Yale Psychiatry Grand Rounds: October 22, 2021

October 22, 2021

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"Race in U.S. Cultural and Social Life"

Matthew Jacobson, PhD, Sterling Professor of American Studies & History; Professor of African American Studies, Yale University

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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.