:32On the other.
• 28:35The most important thing about 1790.
• 28:39What it's telling us is.
• 28:42You know we are taught to think,
• 28:45and I think it's we rightly
• 28:47think that democracy and racism
• 28:48are at odds with each other.
• 28:50That is a contradiction.
• 28:52That racism, racism goes against democracy.
• 28:54What's important for us to recognize
• 28:57is that for the framers for the
• 28:59founders for this first Congress,
• 29:01who drafted the Naturalization Act of 1790,
• 29:04it's just the opposite.
• 29:05Racism.
• 29:06It is what's going to make democracy work.
• 29:09It's the exclusions of white supremacy that
• 29:13will give the Democratic experiment a chance.
• 29:18Racism is the guarantor.
• 29:21Of democracy for them. And.
• 29:27I think it's important to see race and
• 29:30and democracy as mutually constitutive.
• 29:32In this period,
• 29:34you know in overtime they're very
• 29:36narrow tight circle of we the people
• 29:38has in fact been expanded and through
• 29:41struggle and and through civil war
• 29:43and emancipation and through later
• 29:46immigration and through immigrants rights,
• 29:49movements and all sorts of social movements.
• 29:52The the.
• 29:54The circle has indeed expanded,
• 29:57but the fact that racism was the
• 29:59guarantor for democracy at the outset,
• 30:02I think,
• 30:02is one of the reasons that racism is
• 30:04so stubborn in our political culture.
• 30:06It is.
• 30:07It is a core value of this political culture,
• 30:10and you can peel it back like an onion.
• 30:12And there are many many layers.
• 30:13But at that core is the racist
• 30:15idea that's embedded in the
• 30:17Naturalization Act of 1790,
• 30:19so I think it's it's really important
• 30:21to be aware of the depth of this.
• 30:25And how deep is the history
• 30:27when we're talking about racism?
• 30:36So the preamble to the Constitution is very.
• 30:39It's a familiar document.
• 30:40We the people of United States in
• 30:42order to form a more perfect union,
• 30:43establish justice,
• 30:44insure domestic tranquility,
• 30:46provide for the common defense,
• 30:47and secure the blessings of liberty
• 30:49to ourselves and our posterity.
• 30:50Do ordain and establish the the
• 30:53words that are in orange or yellow.
• 30:56Here are words that,
• 30:58for the Framers were already.
• 31:00Racialised when you're talking about justice,
• 31:03you're talking about white people when
• 31:05you're talking about domestic tranquility,
• 31:06you're talking about white people.
• 31:07When you're talking about provide
• 31:09for the common defense you're
• 31:11talking about going to war with red
• 31:14people and enslaving black people
• 31:16to secure the blessings of liberty.
• 31:18We're talking about white people,
• 31:19ourselves, and our posterity, white people.
• 31:23So here's what domestic tranquility
• 31:25and ourselves and our posterity
• 31:27look like in that context.
• 31:29This is a New England town meeting.
• 31:32And here's what common defense
• 31:34looks like in that in that context.
• 31:37And again,
• 31:38this is just to to pull forward and
• 31:40really think about the centrality
• 31:42of whiteness in the original
• 31:43conceptions of American citizenship.
• 31:45But this travels overtime,
• 31:47and here's just to bring this
• 31:49up very close to the president.
• 31:51Here's a really brilliant piece of writing.
• 31:55Historian Robin DG Kelly on the
• 31:57Trayvon Martin case in 2013 it's
• 32:00called EU S versus Trayvon Martin.
• 32:02How the system worked.
• 32:03The point is that justice was always
• 32:06going to elude Trayvon Martin,
• 32:08not because the system failed,
• 32:10but because it worked.
• 32:11Martin died and Zimmerman walked
• 32:13because our entire political and
• 32:15legal foundations were built on an
• 32:17ideology of settler colonialism and
• 32:19ideology in which the protection of
• 32:22white property was always sacrosanct
• 32:24predators and the threats to those
• 32:26privileges were almost always black,
• 32:28brown and red,
• 32:29and where the very purpose of
• 32:31police power was to discipline,
• 32:32monitor,
• 32:33and contain populations rendered a
• 32:35threat to white property and privilege.
• 32:39This has been the legal standard
• 32:41for African Americans and other
• 32:42racialized groups in EU S long before
• 32:45the American Legislative Exchange
• 32:46Council or the NRA came into being.
• 32:49We were rendered property in
• 32:50slavery and a threat to property in
• 32:53freedom and during the brief moment
• 32:54in the 1860s and 70s when former
• 32:57slaves participated in democracy,
• 32:59held political offices and insisted
• 33:01on the rights of citizenship.
• 33:02It was a well armed white citizenry
• 33:05that overthrew democratically
• 33:06elected governments in the South,
• 33:08assassinated Black.
• 33:09Political leaders stripped African Americans
• 33:11of virtually all citizenship rights.
• 33:14The franchise,
• 33:15the right of habeas corpus,
• 33:16free speech and assembly, etc.
• 33:18And turned an entire people into predators.
• 33:22Trayvon Martin couldn't stand his
• 33:24ground to cite the Florida law because
• 33:27Trayvon Martin had no ground to stand on.
• 33:31Powerful analysis of how to think
• 33:34about the Trayvon Martin case.
• 33:36But it also, it just illustrates.
• 33:40How deeply that white supremacist
• 33:42presumption of normative white
• 33:45citizen normative Americans have been
• 33:47ship is written into our political
• 33:50culture and and how thoroughly
• 33:52it's it's traveled over time.
• 33:57Now to go back to that, we that we,
• 34:00the people and others write the tight circle.
• 34:03And this is where I'm gonna pick a
• 34:06group that you probably don't think
• 34:08of normally in in racial terms,
• 34:10but it's a group whose racial
• 34:12odyssey in the United States,
• 34:13or a number of groups whose racial odyssey
• 34:16in the United States really shows us what
• 34:19it means to say that race is socially
• 34:22constructed and that it's mutable.
• 34:24And then it can change overtime.
• 34:25And also what the stakes are.
• 34:27So I'm going to talk
• 34:28about European immigrants.
• 34:29End race now it's important to point
• 34:32out that you're European immigrants
• 34:35were included as free white persons.
• 34:38They were presumed to be free white persons.
• 34:40They came to this country as free
• 34:42white persons and they were eligible
• 34:44for citizenship as free white persons.
• 34:46But especially beginning with the
• 34:49massive Irish migration in the wake
• 34:51of the famine in the 1840s and then
• 34:54followed by the Waves and waves of
• 34:57immigrants from further east and
• 34:59further South in Europe, Italians,
• 35:01Russian Jews, Greeks, Slavs,
• 35:05poles,
• 35:05these were all groups who the
• 35:07Framers did not have in mind when
• 35:09they said free white persons.
• 35:10They really were pretty much
• 35:12thinking about Brits.
• 35:13They were thinking about England
• 35:15and maybe Germany because there
• 35:17was this kind of romantic myth.
• 35:18That that the Teutonic race was the
• 35:22seat of modern ideas of liberty,
• 35:25but for the most part they certainly
• 35:26were not thinking about the Irish.
• 35:27They were not thinking about Russian Jews,
• 35:30so on the one hand,
• 35:31all these people enter the country.
• 35:33I mean to the tune of 26 million
• 35:36between the Civil War and World War One.
• 35:40But they present to the kind of patrician
• 35:44white Anglo-Saxon Protestant old guard,
• 35:47a crisis.
• 35:47These are not people that the country wants.
• 35:50These are not people who are a good
• 35:51bet for the Republic.
• 35:52These they might be white.
• 35:54They might be free white persons,
• 35:56but they are not of the sort who are
• 35:59going to be a good bet for this very
• 36:02fragile experiment called democracy.
• 36:04As they become seen as a crisis,
• 36:07they become racialized and so
• 36:09this figure on the right is a
• 36:11depiction of an Irish immigrant.
• 36:13This is from the 1870s.
• 36:15It's after the collapse of the
• 36:18crushing of reconstruction,
• 36:19but it's talking about the threats,
• 36:21the threats to the polity, and in the in the.
• 36:23In the South it's the freed slave,
• 36:26and in the north it's the Irish immigrant
• 36:29both drawn in these kind of brutish,
• 36:32overly racialized.
• 36:34Kind of depictions and the
• 36:37discourse of race and race,
• 36:39or the discourse of immigration
• 36:41and immigration policy from that
• 36:43point onward from the 1840s onward,
• 36:46becomes a discourse of race and citizenship,
• 36:49and you see,
• 36:50all the time these these depictions,
• 36:52you see it.
• 36:52I mean, in the language of the debates.
• 36:54But also here, visually.
• 36:55You can see this is a cartoon
• 36:57from the 1890s called the last.
• 36:59Yankee. It's again kind of wringing hands
• 37:02over the the the fate of the Republic.
• 37:05In the face of these massive
• 37:07migrations of the world's peoples,
• 37:09and here you can see in and among
• 37:12the the black people and the
• 37:14Chinese people on these heavily
• 37:16kind of racialized European types,
• 37:19who are equally a threat to Yankee culture.
• 37:24Here's a depiction of an Italian family
• 37:28and this is from the 1870s and here.
• 37:32This gets to the heart of what's at
• 37:34stake in these rationalizations.
• 37:35The the physiognomy,
• 37:37the kind of over racialization of
• 37:39Italian physiognomy is of a piece
• 37:41with the brutality of the scene.
• 37:43The VIN yet here is that the child has
• 37:46come home from his day playing his hurdy
• 37:49gurdy and he hasn't collected enough
• 37:51money or as much as his his elders
• 37:53were expecting and now they're just.
• 37:55Basically beating the **** out of him,
• 37:57the Italian brutality and italianness
• 38:00as a physiognomically type go hand in
• 38:03hand and as again as as the European
• 38:06groups became seen as a threat or
• 38:09a menace that are increasingly
• 38:11talked about in racial terms.
• 38:14Here's Uncle Sam tending his garden and
• 38:16you can see there's a kind of hope for
• 38:19maybe the power of environmentalism,
• 38:21represented by public school and
• 38:24the Free Press.
• 38:26Its downsides fool feds and easy graft,
• 38:30but nonetheless those water tanks
• 38:32represent the possibility that
• 38:34environment might change these people.
• 38:37But the the garden itself is a very
• 38:39hereditary and notion of European races.
• 38:42It's the they they are as different
• 38:46across the Rose.
• 38:47The German from the Irish,
• 38:48from the Italian from Hungarian,
• 38:50as they are the same down the Rose,
• 38:52they're there.
• 38:53They are racialized types.
• 39:00Since this is the School of Psychiatry.
• 39:03High interest played an important
• 39:05role in this as the the kind of anti
• 39:08immigration sentiment was was gearing up.
• 39:10One can hardly escape the conviction
• 39:12that the intelligence of the average
• 39:14third class steerage immigrant is low.
• 39:16Perhaps of moron grade,
• 39:17that's Henry Herbert Goddard.
• 39:19There can be no doubt that recent
• 39:21history has shown a movement of
• 39:23inferior representatives of people
• 39:24to this country as Carl Brigham.
• 39:26These immigrant boys are uneducable
• 39:28beyond the nearest rudimentary training.
• 39:31No amount of school instruction will
• 39:33ever make them intelligent voters or
• 39:35capable citizens in the true sense
• 39:36of the word that is Lewis Terman,
• 39:38the person who popularized the
• 39:40Stanford Binet test and as far
• 39:42as Termine was concerned,
• 39:44this is the very reason to
• 39:45popularize the Stanford Binet test.
• 39:47It's really to measure the value
• 39:49of the world's peoples in the
• 39:51context of immigration and what
• 39:53it might mean for the Republic.
• 39:57These white races of a former time
• 40:00are re racialized as the 20th
• 40:02centuries Caucasians and there
• 40:04are a number of reasons for this.
• 40:06One is that immigration law that was
• 40:09passed in 1924 was so restrictive that
• 40:12it really put an end to migration from
• 40:15the problematic parts of Europe as
• 40:18the patricians were were concerned.
• 40:21So it resolved the crisis in a way
• 40:23that kind of stabilized the scene.
• 40:26And and took away the the racial
• 40:28threat of European immigration.
• 40:30Significantly, I think the African
• 40:32American great migration is also
• 40:34really important to the alchemy.
• 40:36The Great migration landed hundreds of
• 40:39thousands of African Americans in the very
• 40:42cities that the problematic white races
• 40:44of Europe had settled the generation before,
• 40:47and the white black binary completely
• 40:50changed the racial alchemy on
• 40:51the on the in those cities.
• 40:53So in Boston, for example,
• 40:55the the greatest racial.
• 40:57In the 1870s was the Celt,
• 40:59the dreaded Celtic inferior
• 41:02immigrant from Ireland.
• 41:04By the 1920s,
• 41:05the threat in a city like
• 41:07Boston was the African American,
• 41:10and so the the the alchemy changes
• 41:13and the formerly I'm kind of brutish,
• 41:17brutish,
• 41:18racialized types of the 19th century
• 41:22become the kind of homogeneous
• 41:24white Caucasian race that we
• 41:26that we are more familiar with.
• 41:29In the 20th century and after so,
• 41:31remember that that brutish Irishman
• 41:34of of the 19th century is now,
• 41:37and this is from the 1940s.
• 41:39This cartoon that's the Irish descendant
• 41:42is the figure in the in the crook
• 41:46of the Statue of Liberty's arm.
• 41:48But the point here is that all
• 41:50of these all of these former
• 41:52white races are now drawn in such
• 41:54cookiecutter homogeneity that
• 41:56they have to be labeled by words.
• 41:59They have to be.
• 42:00Label their their on their clothing.
• 42:01There they are identified as
• 42:03Polish or Italian or Irish,
• 42:06because as far as races they have
• 42:08now kind of been re racialized
• 42:11into one Caucasian group.
• 42:16That's kind of how racialization
• 42:18and re racialization work.
• 42:19Why they work that way in North
• 42:21America in this particular setting,
• 42:23I think it's the way of thinking about this
• 42:25is there's the requirements of capitalism.
• 42:28On the one hand, and the requirements of
• 42:30democracy or Republican ISM on the other.
• 42:31So who is exploitable or expendable?
• 42:35So here, on the left you have Chinese
• 42:38railroad workers in the 19th century,
• 42:40and who is fit for self government,
• 42:43and that the logic of 1790, the free white.
• 42:46Person is still kind of the mythic
• 42:48center of what democracy looks like.
• 42:50This is Norman Rockwell's kind of
• 42:53idealized depiction of a town hall
• 42:56meeting from the from the 1940s.
• 42:59But capitalism, especially in the
• 43:02era of rapid industrialization,
• 43:04capitalism once all the world's people's,
• 43:06no matter who bring him, bring him.
• 43:08We need him.
• 43:08We need to put him to work in our
• 43:10steel factories and in our fields we
• 43:12need him everywhere, but democracy,
• 43:14on the other hand, is still kind of.
• 43:16Wringing its hands over what
• 43:18will this mean for the Republic?
• 43:19Can we?
• 43:20Can we bring in all these people and
• 43:22still be a functioning democracy and
• 43:24race in North America in the 19th
• 43:27century and after increasingly becomes
• 43:29the language by which that tension is
• 43:33discussed and managed and navigated?
• 43:36The overt language of fitness for
• 43:38self government has dropped out.
• 43:40That was a very common phrase in
• 43:42the 19th and early 20th century.
• 43:44Teddy Roosevelt would talk about
• 43:45immigrants in those terms,
• 43:47he would talk about the colonized
• 43:49Philippines in those terms,
• 43:50or Cuba and Puerto Rico.
• 43:52Are they fit for self government
• 43:53or not Hawaii?
• 43:54Are they fit for self government or not?
• 43:57You don't hear that phrase anymore,
• 43:58but I think we can still see the
• 44:01echo or hear the echoes and see
• 44:04the logic underneath it all so.
• 44:06Requirements of capitalism bring him.
• 44:08We need him. We need to put him to work.
• 44:10Requirements of democracy.
• 44:11Are they fit for self government?
• 44:13Can we really absorb them as citizens
• 44:16and I think today is immigration
• 44:19debates are still kind of wound
• 44:22in and around those around those
• 44:25Poles and that tension so that
• 44:28the language has shifted.
• 44:30But I think the core idea
• 44:31is still very much with us.
• 44:35Now to bring this closer to the President,
• 44:38I think the logic of 1790
• 44:40is still very much with us,
• 44:42and I think of the Obama years
• 44:44and the Trump years as of a piece.
• 44:46It's one period because what we now
• 44:49know as Trumpism really emerged
• 44:52as a backlash against Obama.
• 44:54Uhm, so here's you know,
• 44:56birtherism where's the birth certificate?
• 44:57He could not possibly be our President.
• 45:00He must be a usurper.
• 45:01He's he's illegitimate.
• 45:03In some way.
• 45:04There's no way in the world that
• 45:06are a Republic such as the United
• 45:08States can have a black black
• 45:09man in the in the Oval Office.
• 45:11And you know,
• 45:12one of the I guess one of the
• 45:14morals of the story of everything
• 45:16I've said up to this point is that.
• 45:18We tend to think of our very recent
• 45:21history as a kind of departure that
• 45:23it's an aberration that you know,
• 45:25we have Nazis marching in the streets,
• 45:27and we have kind of frank racism
• 45:29in our public discourse that we
• 45:31haven't heard for a generation,
• 45:33so it feels like a departure.
• 45:35But what I want to argue is that
• 45:37it's it's kind of an outcropping,
• 45:39it's it's really.
• 45:40It's very closely related to
• 45:42things we've seen before,
• 45:43so birtherism is a kind of new
• 45:46articulation of that logic of 1790.
• 45:48That insistence that only the white
• 45:50person can be a proper citizen,
• 45:52and significantly it's when Obama is
• 45:55in the White House that we start to
• 45:58hear this kind of language of white
• 46:00grievance and white displacement.
• 46:02A whole politics of white displacement.
• 46:04This is a diner in Philadelphia.
• 46:07I'm mad as hell and I want my country
• 46:10back back from whom we know who.
• 46:14If you can, if you can read thank a teacher.
• 46:16If you can read in English.
• 46:17Thank the marine.
• 46:18This is America when ordering,
• 46:20speak in English,
• 46:21that kind of politics of white
• 46:23grievance and white displacement
• 46:25with that becomes Trumpism and
• 46:27is still very much with us.
• 46:29Even though Trump isn't in
• 46:30the White House anymore,
• 46:31we saw that emerged in the
• 46:33context of the Obama presidency.
• 46:36It was during the Obama presidency too
• 46:38that we started to spike a national
• 46:41fever over immigration even though Obama.
• 46:44Was deporting more more immigrants
• 46:46than any president ever had?
• 46:48And even though the sheer numbers of
• 46:50arrivals was actually on the decline,
• 46:52but with a black man in the White House,
• 46:54you get this.
• 46:55This kind of feverish discourse
• 46:57of they're taking over the
• 46:59immigrants are coming.
• 47:00There's it's that the kind of
• 47:01replacement theory that you can now
• 47:03hear nightly on Tucker Carlson's show.
• 47:05But that language is it begins to
• 47:08emerge in in response to Obama,
• 47:11but not just about blackness,
• 47:12but about about all people of color.
• 47:14And the threat that they pose.
• 47:15It's when Obama is in the White
• 47:17House that you get this spike in
• 47:20Islamophobia even even greater
• 47:21the number of hate crimes even
• 47:23greater than it was right after
• 47:259/11. So here you know everything
• 47:27I need to know about Islam.
• 47:28I learned on 9/11 Islamophobia
• 47:31peaks and spikes when Obama
• 47:34is in the White House and.
• 47:37Putting it most frankly,
• 47:38this is a Romney event in 2012.
• 47:41Put the white back in the White House.
• 47:44It's a mean spirited politics.
• 47:46It's a politics that we had grown
• 47:49unaccustomed to in the generation or
• 47:51so since the civil rights movement.
• 47:54But it's a politics that goes right
• 47:56back to the core presumptions of 1790,
• 47:58and that we we really have to see
• 48:00it as having been here all along,
• 48:02and we can't really reckon with it.
• 48:03And unless we do see it in those terms.
• 48:08So finally and then winding down here.
• 48:10But let me just say a couple things about
• 48:13institutions like Yale and Diversity.
• 48:15Diversity. As we all know it. I mean,
• 48:18whether or not you've seen this image.
• 48:19You've seen 1000 like it,
• 48:21and you know what it means?
• 48:22It's kind of a corporate
• 48:24understanding of diversity.
• 48:25It's kind of a corporate mandate,
• 48:27but it's completely divorced from the
• 48:29ideas of social justice and equity
• 48:32and the social movements that gave
• 48:34birth to the the priorities that
• 48:37diversity is supposed to represent.
• 48:39Uhm myself I I'm.
• 48:42I worked really hard on diversity
• 48:45issues here at Yale.
• 48:47I'm really committed to them, but I'm.
• 48:48I'm a real critic of the way that
• 48:51issues tend to be framed now.
• 48:53I think we would do better if
• 48:55we did away with diversity and
• 48:58thought more about desegregation.
• 49:00I'm not saying that we need to
• 49:02send in the National Guard.
• 49:04But I do think a couple things.
• 49:07I think that we are still a
• 49:08very much a segregated society.
• 49:10Our neighborhoods are segregated.
• 49:12Our cities are segregated.
• 49:14Much of our policy is segregated.
• 49:18And so you know,
• 49:19we tend to think of desegregation or
• 49:22something that we accomplished in 1954,
• 49:24but we have not at all.
• 49:25We're still a segregated society,
• 49:27and for many people who come into
• 49:29a community like Yale where there's
• 49:31the hospital or the university,
• 49:33this could well be the first and only
• 49:36truly integrated space they've ever been in.
• 49:39So when we think about diversity,
• 49:41we have to think about that.
• 49:43We're still a kind of late charter,
• 49:45but a charter nonetheless.
• 49:47In this long story of desegregation.
• 49:49And we haven't mastered these segregation,
• 49:52but I think the language of
• 49:55diversity is a wish that we had.
• 49:58So what I'm saying and saying that
• 49:59we need to think you know and think
• 50:02about the language of desegregation.
• 50:03What I'm saying really is.
• 50:05When you're talking about desegregation,
• 50:07you know that you're talking about power.
• 50:10And that's really important.
• 50:12When you're talking about diversity,
• 50:14I think you're evading that,
• 50:16or it becomes a comfortable way
• 50:18of evading that.
• 50:20So I'm, you know,
• 50:20and this is I don't want to get preachy.
• 50:22This is stuff I've said this to Sallie Mae.
• 50:24I'm on the I'm on the faculty Senate
• 50:26and have been for a number of years,
• 50:28and so I get I get a chance to go
• 50:31into computer salivates office and
• 50:32bark a little bit and and these
• 50:35are ideas that I have said to him.
• 50:37So let me just end with a couple
• 50:39of observations. Again, I'm not.
• 50:40I'm not trying to preach and I know
• 50:41this would be preaching to the choir anyway,
• 50:43but I would just.
• 50:44These are some observations and ideas
• 50:46about diversity work here at Yale,
• 50:48but they're they're rooted in my
• 50:50experience with the institution,
• 50:51and they're also rooted with my
• 50:53my research and the work I've done
• 50:55on race in America.
• 50:56So these are just a couple of
• 50:58precepts that I
• 50:59would put out there.
• 50:59The language had been inclusion is
• 51:01inadequate, and in fact problematic.
• 51:03If I'm if I'm promising to include you,
• 51:07I'm still claiming the territory is my own.
• 51:10No one needs to be welcomed
• 51:12into their own home.
• 51:13It takes more than inclusion for a white
• 51:16space to cease being a white space.
• 51:19Because the issues are deeply
• 51:21historical and structural,
• 51:22not merely interpersonal good intentions
• 51:24and education will never be enough.
• 51:27However important,
• 51:28both may be at its root.
• 51:30What is now called diversity,
• 51:31but was once called desegregation
• 51:33is a matter of power and can
• 51:36only be meaningfully addressed
• 51:38by reckoning with it as power.
• 51:41The burden of equity work in anti racist
• 51:43work must not fall to people of color.
• 51:45Women, immigrants,
• 51:46the LGBT community,
• 51:47or other minoritized groups.
• 51:49The problem that needs to
• 51:51be redressed is not theirs,
• 51:53nor can white people be the
• 51:54ones to adjudicate.
• 51:55What does or does not count
• 51:57as a problem or as progress,
• 51:59though they often fail to cede that ground.
• 52:02White allies are not the greatest need
• 52:04in anti racist work to take the case.
• 52:06What is needed are white accomplices
• 52:09in this work.
• 52:12Listen. What do we as a community
• 52:16already know about the problems,
• 52:17the challenges, and the differential
• 52:19ways that the institution is serving
• 52:21its members as different populations?
• 52:23The people who know best.
• 52:25Must be empowered.
• 52:27The people with the most
• 52:29power must listen and learn.
• 52:32Some members of any community like Yeles are
• 52:34undoubtedly benefiting from the status quo,
• 52:36whether suddenly or spectacularly.
• 52:38We have to reckon honestly with this,
• 52:41rather than pretending that we
• 52:44all share identical interests.
• 52:46We need to better understand how racism,
• 52:48sexism, homophobia, transphobia,
• 52:50xenophobia operate in the institutions,
• 52:53current configuration, and from there,
• 52:55how institutional power might be brought
• 52:57to bear on the side of equity and change.
• 53:00If not good intentions than policy.
• 53:03And finally,
• 53:04in this on my side of the university,
• 53:07I don't know what it's like for you guys,
• 53:08but on my side of the university,
• 53:10this is the question and it's in.
• 53:12It's the greatest failure
• 53:13of the of the university.
• 53:15How is accountability apportioned and
• 53:18what does accountability look like?
• 53:22Thank you for your attention
• 53:23and your patience,
• 53:24and I'm I'm happy to take
• 53:27all questions and comments.
• 53:37Great, thank you so much.
• 53:38We're going to open the floor.
• 53:39I just said for questions and comments.
• 54:01I have a question.
• 54:04Thank you for the talk, Professor Jacobson.
• 54:08I especially was my interest was
• 54:10piqued in the last few points that
• 54:12you made regarding institutions and
• 54:15how they how they attempt to.
• 54:18Talk about and and change
• 54:21some of these issues,
• 54:22and I'm particularly drawn to your
• 54:25comments about power and relinquishing
• 54:27it or distributing it in a way that's
• 54:30vastly different from how it is.
• 54:32I'm wondering if you could.
• 54:33Talk about any historical examples of
• 54:35this being done within an institution in
• 54:39a very different way than it's currently
• 54:41done and and and the way in which you
• 54:43see is has many problems associated.
• 54:46Excuse me associated with that.
• 54:48Yeah, this is on a different scale,
• 54:50but I think the model is really.
• 54:53It's really useful.
• 54:54I'm thinking of truth and reconciliation of
• 54:56the sort that took place in South Africa,
• 54:58where where people actually just
• 55:00met and and heard each other.
• 55:03And that's kind of what I was getting
• 55:05at when I talked about listening,
• 55:06because I think that.
• 55:08And here's here's where my
• 55:09conversation with with Peter Salad.
• 55:11I always goes.
• 55:12I, I really believe that he believes
• 55:14that his good intentions are enough,
• 55:16and and I think a lot of our
• 55:18administrators think that.
• 55:20I think that he thinks since he's a good guy.
• 55:23And has good intentions that Yale can't
• 55:25possibly be a racist institution,
• 55:27and I think that's just a blindness
• 55:29on his part.
• 55:29And it's something that goes along with that.
• 55:31And this is just like,
• 55:32you know,
• 55:33we all we all wear white or erased as white
• 55:35kind of wear it as part of our privilege.
• 55:38He reserves the right and the power to
• 55:42decide what is and is not a problem.
• 55:44And that's why I like the language around
• 55:48microaggressions are is so fraught is that.
• 55:51Uhm,
• 55:51not only do do white people fail
• 55:55to imagine what it's like to roam
• 55:58around in a world where there are
• 56:01microaggressions every which way you look,
• 56:04but but so they failed to
• 56:06imagine or failed to see it.
• 56:07But they also fail to recognize that there's
• 56:09truth in what they're hearing and they,
• 56:11they they reserve the right
• 56:13to say that's not a problem.
• 56:14That's not a big deal, you know,
• 56:17if you get if you get profiled and
• 56:19you get pulled over by the police.
• 56:21Every every time you leave your house,
• 56:23and if you have nothing to hide,
• 56:24that's not a big deal.
• 56:26You know,
• 56:27that's that's a kind of approach from.
• 56:29I mean, that's that's a dramatic example,
• 56:32but I think you can see that
• 56:34writ large across.
• 56:35Across kind of policy discussions at
• 56:38the level of the of the university.
• 56:41I don't know if that really
• 56:42answers your question,
• 56:43but I think that that's that's the start.
• 56:44That's the start is,
• 56:46you know my my colleague David
• 56:47Roediger once said, it's really,
• 56:49you know, kind of a sly comment.
• 56:51But he said racism,
• 56:53racism among white people is on the decline,
• 56:57self reported.
• 56:58And it's that you know,
• 57:00it's that insistence that white
• 57:02people will be the ones to report on
• 57:04whether racism is a problem or not.
• 57:06Like that's what we need to go at first.
• 57:09We need to. We need to hear about.
• 57:12All of the problems from the people who
• 57:14are on on the the hurtful end of them and
• 57:17that has to be the beginning of the policy,
• 57:20discussions and and just that alone
• 57:22dislodges white power and white
• 57:25privilege in a significant way.
• 57:27Does that answer your question or is that it?
• 57:29It's a start anyway, but I don't know.
• 57:31It says it speaks to it I'm I guess I'm
• 57:34just wondering if in a more focal way an
• 57:36institution has has done things that.
• 57:39You see a circumventing this problem?
• 57:43I imagine not, because it's just.
• 57:46I think it's very uncommon for the people
• 57:49who hold the power to relinquish it,
• 57:52but I I think there's a problem
• 57:54that I imagine our anti racism task
• 57:57force is grappling with right now
• 57:59within our department, which is.
• 58:02You know there there is I, I think,
• 58:04talk about listening and soliciting concerns,
• 58:08but even that is problematic because there
• 58:11is no guarantee that people's time and
• 58:14input and vulnerability and even having
• 58:16that conversation is going to be honored.
• 58:18And that's happened multiple times
• 58:20between the university and the
• 58:22community of New Haven, probably,
• 58:23and in many different departments.
• 58:25And it kind of always ends up
• 58:26in that stalemate of all right?
• 58:28We've heard,
• 58:28and won't be the ones who are
• 58:30going to choose whether we can act.
• 58:32On this or not, yeah,
• 58:33one this is not a smaller well, it's not.
• 58:37It's not a small issue,
• 58:38but it's not a smaller scale, it is.
• 58:40It's a it's a specific instance
• 58:42of where I've seen positive change
• 58:44made and it has to do with.
• 58:46The admissions process, I think.
• 58:49The the unit on campus who is actually
• 58:52handled diversity the best of anyone
• 58:54is the undergraduate Admissions Office,
• 58:56and there are a couple of departments.
• 58:57I'm a member of one of them,
• 58:58the American Studies Department
• 58:59has has done a really great job on
• 59:02graduate admissions, and in both cases.
• 59:06What?
• 59:08Part of the process of the positive
• 59:11change had to do with getting wider
• 59:14perspectives on the applicants.
• 59:16That was one piece, but the other was white.
• 59:20The the white people on the committees.
• 59:24Really,
• 59:24being willing to re educate themselves
• 59:27on what excellence looks like and
• 59:29being able to recognize excellent
• 59:31so we can all you know,
• 59:33we can look through graduate applications
• 59:35and and pick you know the the top
• 59:38ten if we're just going to look at
• 59:40the letter head of their of their.
• 59:42I don't mean the top ten,
• 59:44I mean a top ten that will
• 59:46be comfortable with.
• 59:46So if we pick the people from Stanford
• 59:48and Brown and Harvard and Princeton and
• 59:50and then we'll say that our job is done.
• 59:52What people on these admissions committees?
• 59:54Have done is learned how to spot
• 59:56excellence in in non standard
• 59:58forms like the kid who went to
• 01:00:00Community College and then went
• 01:00:02to University of Texas and El
• 01:00:04Paso. What does his file look like and how?
• 01:00:08How do we have to read it in order
• 01:00:10to really see his excellence and
• 01:00:11reading a file like that is a totally
• 01:00:14different thing and it takes a whole
• 01:00:15different set of skills than reading.
• 01:00:19You know the kid who went to Exeter
• 01:00:21and Harvard but so that was a kind
• 01:00:22of work in a kind of commitment.
• 01:00:24That I've seen happen and seeing
• 01:00:28be be successful,
• 01:00:29and I think that that is the kind of
• 01:00:31model that we need in all of these.
• 01:00:33All of these other areas.
• 01:00:40Thank you.
• 01:00:48I don't know question,
• 01:00:49I wonder if you could talk more
• 01:00:52about the accountability piece and.
• 01:00:54Yeah, just my thoughts on that.
• 01:00:56Yeah, well, I think you
• 01:00:58know my experience with.
• 01:01:01The diversity initiative,
• 01:01:02the recent one and all of the failed
• 01:01:06initiatives before it here at Yale.
• 01:01:08One critique is that the language
• 01:01:10is the kind of the language of
• 01:01:12inclusion which I spoke about it.
• 01:01:14I just think that's anemic,
• 01:01:15but another of my critiques is
• 01:01:17that it tends to be very vague,
• 01:01:19and so there's no benchmarks like what
• 01:01:21is what is success going to look like?
• 01:01:23What are we?
• 01:01:24What is the goal here?
• 01:01:25You know how or what are our metrics?
• 01:01:27How are we thinking about what
• 01:01:29kind of job we're doing on this?
• 01:01:31And who's responsible for it?
• 01:01:34And I think that you know,
• 01:01:35there's some great people at this
• 01:01:37university who are committed to diversity.
• 01:01:39We have been working on it
• 01:01:40really hard and who are really
• 01:01:42brilliant and smart at this work.
• 01:01:45But if there's no metric for
• 01:01:47understanding progress or success,
• 01:01:49and there's no real articulated goal,
• 01:01:52and there is no one whose responsibility
• 01:01:54it is to meet those goals,
• 01:01:56then we're just in a soup of some sort,
• 01:01:59and I think it's I think
• 01:02:01that there's there's.
• 01:02:05I don't know. I think it's the
• 01:02:07the the initiative is lacking
• 01:02:09teeth that's I'll put it that way.
• 01:02:12I don't know if that's a if that gets
• 01:02:16to where your question wanted to go,
• 01:02:18but that's that's kind of what
• 01:02:20I meant though. Yes, thank you.
• 01:02:24Yeah, I I wonder about if
• 01:02:27you can comment more about
• 01:02:29education and blindness because we
• 01:02:33deal with that issue constantly
• 01:02:36and and how do you address that?
• 01:02:42Yeah, well, I think
• 01:02:43there are a couple things.
• 01:02:44I mean, I think that come.
• 01:02:50People. You know, I said education
• 01:02:54isn't enough and I believe that,
• 01:02:55but I do think that education is
• 01:02:58important in the sense that people
• 01:02:59need to be taught how to understand.
• 01:03:02Their own social location and what it
• 01:03:05means and and and and other people,
• 01:03:08social locations and what those mean.
• 01:03:10It goes to what I was saying about diversity.
• 01:03:12Not just being a matter of languages
• 01:03:15and tastes and songs and poetry
• 01:03:18and and religion and foodways.
• 01:03:20It's it's about power.
• 01:03:22It's about our our structural
• 01:03:24positioning within within the polity.
• 01:03:27Whether we're talking about the nation
• 01:03:28writ large or within the institution.
• 01:03:29If we're talking about Yale,
• 01:03:31but we aren't,
• 01:03:32we aren't standing on.
• 01:03:34Equal ground we aren't standing on
• 01:03:36the same ground and so we we need some
• 01:03:39education to really understand that
• 01:03:41piece before we can do the meaningful
• 01:03:43work of what is being called inclusion.
• 01:03:47And I think I I don't know if
• 01:03:49that's what you meant by blindness,
• 01:03:50but I think that that's that's
• 01:03:52one of the biggest blindness is is
• 01:03:54that you know Peter salivating.
• 01:03:55I keep coming back to him.
• 01:03:57He's, you know he's a good guy.
• 01:03:59I don't have a particular beef with him,
• 01:04:01but I think he's a really good
• 01:04:03example of a well intentioned
• 01:04:05administrator who has not been
• 01:04:07terribly successful on these issues.
• 01:04:09And I think one of the reasons is that.
• 01:04:14You know,
• 01:04:14I've never heard him address
• 01:04:16diversity without trotting out
• 01:04:18his own immigrant grandparents
• 01:04:19who lived on the Lower East Side.
• 01:04:22He he he,
• 01:04:23he doesn't understand his own
• 01:04:26structural location very well,
• 01:04:28so he he doesn't understand whiteness
• 01:04:30in the way that I've just described
• 01:04:33it in the last hour very well.
• 01:04:35And I think that those are the you know,
• 01:04:37those kind of lessons from history can
• 01:04:39really mobilize us in a different way
• 01:04:42for different kind of conversation.
• 01:04:43You know if if you understand truly
• 01:04:46that you are privileged in that
• 01:04:48privilege has power to it and you
• 01:04:50understand how it operates and how it works.
• 01:04:53You can hear you can hear things in a
• 01:04:56different way in these conversations,
• 01:04:58but if you think when diversity is
• 01:05:01being discussed that you represent
• 01:05:02it because your parents were,
• 01:05:04you're speaking immigrants on
• 01:05:05the Lower East Side,
• 01:05:06you're only going to get so far,
• 01:05:08and that's that's a kind of blindness
• 01:05:10that we really we really have to
• 01:05:12take some cracks out in this work.
• 01:05:21There are a couple of things in the chat.
• 01:05:23Could you offer some examples of metrics
• 01:05:25or goals that you think would have teeth
• 01:05:28to which leaders should be accountable?
• 01:05:32Here again, I mean, I think that.
• 01:05:35I think that the undergraduate Admissions
• 01:05:37Office has some lessons for us all,
• 01:05:39because I do believe that that
• 01:05:41when they set out to remake in
• 01:05:43and more equitable, Equitable Way,
• 01:05:45our undergraduate student body,
• 01:05:48they had to have had some goals.
• 01:05:51Some targets in mind,
• 01:05:52I don't know what those were.
• 01:05:53I haven't had that conversation with them,
• 01:05:55but I know that I know that they had a very,
• 01:05:57very precise vision of what
• 01:05:59they were trying to do.
• 01:06:00They had some theories about how to do it,
• 01:06:02but they also had a really clear idea.
• 01:06:05Of what success would look like?
• 01:06:06So there are certain things that are
• 01:06:09measurable, like like admissions,
• 01:06:11that that might be easier
• 01:06:14to dream up metrics for.
• 01:06:16Other things you know, I think that, UM.
• 01:06:19You know things like climate,
• 01:06:21kinds of questions like what are
• 01:06:23racialized relations really like on
• 01:06:25the ground within the institution or
• 01:06:27in the department and or, you know,
• 01:06:29on the ward or in the hospital or whatever.
• 01:06:32Uhm?
• 01:06:34Those things are hard to measure,
• 01:06:35but they are measurable and and I
• 01:06:37think that that that has to do with
• 01:06:39what I was saying about listening,
• 01:06:41like being being willing to really
• 01:06:44hear the problems as they're being
• 01:06:47articulated and and being willing
• 01:06:49to really work together to try to
• 01:06:53address them rather than saying,
• 01:06:55well, that's you know,
• 01:06:57either dismissing it as an
• 01:06:59interpersonal issue,
• 01:07:00which is another thing here,
• 01:07:02and that's that's why I was so insistent.
• 01:07:04In my talk I'm I'm kind of pulling
• 01:07:06forward the structural matters
• 01:07:07that are at play when we're
• 01:07:09talking about race in America,
• 01:07:11because I do think that there's a
• 01:07:15tendency to dismiss like half of the.
• 01:07:18The inequities as kind of
• 01:07:21interpersonal matters or or to
• 01:07:23believe in a kind of meritocracy.
• 01:07:25That's that.
• 01:07:26To believe that meritocracy is
• 01:07:28operational in a way that allows you
• 01:07:30to be quite dismissive of some of the
• 01:07:32things that you're hearing about how
• 01:07:34the how the institution is functioning.
• 01:07:37So I think that that climate.
• 01:07:41Is hazier and harder to kind of think
• 01:07:44in terms of metrics than something like
• 01:07:47admissions where there are in fact numbers?
• 01:07:50But I do think there's there's a metric for,
• 01:07:54you know,
• 01:07:55a smoothly functioning and equitable
• 01:07:58department versus a dysfunctional
• 01:08:00and hierarchical Cole and in
• 01:08:04inequitable department,
• 01:08:04I think we can see it.
• 01:08:06I think we recognize it when we see it,
• 01:08:08so I think there we just.
• 01:08:11We have to be.
• 01:08:12Creative and thinking about how
• 01:08:13we're going to to measure where we
• 01:08:15are and how we're going to measure
• 01:08:16what success would look like.
• 01:08:20There is another question in the chat.
• 01:08:22Thank you for this wonderful talk.
• 01:08:23Are there lessons or steps?
• 01:08:26Successful ones from gender equity attempts?
• 01:08:29Not that we've achieved it that can
• 01:08:32be adopted to anti racism efforts.
• 01:08:36You know, I think that there are, I think,
• 01:08:38that you know not that not that there
• 01:08:41are successes everywhere across the
• 01:08:43university when it comes to gender equity,
• 01:08:45but you know a quite a distance has been
• 01:08:50traveled since this was an all male college.
• 01:08:54And I think that all of these
• 01:08:55struggles are interrelated.
• 01:08:56I mean, they're all you know. I go back to.
• 01:08:59I mean, here's a word that's probably
• 01:09:01overused and two little understood.
• 01:09:03But intersectionality as it was articulated
• 01:09:05by black feminists in the 1970s.
• 01:09:08That yes, I think it was Barbara Jordan said.
• 01:09:11I will always be both a woman and black
• 01:09:13as I'm standing waiting for a cab, right?
• 01:09:15And so we need to.
• 01:09:18We need to think about these struggles
• 01:09:20as being interrelated because the
• 01:09:22structures that they're up against.
• 01:09:24Come come from the same place you know
• 01:09:25going back to that circle of we the people,
• 01:09:27that was an all male.
• 01:09:28We the people as well, you know.
• 01:09:31And so.
• 01:09:32Uh, I think there are lessons
• 01:09:34across these different struggles.
• 01:09:36I don't have a particular one here
• 01:09:38at Yale in terms of gender equity.
• 01:09:40I do think, though,
• 01:09:41I think the Women Faculty Forum has
• 01:09:43been a really important presence
• 01:09:45and I would like to see the advent
• 01:09:47of a faculty of Color forum.
• 01:09:49I think that there's.
• 01:09:51Such things do exist,
• 01:09:52and at least a few other universities
• 01:09:54and I know there's one at NYU and
• 01:09:57I think that body like that could
• 01:09:59actually really do some work that
• 01:10:01isn't currently being done or isn't
• 01:10:03being done well enough here, right?
• 01:10:05Yeah.
• 01:10:07We do in the School of Medicine have the
• 01:10:09minority organization for retention and
• 01:10:11expansion that has actually expanded
• 01:10:13to the other parts of the campus. So
• 01:10:17has that been a successful foray?
• 01:10:21Uhm, I think so.
• 01:10:23I think you know we still run up against the.
• 01:10:27Low numbers of racial,
• 01:10:30ethnic minority faculty and you know,
• 01:10:33if that's your ultimate metric,
• 01:10:35no, we have not been successful,
• 01:10:37nor has the university or the
• 01:10:39School of Medicine been successful.
• 01:10:41And so I, I think it depends
• 01:10:43on partly what the metric is.
• 01:10:45I think in terms of building
• 01:10:48community and support education
• 01:10:50information to the Community,
• 01:10:52I think people would say yes,
• 01:10:55we have been more successful.
• 01:10:58But for every.
• 01:11:00Person we retain or recruit.
• 01:11:04There are people that leave
• 01:11:05and so we end up with the
• 01:11:08same numbers year after year.
• 01:11:10So
• 01:11:12yeah, that's that's the case
• 01:11:13in Yale College as well.
• 01:11:16So just looking at some more in the chat,
• 01:11:18do you think current anti racism racism
• 01:11:22efforts will change Yale in 10 years?
• 01:11:27I actually do.
• 01:11:28I do think so, and I think.
• 01:11:32Some of the credit will be do
• 01:11:35the current diversity effort.
• 01:11:36Even though I am a critic of it,
• 01:11:39some of it will be due to really great
• 01:11:41work being done by people like Larry Gladney.
• 01:11:44I think a lot of it will be due
• 01:11:46to our current student body,
• 01:11:47students of this generation.
• 01:11:48I'm talking bout undergrads now,
• 01:11:50but graduate students to students
• 01:11:52of coming up in these and these
• 01:11:54younger cohorts are incredibly
• 01:11:56sophisticated on these matters.
• 01:11:59And you know,
• 01:11:59I think of like the the next Yale.
• 01:12:02Efforts back in 2015.
• 01:12:03I mean,
• 01:12:03they were articulating really sharp
• 01:12:06and sophisticated critiques of
• 01:12:08the institution that were heard.
• 01:12:10They were heard and that gives
• 01:12:12me as much hope as anything.
• 01:12:14'cause I think that you know one
• 01:12:16of the problems with students is
• 01:12:18that they cycle in and out and
• 01:12:19there's a kind of revolving door,
• 01:12:21so it's hard to harness a student movement.
• 01:12:24But as you know,
• 01:12:25as a generation or as a cohort,
• 01:12:27the people who are coming through our doors,
• 01:12:30I think are really doing important work.
• 01:12:32For the university,
• 01:12:33and I think that we need to
• 01:12:34harness that as best we can.
• 01:12:36And and you know and let them lead a bit.
• 01:12:40So we have one from Lucille.
• 01:12:42Thank you for this wonderful talk.
• 01:12:44Going back to 1790.
• 01:12:45How did the idea of fate or
• 01:12:48destiny come into play with the
• 01:12:50development of white supremacy?
• 01:12:52I'm sorry my screen move.
• 01:12:55I often wonder whether we are
• 01:12:56still falling into a trap of
• 01:12:59a kind of fatalistic thinking
• 01:13:00that the problems we face or so
• 01:13:03intractable that we can't solve them.
• 01:13:05Do you see this as related to
• 01:13:06an old idea of racial fate or
• 01:13:09destiny showing up in our anti?
• 01:13:10Racist efforts today.
• 01:13:14That
• 01:13:14is really interesting man.
• 01:13:16I'd have to spend some time with that
• 01:13:18question before I answered it well I think.
• 01:13:21Uhm, you know, I think that the idea
• 01:13:23of destiny is really interesting.
• 01:13:24I think that you know in that shift
• 01:13:27I was describing from the religious
• 01:13:29language of Christianity and Heathendom
• 01:13:31to a racialized language or secular
• 01:13:34language of civilization and savagery.
• 01:13:37I think that the idea is kind of religious.
• 01:13:39Ideas of fate did travel that
• 01:13:41route and landed pretty squarely
• 01:13:44with the science as well.
• 01:13:46And you see that in kind of debates
• 01:13:48over evolution, for example,
• 01:13:49in the 19th century there's there.
• 01:13:51Clearly they're talking about
• 01:13:53something that we might call
• 01:13:55fate when they're talking about.
• 01:13:57Racial groups and their potentiality's.
• 01:13:59Let's put it that way.
• 01:14:02This the other piece of this,
• 01:14:03though whether whether we're fatalistic,
• 01:14:06I'm not.
• 01:14:07I'm not sure that I believe that we are.
• 01:14:11Or at least not always.
• 01:14:12And if we are,
• 01:14:13I'm not sure that it's related to the same
• 01:14:15notions of fate and collective destiny,
• 01:14:17but that's it's really
• 01:14:18something worth thinking about.
• 01:14:20And I do think you know one of
• 01:14:22the things you do run into a
• 01:14:24kind of fatalism in a place.
• 01:14:25Like,
• 01:14:25yeah,
• 01:14:26the institution is so heavy it is so heavy,
• 01:14:28and it's so stubborn and things
• 01:14:30are the way they are,
• 01:14:32because they have been for hundreds of years,
• 01:14:34and so I guess there is a kind
• 01:14:37of bureaucratic fatalism that
• 01:14:38goes along with that.
• 01:14:40But I don't sense a sense of fatalism
• 01:14:44among the the people that I'm working
• 01:14:47alongside doing diversity work.
• 01:14:49I think On the contrary,
• 01:14:50I think that that you know,
• 01:14:52I think people are able to imagine
• 01:14:54change and and therefore are willing
• 01:14:56to take the leap of faith that that
• 01:14:59change is possible and and we have
• 01:15:01to kind of bottle that and serve
• 01:15:03it up to our colleagues as well,
• 01:15:05because it at a place like Yale,
• 01:15:06it does take a leap of faith to imagine,
• 01:15:08imagine differently.
• 01:15:11I'm sorry I can't see all the hands,
• 01:15:12but I was told that Deborah freed you.
• 01:15:14Had your hand up.
• 01:15:15I'm sorry I did not see you go.
• 01:15:17That's OK. Thank you.
• 01:15:18Thank you so much.
• 01:15:19Professor Jacobson.
• 01:15:20So I was struck by your saying
• 01:15:22that undergraduate admissions
• 01:15:24are particularly measurable and
• 01:15:26successful progress here and
• 01:15:28there were recent articles about
• 01:15:31other illustrious universities
• 01:15:32and colleges doing away with
• 01:15:35legacy priority admissions.
• 01:15:36Are you helping salivate at
• 01:15:38all work on that at Yale?
• 01:15:40You know that is such a great point,
• 01:15:43and I know I've the Senate
• 01:15:45has talked to him about that.
• 01:15:47I don't think legacies are as sacred
• 01:15:52to yell as they were at one point,
• 01:15:55but it is kind of fascinating that.
• 01:15:57I mean, I remember this,
• 01:15:59especially especially from when I first
• 01:16:00arrived in the 90s and in the 90s.
• 01:16:02I mean, the whole you know,
• 01:16:03affirmative action debates were still
• 01:16:05very real and very kind of salient.
• 01:16:08Come and you know legacies were basically
• 01:16:10in a in a formative action category,
• 01:16:13but they were never talked about that way.
• 01:16:15And because of the demographics
• 01:16:16of the institution,
• 01:16:17almost all of them were white, but they were.
• 01:16:19They were the one population at Yale that
• 01:16:22you couldn't find out anything about and
• 01:16:23that is probably still the case that you can.
• 01:16:26You can ask the Admissions
• 01:16:28Office for information,
• 01:16:29kind of aggregate information
• 01:16:30on the student body,
• 01:16:32and you can find out anything you're
• 01:16:33going to breakdown by gender.
• 01:16:34Their breakdown by race and
• 01:16:36ethnicity you know breakdown where.
• 01:16:38Part of the country or the world where they
• 01:16:40from you can answer almost any question.
• 01:16:41Try finding out anything about
• 01:16:43legacies and you can't do it.
• 01:16:45But I do think you're right to
• 01:16:47raise it as a real problem because
• 01:16:50I think that it's the kind of.
• 01:16:54Uh,
• 01:16:54it's the kind of structural privilege that
• 01:16:56that too easily flies under the radar.
• 01:17:00And I'm going to go.
• 01:17:02One more question, I'm sorry Zach.
• 01:17:04I was told that you had had your
• 01:17:05hand up by and I'm sorry I cannot
• 01:17:07see everyone on the screen,
• 01:17:08so I apologize about that.
• 01:17:10But Zach, go ahead.
• 01:17:15So sorry, so going
• 01:17:18back to your point
• 01:17:19about accountability, and in particular
• 01:17:21some of the data and metrics.
• 01:17:24I'm wondering what I'm noticing
• 01:17:27is sort of hard data is numbers
• 01:17:30are easy to take care of it.
• 01:17:33How do we get people to take into account
• 01:17:35narrative data or anecdotal data?
• 01:17:37Because these are real stories.
• 01:17:39And how do we get administration
• 01:17:42and insert scientists and I I am
• 01:17:44I'm someone who counts myself.
• 01:17:45There to listen and take these into account?
• 01:17:48Yeah no, I think that that kind of
• 01:17:51information gathering is is as important,
• 01:17:53even though some of our administrators
• 01:17:56aren't as quick to deal with it as they are.
• 01:17:59If you show them numbers.
• 01:18:01But if you want to go to
• 01:18:03the website for the faculty,
• 01:18:04the FAS faculty Senate and Underreports,
• 01:18:07we did a diversity report in 2016.
• 01:18:10I think it was maybe 2015.
• 01:18:13It's still posted.
• 01:18:14There's a link to it there.
• 01:18:15And and it's still.
• 01:18:16It's kind of the gold standard of the genre
• 01:18:19and the diversity report of a university,
• 01:18:21and you'll find both metrics
• 01:18:24and narratives in there.
• 01:18:26And I do think I do think that it's
• 01:18:29really powerful, and that goes.
• 01:18:30It goes back to listening.
• 01:18:31If people are telling you their stories,
• 01:18:35you have to hear them and let
• 01:18:38them put a dent in your thinking
• 01:18:41about what's actually happening.
• 01:18:42And that's that's where the white
• 01:18:44power and the white privilege of of.
• 01:18:47Institution like Yale is is still.
• 01:18:51Potent and and stubborn as I do think
• 01:18:54that there's there's a tendency,
• 01:18:58there's a tendency to glorify
• 01:18:59the institution.
• 01:19:00There's a tendency to to hear someone
• 01:19:03story or someone's complaint as a one off,
• 01:19:07and is not a not important in
• 01:19:09any kind of structural way.
• 01:19:11So I think narratives maybe don't
• 01:19:12get as much purchase as they should,
• 01:19:15and they probably don't get as much
• 01:19:17purchase as what you called hard data,
• 01:19:19but they're equally important,
• 01:19:20and I think that's that's an especially.
• 01:19:23Important part of the work and it goes
• 01:19:25back to you know David Roediger part
• 01:19:27about racism being on the decline.
• 01:19:29Self reported.
• 01:19:29No,
• 01:19:30we need the reports we need the
• 01:19:31reports from the people on the
• 01:19:33other end of the racism and those
• 01:19:34are the reports that we we have
• 01:19:36to listen to and those are the
• 01:19:37reports that are telling us the
• 01:19:39truth about our our institution.
• 01:19:42So great, thank you Matt.
• 01:19:44I don't know if you have a few extra minutes
• 01:19:47for people who might want to stay on,
• 01:19:49but I'm gonna be respectful of
• 01:19:51peoples times and we we end at 11:30.
• 01:19:54So thank you for those who want to stay
• 01:19:57on maybe another couple of minutes.
• 01:19:59But so thanks everyone for being here today.
• 01:20:03Thank you all.