Next on Horizons.

After a hard fought reelection, the nation's first African-American president has been inaugurated for a second term.

So what have we learned about race in America?

How have we changed?

How have we stayed the same?

And where are we headed?

Join us for an in-depth conversation about race in America from African American to Latino, white, and Asian influences on American culture.

Horizons starts now.

Welcome to Horizons.

I'm Chris Moore.

Yesterday, Americans and the rest of the world watched as the 44th president of the United States was sworn in for a second term.

It's an American ritual full of pomp and circumstanc and one we can be very proud of.

The peaceful transition of power in this country every four years.

Now we look ahead.

And that's our focus tonight on this special edition of Horizons.

We're going to spend the next half hour talking about race in America and right here in Pittsburgh too.

Joining me now Doctor Larry Davis.

He is the dean of the School of Social Wor at the University of Pittsburgh, where he's also the director of the Center on Race and Social Problems.

Welcome, sir.

Thank you.

Docto Kenya Dworkin is with the center for International Relations and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University, where she is also the associate Professor of Hispanic Studies.

Welcome.

Thank you.

J.G.

Bocella is a recording artist, educator, and speaker.

He is currently working on a new book, The Conversation We Could Be Having, and hosting a discussion series on the same topic.

Welcome!

Harish Saluja is a filmmaker, artist and entrepreneur.

His film, The Journey, won several awards and was distribute by the Independent Film Channel.

He is the co-host of Music from India on WESA FM, as well as the Executiv Director and founder of the Silk Screen Asian arts and culture organization.

Harris.

Welcome.

Thank you.

It's good to have you all here.

So do you talk about the conversation we should be having in light of the second inauguration of the president?

President, with, as I heard some amount to say, an Arabic name, foreign sounding name and all the rest.

And, man who is the second was the first of color to serve in this office, even though this is his second inauguration.

What is that conversation we should be at?

Well, first of all, I don't want to shoot on anybody, okay?

Everyone hears it that way but it really reads as could it.

We could.

It's the conversation we could be having.

And I say that, Chris, because, you know, I feel like it's a missed opportunity.

I feel like, wether you think we talk about race too much in this country or we talk about it not enough in this country.

I feel like the premise of my work here is that there's a whole other conversation that we're not even having for because of whatever gets in the way of that happening.

So it's the conversation we could be having.

And so, but regarding regarding the inauguration, I mean, I think, I think it's really fertile, fertile ground in terms of a conversation.

You know, you have this whole discussion of post blackness and what that means in this country.

This is his second term and their conversations about him as a black man identifying that way, him as a biracial person, multiracial person, his middle name being Hussein.

You know, this idea that you have a lot of folks, who say, well, we're post-racial, we're there because we elected a black man.

But, you know, and a lot of folks saying, look, look at all the work that still needs to be done.

Yeah.

But I guess what I'm interested in, in terms of the conversation we could be having, is, there are a lot of folks out there, and I've talked to so many of them, and that's where this thing evolved kind of organically.

Who really want to have this conversation but don't have a place to, to go?

They don't necessarily resonate with sort of a lot of the great work that's being done out there, you know, whether it's in the corporate sphere, sort of diversity talk or out of academia, fantastic work coming activists work, which is necessary, exploring things like white privilege, all that stuff that's so important.

But you have this whole sort of hidden demographic of folks who don't resonate, who don't feel quite, an entry point in academia or in the corporate world.

And it's like, what's that missing piece?

How do we engage this huge sort of hidden demographic of folks to talk about this and give them a way back to how we do that in just a second.

But but that conversation, Doctor Dworkin, that we could be having, I find it's difficult to do it in the places that I work.

If you mention a phrase like J.G.

say, you said white privilege, people, automatically the hairs on their back go up.

What are you talking about?

Absolutely.

I want to go back to something you said in your introduction about the the inauguration, and that is that, look where we've come to and where are we going?

And one of the things I want to remind us is that we've actually now just begun to term come to terms with what we've always been, is a nation of many different people.

And we're only now coming to terms with the fact that we are a nation of whites and blacks and Latinos and Asians and many other people.

It's just that the story ha never been told that way before.

We're now coming to terms with it, and now we have to make that dialog and that conversation something we can have around a table where, as you said earlier, we can break bread.

We can share commonalities.

And one of the best venues for this, outside of the political arena or the academic arena, is through cultural venues.

But wasn't that playing in the inaugural, ceremonies you had, Sonia Sotomayor given the vice president absolutely had a Hispanic poet there.

One of the co-chairs, Eva Longoria, of the entire event, there was, a rich Hispanic presence.

Absolutely.

But the fact is that these are high profile events that are planned, and those people should be there.

But but everyday people, like here on the ground in Pittsburgh need to know that we need to get together with their neighbors, all the different neighbors, all the different communities come together, and there need to be venues for this to happen.

And it can happen on many levels.

It can happen in schools.

It can happen in churches.

It can happen at dinners, it can happen at cultural events.

And as you know, culture is one of the tool that I think is really important to help bring people together is going to cook Cuban dinners.

I'm going to cook Cuban dinner for everybody.

Right.

I'll be there, We can have a conversation.

Doctor Davis, you'v studied and studied this matter.

You've presented forms and speakers, about these issues.

And I'm sure you find it.

Probably difficult to put some of the findings, the research findings forward and having have them be accepted honestly, like media coverage.

Yeah, there really are at least two conversations that are going on.

One has to do with culture of sharing, understanding of people that are different, knowledge building.

In candor, that some of the university does, some of that some cultural centers do some of that.

But the other discussion, the primary discussion that African-Americans have has not to do with the commonalities, bu has to do with disparities.

Why?

Because one is a shared one, is celebration.

The majority group, by enlarge, wants to talk about celebrating differences, celebrating culture.

African-Americans have primarily been at the other end of this and want to talk about disparities.

But the criticism of African-Americans, when they want to talk about disparities is let that go.

Let's celebrate that diversity.

That's right.

Because those who have it makes it makes sense for those who in advantage position not to talk about disparities, because talking about disparities to just change, sugges problems, suggest fault, suggest the need for correction and blame too and fault too.

But if you talk about celebrating differences, celebrating, then you know you have one type of food, I have another, you speak another language, I speak another that basically doesn't require any change, that sort of thing.

Acknowledge that we're all different and we're all part of the salad bowl.

And.

Oh, and great.

And that's kind of where most people are happy with the conversation.

But in these conversations, you have two tracks running all the time, and one is more positive or more favorable or palatable, more acceptable to the general population than it's the latter.

And that isn't just the topic by the way, that African-Americans would have, but that has been African-American experience with America.

It hasn't been the larger culture wanting to know about black America.

It's been black America being shut out largely of some of the advantages of the culture.

So we really have the much in terms of white privilege.

I'm just reading this book called Red Summer, which talks about, you know, a whole number of, racial conflicts, African-Americans have in their time here been characterized by conflict, not by cultural exchange.

It's that it's not the whites don't know, have historically not known who blacks were.

Is it possible for whites and blacks to get over that kind of conflict?

That is the history of America between those 2 races?

Well, you are only likely to have peace if you have justice.

And to the extent that you have inequities, you will continue to have conflict.

Yeah.

Harish I wonder about Asian influence in America.

And we talk about the diversity of that, given the election of president and reelection of president Obama.

Do you feel part of that diversity?

Does the Asian community feel part of it?

That mix of Hispanics, blacks, whites, that I saw waving flags, out there as people were witness to the inauguration?

Yes.

Yes, very much so.

I think a considerable number of, people, were employed, particularly in the polling and, and the internet work.

Who are Asians and Indians in the Obama White House and his machine.

60 plus percent Asians, vote Asian American, voted for Obama.

And my Republican friends are very shocked as to why they were only 30% or 40% who voted for Republican because Asians being entrepreneurial and generally and the richest segment, they are the richest, the most educated and the richest segment of the American population in Pittsburgh.

I am the only poor Indian now.

That's true.

Because you are an artist.

Yeah, there you are.

But but you think that since they have money and they're affluent, they would they would, you know, be voting more Republican.

And there are many of my friends, actually, my friend Roger Ran on a Republican ticket and so forth.

But yes, we are we are very much part of it.

But, you know, we we come at the whole, race issue from a very different angle, apart from the Chines who came to build the railroads, most Asians came like me in the 70s, late 60s and 70s onwards.

As professionals, we are doctors or engineers or professors, the students.

And we immediately went to the top of the heap.

Economically, people didn't know enough about us to hate us, you know.

And then you saw us driving a nice car and having a PhD and being a doctor, you know, like 28% or of all physicians in the US are from India, for example.

So you, we weren't, we didn't experience prejudice as much as those with the 400 years of oppression.

You know, we got it.

We came to the to was the Chinese Exclusion Act.

You mentioned those who came, the different worlds.

Yes.

How people call me and tell me the Irish would discriminated against Italians and treated like government.

Mieux.

We've had a history of oppressing quite a number of people as they immigrated to this country.

Is there anything that will ever bring us all together?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I think we all agreed we had so much to bring us together.

I actually wanted to ask you about, why celebrating or learning or differences is helpful.

How how is that a positive thing?

I mean, I'm actually muc more concerned with disparities.

Disparities.

Okay.

But but I mean, understanding what happens.

This this sort of form is easier to take place among us.

We're privileged people.

I mean, so so we can talk about the exchange or our travels or music or whatever we want, but the people we represent have different agendas.

In some respects, you and I, representing different ends of the spectrum, the economic spectrum.

Right.

So the conversation to have a less sort of celebratory than concerned about, differences in education, differences in income, life expectancy, so the different concerns.

So the fact that you and I are talking is, is a good is a good thing.

But to the extent that something happens, something change and change occurs if what's really importan other than that, it's been nice.

But at the end of the day, I go back to my constituents and say, well, they appreciate, soul food.

But, for example, the Latino demographic is very complicated because Latinos are all colors and every mix of all colors and races.

You have whites and blacks and you have mixed race people, and you have Asian Latinos, and also you have every social class represented there.

So you have Latinos who have been living in this country since before the English speakers got here, people who have been living in the southwest since the 1600s.

And you also have recent immigrants, you have white collar immigrants and you have working class immigrants.

You know, you have documented immigrants and you have undocumented immigrants.

You have people have been citizens since before the US existed.

So it's a very complex demographic that I think that when I say when I talk about using culture as a way to bring people together, it's not to celebrate difference.

It's to celebrate commonalities.

So a point in an appointed example is to have a concert that celebrates African Latin American music.

It crosses all boundaries and knows no national boundaries, and people discover the values and that they share through events like that when they're brought together with those events, not just to experience them, but to help plan them and to have workshops that, on the day of the event that deal with our shared percussion traditions and food traditions and things like that.

So I'm not saying celebrate difference.

All of that is well and goo when it comes to musical events.

But when you start talking about social issues, strada, employment, crime, those kinds of things, it takes a harder edge, doesn't it?

The important, I think the important thing, the distinction is that you're right about Hispanics, being diverse in terms of color, and cultural.

But Hispanics in America follow the color line.

Absolutely.

That's the real key ingredient.

So if you want to talk about Hispanics, it's the artists using their confusing as demographic.

Because if you compile them, you lose.

You lose.

Really essence of what's going on.

Cuban Americans biological white look like white Puerto Ricans who are also Hispanic, who a doctor who look like blacks look like blacks on social indicators.

So when you factor that out, if you were to pull, for example, Mexican-Americans who about 65% of that group out, they look they looked less white than they do black.

Do they decide social and political issues?

That's in.

That's and that's in part that's in part why you're getting this.

Because what happens they are they are being responded to as non-whites, more so than Cubans who are viewed as white.

They may view them as being Hispanic, but they're treated as white people in the country.

So that's that's why the Hispanic with is sort of an interesting group in that sense.

But make no mistake that Hispanics in America are treated along the color line.

Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Panamanians, people, Hispanics who are dark share this nonwhite reality.

Those who are fair, Argentinians, people like that have a different reality for them.

I'm curious, you know, in terms of, the, the either or dynamic that's going on here, what I'm really curious about is what does it look like if we apply this both and paradigm instead of the either or so without in any way watering down the truth about the racial disparities in this city, in this country, without watering that down one iota, but also, engaging folks to.

So we have that reality, both that reality and also this other reality of people of goodwill who want to come together and have a cultural exchange.

So I think right now it really does.

And, Doctor Davis was really getting it that it's kind of like this either or phenomenon.

You get folks, maybe some folks get uncomfortable, talking about race.

They do what the people are important.

The people who are important, who talk about race.

There aren't the people who are going to make important decisions, right?

I mean, it's nice for us to get together and talk about celebration, right?

But what needs to be at the table are people who can really make serious decisions about.

Exactly.

Well, yeah, but he can't obviously that matter.

Well, we can see him having difficulty make some decisions.

Well, of course we need we need decisions.

He made a question of it.

It's important who makes a decision who's in control to sort of do that in.

And while I think well I think well of the cultural events I think that's fine.

I mean, but that's just how it sort of breaks out.

And people have been able to sort of not address the report we put out every so often is called Differences and Disparities, that it's one thing to celebrate our differences.

But what causes the problem is to acknowledge our disparities in the conversation.

Like this is very likely to wind up talking abou let's celebrate our differences.

And, you know, it's in the room right now.

And that's what I love to say.

It's in the room right now.

And in terms of how how how do I how can I be an ally?

What do what do alliances look like?

And in terms of again applying this both and paradigm, the reality of walking down the street, I'm I'm both J.G.

just as a person with the spirit, my family just who I am inside.

But I'm also a white man walking down the street.

So that's real.

And sometimes people don't want to talk about this part of it, and sometimes people don't want to talk about that part of it.

But they're both realities.

When you and your wife, who is black while walking down the street, yeah, I can tell you stories about my wife who's black and I'm like, walking down the street.

And that's the thing.

I mean, so so my question is, how can I be an ally?

How can I be an ally as a white man to my wife, to my colleagues, to my fellow citizens?

But it's not just about being, oh, that white dude who's talking about race or that white activists liberal guy.

It's not liberal.

It's not conservative.

It's so regressive.

It's progressive.

It's.

But what what I'm really curious is like when I say this in the room and this happens and here's a conversation that's not happening.

You can talk over and over again to folks in every sector, across all sectors, whether it's law, whether it's the arts, whatever the sector is, whatever the profession.

And you got folks who the burden should not be on you, sir, the burden should not be on my wife, on my friend, on my colleague to be the one attorney in the room who's African-American saying, excuse me, I think we're having a diversity issue here.

And then some people who don't know might say, oh, here she goes again, the militant black woman like, and why is that burden on her?

And so my question is, how do I be an ally?

Not because my wife happens to be African-American, but there are a whole group.

There are lots of white folks who out there who aren't, aren't really afraid to talk about race, but again, don't necessarily know how to engage.

And you might say, we'll just come to a workshop.

That's how you engage.

Get out there and do something.

Be an activist.

Well, I'm not an activist.

Maybe they say, but they want to engage.

And then you also have folks, people of color who don't have who, We're not engaging their whole humanity either, whether it's Mexican, African American, Indian, like, because what happens to them frequently, Not always, but often in those settings is they're put on a pedestal of representative of the racial group, like, you know, okay, you're representing the black race, the black group.

Tell us what to do now or, you know, they they talk about this Turay was talking about in his book around post blackness.

But in other words, like black folks, people of color don't get to have their whole humanity either.

White people don't get to have their whole humanity because they go in either feeling guilty about having white privilege or confused like I didn't do anything wrong or in denial mode.

I'm uncomfortable lets dont talk about that doesn't engage their whole person either.

We're also guilty of essentializing here because you know what is white and what is black?

I mean, the other day I had someone telling me, I didn't know you were Latino.

I thought you were white.

You know, and not every black person on the street is going to be African American, right?

Right.

I mean, so you know what I'm saying?

I mean, but walking down the tell you, and I look white walking down the street, I mean, you have you had.

You have the option.

I mean, you know, someone has to ask if somebody has to ask you or you have to tell them.

But the whole point is it.

But the point is it must be the one category.

Then you know, the different, you know, shouldn't have to say that there's a there's a common.

You know, that Jesse Jackson makes use some years ago says reality will tolerate fantasy, but it won't spear it.

whether I like this dichotomy that America has created, I must live with it.

I mean, I can say whatever I want in this group.

We can be the best of friends, and I'm sure we would be, but we walk outside.

Society responds to me, I can call myself anything I want.

Tiger woods faces this.

He can create any sort of acronym or anything he wants to do, which is what makes Obama so great.

Obama really could have come out of a very different position, but the fact is, I want to saysomething about which something you guys are going to agree with me, I think Obama being elected president, and I was very emotional when he was taking the oath.

Surprisingly, I think it has made race relations worse.

I am finding hatred where never thought would be possible.

You know, it's people are just let me finish.

You know, people are apar from some TV and radio coverage, you get so much poison, which never used to be there because I think it's subconsciously people of color where they were in their proper place.

You know, we pat them on the cheek and say, okay, good work, good work.

Now go home.

Let us do those things where suddenly this man is in the White House and there are other people, you know, saying, oh, we can do things too.

And I think is disturbing.

A lot of people did.

This is I wrote an update about three weeks ago in the paper and addressed this very thing, yet that it it happened.

So and it's happened actually periodically when, when they've been following, following emancipation, following civil rights movement.

So it happens when a grou basically moves beyond its past.

So it's not surprising.

I mean, the comment I make here is that what is really happened since the 1980s is that America, people who say we want to go back to where they were when we were, we want our country back.

What they want is a country that looks like, where did it go?

They went, they want a country, they want it to look like the Republican convention.

Right.

And instead it really looks like the Democratic convention.

So, so, so when people sort of say that that's why you're right.

You are getting you are getting more, you're getting pushback, but you are getting some pushback that comes with the progress.

So that's that's to be anticipated.

You know, I hate the number of hate groups is up in the country.

Yeah.

They're number number back.

But at the same time, it's like white Americans had for forever all the seats.

Now they're recognizing the other people want some of these seats.

And having not only want them but have some.

Time is getting short So where do we go from here and what do we do?

J.G.

started with you.

I'll go to you for this.

Yes.

Thank you.

Chris, I really think there's an unmet need.

There's a way to meet that need.

And I think it's a there's a way to engage folks.

And we have to start.

We were talking about this in the green room about how do we go from just talking about it to doing something.

And I think looking at, again, historically, how has social change occurred?

How does social change happen?

You know, historically regarding race relations in this country, how does it actually happen?

It's never a smooth thing, right?

But right now I think there is an opportunity because you have, again, quite a number of folks.

Well, I don't know about smooth, Chris.

I don't know.

But I do think you have an untapped resource here.

And I just want to also hasten to add that that even m right now talking as a white man about race and the sensitive topic and, you know, it's like, oh, that's liberal.

But again, it's not liberal.

I want to engage folks from across the political spectrum around this.

Are people willing to do that?

You mentioned some are very reluctant and uncomfortable.

Yeah, they are.

And I think where there's a critical mass in terms of social change, I forget that that that quote from that woman talking about a group of folks that sort of that critical mass of folks and, and, what I'm saying is, I think we can engage these folks an bring them together of all races and have this conversation differently because there's a missing piece here.

They want to come together and they don't really know how.

I'm not so sure about that.

Doctor Dworkin, I tell you what, I think we're forgetting something very important and that the source of changes is our young people.

And if you had this conversation with four people a lot younger than the the four of us, you might be having a very different you might be.

You know you are right, my nieces and nephews.

Tell me, Chris, It's it's not like when you and daddy were young.

I got friends all over the place.

They don't care about our official spaces.

And they're doing it already.

When you know things like the underground hip hop movement and culture, all these things are doing what we have not been able.

That's true, that's true.

But also talk to a young student in Wilkinsburg High School right now.

Go to Homewood.

You've got public schools with 99% low income African-American kids.

I agree with them.

Will tell you we're not happy.

Why can't we have an education like that's deep, that's black and white, and we can't ignore that.

They know that they're suffering with that.

And yet at the same time what you say is true again, it's not either or.

Thank you, Doctor Davis.

Is there hope for that kind of change, especially among our youth?

Yes, is hope, but I would like to add something to about holding this piece together.

It may be, I think, one of the greatest things, the best things that whites can do is to talk to other whites.

I think that your change should be to lobby for, to get together like minded people in trying to persuade white people to do the right thing.

Okay, on that note, we're going to have to close it out.

I'm sorry.

It's never enough time for these conversations.

We are just about out of time, but we'd love to hea your thoughts on tonight's show.

Join us on the web at wqed.org/horizons.

Click on the big Talk to Us link and send us your comments or post your thoughts at facebook.com/WQEDPittsburgh.

And we probably should have that conversation with some younger folks.

As Doctor Dworkin said, I want to thank Doctor Davis for being here, and J.G.

Bocella, and also thank you, Kenya Dworkin, Doctor Dworkin and Harish, you for being here.

We'll be back next Tuesday night at 7:30 with another all new episode of Horizons.

Looking at a medical breakthrough for people of color.

We'll hope that you'll join us then.

Until next time, I'm Chris Moore.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.