>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

>> Our connection this hour was made five years ago in the fall of 2020, when American schools were either bringing students back in person or considering doing so.

And a question we heard often then was, when will things go back to normal?

To Jonathan Rosa.

This was a telling question.

Rosa says that for many people, they just wanted to return to something that felt recognizable, normal in the classroom and their communities.

But schools, Rosa says, were never really normal, and the desire to return to something that many people acknowledge was not really working or even causing harm was part of a larger issue.

Dr.

Rosa is a professor in the Graduate School of Education and the center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

He's visiting his native Rochester today as a guest of the University of Rochester, and he's a lot to say about language, race, and more.

He's pointed out that on a planet with roughly 8 billion people, we use maybe five categories or so to describe race, which doesn't really effectively tell us much.

And yet, people in power often use racial categorization to divide or push policies to entrench.

Power might be immigration, it might be deportation and more.

They talk about who belongs and who does not.

So what can we learn from all of this?

I want to welcome Dr.

Jonathan Rosa, who has an event later today, which we'll tell you about.

And I mentioned it's got some local roots.

So we're glad to have you back in Rochester.

Thank you for making time for the program today.

>> It's great to be here.

Thank you for having me.

>> And Jonathan is, by trade, a linguistic anthropologist.

Which means what for the layperson.

>> It means I study language and culture in communities.

So I study the ways that that people's ideas about language shape how they understand one another, how they build social relationships, how they understand themselves to be connected to one another.

how how they understand themselves to be separate from one another as well.

So how borders get created, how they get transgressed as well.

And I think that's a pressing issue, especially in the present moment.

>> Yeah.

We got a lot to talk about there.

By the way.

This is the area you grew up in, is that right?

>> It is.

I was born and raised here, so I was born in the city of Rochester.

And then my my family moved to the, the western edge of, of Monroe County to, to Hamlin and then Clarkson, New York.

And I attended Brockport, Central Schools.

>> Well, welcome home, I should say I I'm thinking of a drive that I was on a couple of months ago now in the western part of the state, down in Chautauqua County, in a little town.

I was driving through a little town called Stockton, and I don't share this story to say anything about the fine people of Stockton who I'm sure have different views on a lot of different things.

But I passed a house that had a large sign, and the sign it was not a homemade sign.

It looked very commercially made, but it was big and it said, we support ice.

And then it said, deport them.

All of them.

All of them is what the sign said.

And I was just it shook me a little.

I wanted to ask who is who is them to you and what compelled you to put a huge highway billboard type sign leaning up against your house?

when you see a sign like that, what goes through the mind of someone in your profession?

>> So it's it's my job as a linguistic anthropologist.

First, to always assume that any language use has multiple meanings and to to not assume that it just has one meaning to to try to understand those meanings in context and to try to to actually work within the local context and to to sit with people and to to try to understand where they're coming from.

And to, to try to, to kind of figure out from within their worlds what that might mean.

>> So you'd want to peel back the meaning of because that sentence that those words might mean something different to different people to the podcast host, Joe Rogan, who supported this administration's election.

He said last week on his podcast that he's horrified by what Ice is doing and that he never thought it would go this far.

He thought the them, perhaps that would be deported would be just criminals and terrorists and that's it.

Anybody who's been violent and the people who have worked for years, decades, the people who have families, the people who who have jobs and pay taxes and contribute to communities and go to church and all of that stuff, that they would not be pulled out of their jobs in the middle of the day by people in masks and raids.

And Joe Rogan says he he's ashamed of that.

But I don't know what the person in this house in Stockton would say.

To your point, we don't know until we ask them, is it is it dangerous to make an assumption because the word them to me is doing a lot of work on that sign?

What do you think?

>> I guess what I'm what I'm saying is that first, I'm not sure that I would even interpret that sign as a principled stance about immigration in the first place.

I'm not sure that that sign, even might be informed by a lot of a lot of, let's say,, a great deal of, of information about what's going on across different borders with different populations.

that, you know, the people who, who, who knows where people might have have gotten that sign who knows what they might know about, you know, how populations have crossed borders, which populations are going to be deported, are going to be detained.

Who's going to be detaining them?

What the history of Ice is, or any of these sorts of actual the the practicalities of what's going on.

I'm not sure that that the people who are posting those signs, you know, so I guess that's the first thing that I would say about, you know, my interpretation of what the function of, of that kind of a sign is.

That's, that's what I'm saying, that that sign might be functioning in lots of different ways.

>> But in the context that you're posing, which is, of course, a hypothetical then it becomes something about what?

Identity?

>> Yeah, absolutely.

That the sign itself is a political stance that says, I'm really unhappy with what's going on in our current political moment and lots of ways.

And this sign allows me to express that in some sense.

And so the sign becomes a sign becomes, you know, an act of identity in some ways.

And what's really dangerous about that, as an act of identity is that act of identity can become connected to all kinds of forms of violence that, as we see, are really dangerous because it serves as a license for all kinds of institutions to mobilize resources towards violence.

And that can become incredibly consequential.

And we're seeing the consequences of this right now.

You know, those forms of violence.

are, you know, are everywhere from, you know, small scale acts of violence to large scale forms of rendition, where you have people being disappeared.

you know, across continents in this moment, in ways that are, you know, horrifying.

>> So I want to return to that theme in a moment.

I want to zoom out a little bit and just talk to you a little bit about your thoughts on some of what you've shared in past presentations.

This idea that if we really stop and think about it on a planet with 8 billion people, how many racial categories do we think of?

Do we think quote, unquote exist and what that tells us or doesn't tell us about ourselves?

Can you tell me about that?

>> So for me, a lot of the ways, you know, I always, you know, when I, when I teach a class on race and ethnicity, it's a really challenging course to teach in some ways, a course, an introductory course for, for at the undergraduate level on, on race and ethnicity on one.

In some ways I want to take really seriously what my students know and any course I want to take seriously the knowledge that my students bring to a course about their own experiences.

And on another level, I want to challenge some of the assumptions that my students bring to the classroom.

And so I have to to kind of balance you know, affirming the experiences that they bring to the classroom and challenging some of their assumptions.

>> What's a common assumption?

You might challenge.

>> A common assumption I might challenge is exactly what you just suggested that the categories are received.

Categories for for parsing humanity are objective and are universal.

So you know, the the idea that those are that there are 5 or 6 categories you know, that that some of those categories white, black, Asian make sense and that some of the categories don't make sense.

So my students, for example, will often say a category like Hispanic or Latino, that is an ethnicity.

And a category like white or black, that is a race the students will often say that to me.

so what they distinguish their distinctions between race and ethnicity.

They'll say race is a matter of physical appearance, and ethnicity is a matter of culture.

And that's a really interesting kind of distinction to me.

>> When they say that, do you say you're right or you're wrong?

But, but, but good try.

Well.

>> What I, what I say is, you know, okay, let's let's think about that.

Yeah.

You know, let's think about some examples.

Let's think about how race, you know, ideas about race can be connected to physical appearance, ideas about ethnicity can be connected to culture.

Let's also think about how ideas about race can be connected to culture, and how ideas about ethnicity can be connected to physical appearance.

so you can any of these categories can get mapped onto a whole range of stereotypes and in various ways.

So you show me any of these categories and I'll show you how any number of stereotypes can get reworked, depending on the context and depending on the historical moment.

So in this, in this historical moment, right now, we're looking at, you know, the southern U.S.

border is the object of deportation.

A hundred years ago, we were looking at Southern and Eastern Europe and whiteness.

We had the United States immigration system a hundred years ago was said that there were 45 races, right?

36 of which were white races in Southern and Eastern Europe.

We were disaggregating white races, 36 of which were Southern and Eastern European white races.

That's what that's what the U.S.

Immigration Service suggested.

Ice didn't exist at that point.

It was the U.S.

Immigration Service, which I.S.I.S.

only existed for 20 years.

This is the other you know, when we talk about this is why I'm not I'm not so quick to defer to people's ideas about immigration.

These institutions have only existed less than a teenager's lifetime.

>> What were your students think when they hear that there were dozens of white categories of races?

>> They're shocked.

They're scandalized by it.

And that's what I try to invite people into.

The scandal of race.

Race is a scandal, and we should be scandalized by it.

And once you're scandal, once you're properly scandalized by race, then you can start to be scandalized by borders.

Then you can start to be scandalized by the violence that we enact on one another and by our assumptions about where people rightfully belong, who should rightfully have access to which territories, to which language practices, to which resources.

And once you're properly scandalized by our assumptions about those things, then we can get to the work of redistributing resources, of protecting one another in different ways and building different kinds of societies.

That's the work that I would suggest that we could be up to as a species.

>> I want to return to some of these ideas as well.

The notion of of borders coming up here as we think about how we use racial categories.

Now, there was a clip that was on my mind before this conversation that came from a couple of years ago.

And I want to listen to this clip, and I'm very curious to know what doctor Rose thinks.

Again, if you're just joining us, Jonathan Rosa is, a linguistic anthropologist who is visiting Rochester today as a guest of the University of Rochester.

And we'll have a presentation to tell you about coming up here.

he is a professor in the Graduate School of Education at the center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at the at Stanford University.

And, the clip in question is about modern terminology.

and in particular, the term Latinx.

I want to listen to some of what Congressman Ruben Gallego said a couple of years ago.

Now he is a he was a congressman from Arizona.

He is now a senator from Arizona.

And he was talking in pretty pointed terms in a conversation on HBO's Bill Maher.

Let's listen.

>> You're the guy I've quoted you on this show a number of times because you've been talking about this term, Latinx, which sounds I don't know what it sounds like.

It's something that white liberals made up.

Right?

>> It's something that's used largely by white liberals and small amount of Latinos, but largely it's to satisfy white liberals, not necessarily to do it.

Now, there are some people that.

>> And you said, stop doing this because we have polling on it.

And like an extraordinary number, sometimes up to 99% of Latinos either don't know it or when they hear it, don't like.

>> It, are offended by it.

Yeah, right.

Well, it's just it's think about it this way.

Like I had a little marketing firm when I was a little way younger.

If I was working for a firm.

And I said, I'm going to use this term that only 3% of the population identify with and 40% of the population hate, that firm would probably get rid of me because, like, what are you doing?

How are you actually reaching out to people?

Why are you even reaching out to people in this way?

For some reason, the laws of gravity and rationality have skipped when it comes to Latinos.

You know, I'm being told, you know, a language that I had to, you know, forget in order for me to learn English.

Spanish was actually my first language.

And I was told to forget Spanish so I could learn English as something that they did back in the day.

I was made to feel embarrassed because I spoke Spanish.

I mean, kids used to make fun of me because I used to have a Spanish accent, and now I'm being told that my language is wrong and my thinking about my language is wrong.

I don't need to hear that.

I love my culture.

My language is part of my culture, and I'm not going to have someone change that.

>> That's now Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona.

What do you make of that?

Jonathan?

>> So I'm I'm trying to transition topics here in some ways.

So I'm thinking about the ways that that we debate, we try to stipulate what kind of language allows people to be recognized in in what ways.

I'm my my job as a as a linguistic anthropologist isn't to tell people how to talk.

It's to observe how people become invested in how people are using language.

And so, you know, I'm interested in when people try to make decisions about how other people should use language.

And so, you know, in this case, the senator you know, you've got a federal official who is stipulating, you know, how people.

So I'm interested when someone who's in a position of power becomes invested in how people how other people should, should be using language.

So in that particular case, this is a you know, this is an important person who, you know, a person who is whose opinions are, are are significant weight.

Yeah.

They carry tremendous weight.

you know, to be to be less to, to be less guarded in my, in my view of this, this particular issue, you know, my view of this is that I'm, I'm less inclined, you know, I'm not inclined to position that term Latinx or Latina, Latino, Latinx.

So let me lay it out this way.

Yeah.

So, so the idea is that you have some languages that have gendered noun systems, right?

so, you know, Latina, Latino.

so, so you have a term like Hispanic, which is understood as gender neutral.

Then you have a term, an alternative term like Latino, which is understood as masculine.

then a term like Latina, which is understood as feminine.

and so you have some people sort of saying, oh, you know Latino shouldn't be used as the default term.

because it is masculine.

and so Latinx is a gender a gender neutral term.

and when you use Latino as the, as the default term, it's, it defaults to a masculine term.

And so Latinx is, is more of a gender inclusive term.

And then you have some, some people who sort of reject that and they sort of say, oh, no, you're politicizing language.

or you're, you're, you know, that's a liberal view or that's, you know, for college students or that's for elites, this sort of thing.

Well, look, you know, the the reality is that for decades people have been engaging in these sorts of debates throughout Spanish speaking contexts, throughout Latin America, throughout the Iberian Peninsula, in Europe.

So people have been debating this across Spanish.

The Hispanophone world for decades.

>> This isn't just a white liberal professor thing.

No, that's 15 years.

>> That is an ignorant.

That is, you know, you would have to be ignorant of Spanish speaking worlds throughout Latin America and throughout the Iberian Peninsula to make that argument.

So, you know, that's that's just sort of factually untrue.

you know, the next, the next conversation to have would would be to say, now he's what he is correct about is saying that it is not a particularly popular usage.

He's absolutely true that it's not a it's not a popular usage among U.S.

Latinos.

Most U.S.

Latinos do not use the term Latinx.

Now, he's making the argument that because it's not popular, that people shouldn't use it.

Okay.

And he's making the argument.

And you heard him invoke marketing.

Well, because something isn't popular based on marketing principles.

Is that is that grounds politically?

Well, we're talking about people who are marginalized, you know, you know, and if those are the grounds, you know, you've got people who are who are part of marginalized communities, who are are saying, you know, are experiencing different forms of marginalization.

And when people are drawing attention to various forms of marginalization, I think it makes sense to to ask about who's being pushed to the margins based on and who's trying to draw, trying to use language to draw attention to marginalization.

Now, my other view of this is that language is neither the fundamental problem nor the answer to the problem.

And let me just kind of lay this out in these terms.

So there are some people who would say, oh, because Spanish uses gendered pronouns, it's an inherently sexist language system, which then would would suggest that, for example, English, which doesn't have gendered, you know, gendered noun system is more inherently gender egalitarian.

Is that true?

So our English speaking worlds inherently less sexist?

Well, look across Latin America and look at the range, for example, of women heads of states throughout Latin America versus in the United States.

Have we ever had a woman head of state in the United States?

Now, if you use that as an example, you know that.

Does that necessarily mean that the United States is less progressive in relation to gender?

That's just one example.

So, you know, I worry about equating gender.

let's say grammatical gender with societal gender.

And now that's not to say that we shouldn't use the politicization of language that that language can't be a way of of drawing a, you know, politicizing language can't be a strategic way of drawing attention to these broader societal issues.

>> I think some of what I hear when I hear criticism of the so-called language police, which I'm always curious to know, what, you know, linguistic anthropologists think when people are are claiming that the term Latinx is just part of the language police.

But here's what I hear.

I hear a concern that there are certain modern developments that aren't actually aimed at justice or improving lives.

They're aimed at posturing.

So do you care about climate change?

Do you really care about the habitability of the planet for all people, or do you just want people to know you're driving a Prius?

Do you care about native dispossession, or are you just patting yourself on the back because you did a land acknowledgment?

Do you care about the history of inequality for people of Latin descent, Hispanic descent, whatever term you want?

Or are you just proud that you use the term Latinx?

And that's when it starts to look hollow, that you're yelling at somebody on Facebook because they said Latino and not Latinx.

Your preferred term, but you're not really doing anything else.

You used a land acknowledgment, but you've never actually taken the time to meet with native communities who are not only still here, but still very much part of important conversations about treaties, dispossession, et cetera.

so that's where I think people feel like that's when the language stuff starts to get hollow.

What do you think?

>> I this is such an important such an important dialog.

and for me, I, I appreciate that that people are debating the, the ways that that language and the commitment to what that language is, is connected to the broader sorts of accountability.

And that's what the presentation that I'm giving later today is about what forms of accountability are connected to that language use.

But that's the that's the question to me.

I think we can we can engage in multiple dialogs simultaneously.

And this doesn't have to be an, you know, a question of whether one uses this terminology or or whether one is is connected to a broader set of, of commitments.

One can can engage in, in both of those dialogs simultaneously.

And, and I don't think we have to begrudge and in fact, maybe one of those projects can be connected to the broader project.

And so perhaps land acknowledgments in one moment can open up a can or perhaps.

Perhaps it's precisely because of the debate that we have about whether land acknowledgments are doing anything in one moment that allows us to get to the place where we make those broader demands to say, wait a second, maybe it's land back, maybe land acknowledgments don't do enough for us.

And so maybe it's the it's debating the hollowness of land acknowledgments that allow us to say we need to have broader indigenous reclamation, a broader are we are we doing enough with the land acknowledgments.

So maybe that's maybe that's an important political discussion.

>> I didn't mean to imply that anybody who drives a Prius actually doesn't care about climate change.

Or if you do a land acknowledgment, you inherently don't actually care.

I'm simply pointing to the concern that there might be some very surface level work going on, as opposed to some of what you are describing, which is connecting some of these ideas to actual action.

>> And what I'm what I'm saying is, I think I appreciate the debate.

I think the debate is the point.

And if the language use allows us to have the debate, then that's fantastic.

So if it's precisely because people are politicizing language that we get to have this debate, and the debate allows us to sort of to push one another to engage in this broader kind of action, then this is fantastic.

>> So if Senator Gallego were here and he said, look, this isn't about me being a federal official.

This isn't about the weight that I carry in power.

This is about me being a Latino male who grew up here and nobody that I know wants to use Latinx.

I don't want to use Latinx.

Stop using Latinx.

You would tell them what.

>> I would tell him.

I'm less concerned with whether you're using which term you use.

I'm more concerned with the politics of gender.

And in our community.

And regardless of what term we use, how is gender being enacted?

You know, how are we accountable to gender in our communities?

>> Let's let's take our only break.

And when we come back, I want to tell you that tonight, by the way, Dr.

Rosa is giving the Lewis Henry Morgan lecture.

it is starting at 7 p.m.

It's at Rush Rhees library in the Hawkins Carlson Room at the University of Rochester.

And it is free and open to the public.

And they would love to see you there.

Some of these themes, and a lot more that we won't get to today, are going to be up for discussion with.

And a presentation led by Dr.

Rosa tonight.

So let's take this break.

We're going to come back and we're going to connect some of this to the broader question.

Now when you see racial profiling, when you see these immigration debates about quote, unquote belongs, I want to talk more with Dr.

Rosa about that.

We'll come right back on Connections.

Coming up in our second hour, Politico has created a kind of a firestorm by leaking thousands of messages that were supposed to remain private on a young Republican chat.

That chat on telegram is now public, and there are many horrifyingly racist comments made by people who work in politics, some in this state.

So what do we make of this?

What does it actually mean?

What happens next?

We'll talk about it next hour.

>> Supporting your favorite programs on WXXI TV and radio is just a click away.

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It's a convenient and secure way of supporting an important community resource.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Let me read a couple of comments from listeners.

Rick emails the program to say Evan to to.

What does your guest attribute the origins of the idea of race?

Sometimes I wonder if it is so ingrained in human nature that there is no escaping it.

Not for nothing.

But the Old Testament signals this concept of race in my estimation, because it speaks about God's chosen people.

And if there are chosen people, then there are people who are not chosen.

The chosen get the land of milk and honey, and those not chosen get nothing.

Would Dr.

Rosa agree with my assessment?

That's from Rick.

>> So I'm.

I'm less inclined to defer to any particular faith.

You know, any any specific kind of religious account of, of race.

because there are various kind of global, you know spiritual accounts of, of chosen peoples.

so the Christian account of, of, of a chosen people corresponds to we could, we could look at you know, the problem with being an anthropologist means I have to be accountable to various sorts of global sorts of narratives of chosen peoples.

and so I wouldn't defer to any particular kind of account.

the part of what I think about in, in relation and one of the other challenges with questions about human nature, I think I hesitate to to frame race in terms of human nature.

often we, we default to these ideas about what we, what we call human nature.

and sort of think of, of this sort of idea that this is inherent or this is just a natural.

It's natural to create these kinds of categories for one another.

I don't think that's necessarily the case.

I don't think we have to we have to categorize each other in these ways.

I think that there are other, you know, we have lots of evidence for other ways of of, relating to one another that for, you know, part of what's interesting in my work and part of what I try to demonstrate in my work, is that for all the evidence of the the five categories that that we default to, that people contradict themselves all the time, too, that for that we, we also connect to one another and all kinds of ways that we use these five categories.

But we also connect to one another in ways that that sort of go beyond those five categories.

Example examples of these are, you know, the the kinds of family relationships that we create, the all sorts of intimate relationships that we create that, that don't correspond to those five categories that we we say that, you know, we understand ourselves to fit within these, these sorts of five categories.

But then we identify, you know, we might say so.

And so I identify so and so in relation to this category.

But they're not really just that they're not they're not blank blank.

They're, they're such and such.

I see them as something else.

And we create all kinds of exceptions for people in ways that contradict the categories that, that we might imagine or that we might sort of say that we, we rely upon.

And that's part of what I try to demonstrate in my work.

so, you know, I think that part of part of what's interesting to pay attention to on the ground are all of the exceptions that we create, all of the contradictions, all of the ways that these these categories across global contexts are are there's much more happening beyond beyond those five.

And so yeah, that's now there's there's one other point that I would make which is that we've got we've got a set of, of predicaments in the last several hundred years, you know, that that have emerged in terms of a particular kind of way of, of creating borders, of organizing borders of creating nation states.

and that's, that's a very specific way of, of mapping out the world.

and of governing populations and of deciding, you know, how it is that territories should be organized.

That's that's a very specific way of, of sort of organizing the world.

And that, that structures, you know, that plays a profound role in structuring race.

And that's something that I think you know, I hesitate to I hesitate to frame, you know, to suggest that there's a single origin, but, you know, because it's mid-October and we're celebrating either what some people call Columbus Day or other people call Indigenous Peoples Day, modern colonialism and the history of the last 500 years does play a profound role in the emergence of what we call of modern racial categories.

>> Well, when you say that you want your students to feel scandalized by borders, what's the correct action, then, for people who do feel scandalized by borders in the way that you feel.?

>> For me, it's to it's to pay attention to the the ways that the the borders, as we have defined them right now.

Are we live beyond them, you know, the world that that we are living in right now.

We rely on a world that that lives beyond them.

We've and we have been living in that world.

So we imagine, you know, when people talk about globalization or transnationalism, they imagine that as, you know, this modern, this late modern phenomenon or a 20th century or a 21st century phenomenon, we've been living in a transnational world for 500 years.

That has been in production for centuries now.

And so, you know, even what we call, you know, America or the United States, this has been a transnational production for hundreds of years.

And so the the border borders are fluid, they are dynamic.

They have always been shifting.

They are not fixed entities.

And so I think part of what we try to map out are whether they are geographical borders, whether they are racial and ethnic borders, whether they are linguistic borders, they are incredibly dynamic, incredibly fluid.

They shift in different historical time periods.

Power makes them shift.

Ideologies make them shift.

And so I think you learn a lot when you when you start paying attention to any of these borders.

And we could look at any of the ones that I just pointed to, whether it's through language, whether it's through geography, whether it's populations.

And I could show you how any of them have shifted.

>> a listener named Alex wrote in to ask, is it your goal to eliminate the idea of racial categories?

>> It's is it my goal to eliminate them?

I my goal isn't necessarily to to eliminate racial categories.

I, I'm, I want to draw attention to what people are already doing.

I want to I want people to pay attention to what they're already doing, which is living beyond them.

>> Wouldn't that be a good outcome if we stopped talking about race entirely?

If race became a non important factor?

>> So that's that's what John Roberts said.

A while ago, our chief justice of the Supreme Court.

So as a linguistic anthropologist, it's my it's so that's an interesting kind of sorcery, right.

To think that if you stop talking about a phenomenon that it goes away.

>> No.

Right.

I agree with that idea, but I'm actually asking, is it a goal of yours to create a world in which the notion of race is not wielded in the acquisition or the wielding of power?

That race that you actually try to minimize race to the point of it's not being considered or valuable anymore.

I'm not saying, are we living in a post-racial world because Barack Obama got elected and everybody's going, well, yeah, everything's over now.

I'm actually asking functionally if it would be a good goal to try to eliminate race from the minds of people.

>> It's an interesting question.

It's a really challenging question.

I guess what I'm what for me, it's more, you know, there's a there are a couple of I almost have to turn to literature to grapple with this.

I part of the, the the talk tonight is titled Racial Reckonings.

And I worry that what history teaches me, you know, when you look at truth and reconciliation efforts, I worry that the that part of reconciliation requires us to continually to, you know, continually grapple with these histories that continually grappling with them is the way that we maintain our accountability and that once we forget, once we forget the violence that's been wielded that, that we recreate it, that we allow it to reemerge and that the way that we maintain our accountability to it is we continue to teach each other the violence that has been wielded the harm that has been caused and that once we stop teaching each other that harm that has been caused, that that's how it reemerges.

And if we just try to forget it, then it then then the harm will continue to be caused.

And we've been trying to forget in the United States, I think the United States is a big project in trying to disappear things and causing violence and trying to act like that.

Violence just disappears.

>> Through their education, through classrooms.

>> The United States is a big project in genocidal violence, and then trying to act like it never happened.

>> let me read from YouTube.

David said, no, this is not this is from Whitey on YouTube.

He says, in the last few years no, hold on a second here.

This is from David.

Okay.

Sorry about that.

He says many critics, particularly from Latin America, find the term Latinx linguistically, linguistically awkward and an imposition of English speaking culture on the Spanish language.

So the idea that because the Spanish language does have, as you said, gendered nouns, it would be sort of like this white European imposition to try to take that away.

What do you think?

>> Yeah.

So I understand I understand that, you know, the linguistically, I think humans are capable of of many things.

So you know, terms in Spanish like éxito or which means success or like taxi or examine.

Taxi like taxi, taxi cab or examine.

Those are the same phonological patterns as X, like Latinx.

So the Spanish language is capable of phonologically producing X. So the Spanish.

So when we say it's an English language imposition on on the Spanish language to say Latinx, it's to sort of, you know, the Spanish language is capable of producing those phonological patterns.

so I, I also respect what the, what the listener is, is suggesting.

And I also so, you know, the there is a way that people experience it.

What I think people are experiencing is an emergent language pattern.

And when people experience something that's new, many people are they sort of say, this is new.

I haven't used this before when I and to full disclosure, ten years ago when I gave a lecture at Oberlin College and I, you know, I'm a I'm a professor of anthropology, but I picked up Latino studies along the way because my research is in Latino communities.

and so I had to become well versed in Latino studies.

And so Latino was the.

But when I didn't even use the term Latino, you know, I grew up here in Rochester, but as a Puerto Rican person the term that many people use here, we called ourselves Spanish.

and so when I got to college and I called myself Spanish, many Puerto Ricans called themselves Spanish.

And I write about this in, in a, in a, in a book manuscript that I prepared in conjunction with the lecture when I got to college and said, I'm Spanish in the elite college setting that I to which I arrived, people said they were scandalized.

They said we don't say Spanish.

You have a colonized mind.

You should say you're Latino.

And so I said, okay, no, I'm Latino now.

So I became Latino in college.

and that was at the turn of the century.

and then 15 years later when I went to Oberlin College to give a lecture and the students were calling themselves Latinx.

And this was in 2015.

And I said, Latinx, what is this?

And it was new for me.

And it was, you know, and I sort of said, what is this?

But students were saying, well, you know, it's a nonbinary it's a gender neutral sort of alternative to Latino or Latina.

And it was strange for me and it was hard for me.

It was novel.

but they were politicizing language, and I don't use that term as a fix or as the answer or as a catch all, but it's one.

It's one option among many that you can use.

>> You don't tell your students they have.

>> To use, I don't know, it's not a term you have to use, but it's an option among many that you can use.

And many students now have many students don't use Latinx anymore.

Now they use Latin.

They're past Latinx, Latinx.

They use Latino.

A l a t I n e. And they say Latinx is is passé.

Now they're on to the next one.

And you know what?

Latin will be old pretty soon, too.

And they'll find a new one.

That's how language works.

They'll find a new one.

That's how language works.

And we shouldn't be scandalized by that.

This is what this is how this is what humans do with language.

>> I want to ask you about a term that I think ten years ago had maybe more currency.

It was always a hot term, but now it seems like, at least politically, a nonstarter, maybe culturally in this country, a nonstarter.

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote the piece in 2015, called The Case for reparations.

He was not talking about reparations for slavery.

He was talking about economic dispossession very specifically about the lack of generational wealth that black families have through intentional practice and dispossession.

And he didn't create a formula, a policy guide for how to do reparations.

But he wrote the case for reparations on the moral basis, based on dispossession of wealth.

And at the time, I mean, that piece landed.

I mean, it hit big, of course.

but it it even felt like in the political culture, it wasn't impossible that some sort of reparations could happen.

and now today it does.

Today it feels dead on arrival.

What do you think has happened in ten years since that piece came out?

What?

The word reparations.

>> This is a it's a really.

You have to read the context.

you have to read the the entire argument of that, that piece as well.

And what he uses as the, the broader kind of historical reference points for the case for reparations, reparations.

And Israel is one of the, the, the primary kind of reference points he uses historically.

And then in his most recent book, The Message, he retracts Israel as the the reference point for the case for reparations.

And he says the danger of of of building a nation state around as a form of repair.

Is that a nation state can be turned into a weapon.

against another population.

and that's what we've seen in the current political moment.

and the to be clear, that's not why the case for reparations for African Americans and for descendants of slavery and enslavement in the Americas that's not what has undermined the case for reparations across the Americas.

the I, I think we're we're in a moment right now where the entire alleged racial reckoning that took place, you know, that was taking place five years ago has been sort of undermined and retracted in various ways.

And it shows sort of the, the, the shallowness of what that, that moment you know, for some what that moment was while for others it was there was a, a way that that many people were beginning to draw Connections across sort of a case for what reparations could mean in relation to thinking about the ways that various historical forms of violence and their ongoing the their ongoing significance could be, you know, that you can stake claims to the accountability and the current moment.

What that means for how that shaped people's access to housing, how that shaped people's access to providing care for their families and access to various forms of opportunity.

You know, what's our responsibility to that?

And those are I think those are, you know, what are the health consequences of that?

You know, as a as a nation, you know, how do we justify being the wealthiest nation in the history of the world and not making housing and health and education into fundamental human rights?

How do you justify that?

And, you know, those are questions that that he was asking then and that he's continued to ask, and that as a nation, why aren't those questions that that we're grappling with?

And why is it that particular populations that have been the that have been the object of particular forms of, of harm have not been that that those forms of harm have not been redressed.

and, and, you know, the, the topic that came up earlier about what's at stake in hiding and erasing and trying to you know, trying to move past that harm.

I think there's a lot at stake in trying to do that as a nation and trying to continually frame us as a nation of progress.

That's the, I think, trying to disappear that harm.

There's a lot at stake in that.

>> So there's been that pushback has been connected to, in your view, the erasure of history.

>> Absolutely, absolutely.

To continually sort of say we've moved past that.

And this is the this is the, the, the, the challenge of, of, you know, the, the two sides of, of what, you know, what we're faced with in this moment of, you know, make making making America Great again or making America civil again as the, as the, the options that have been put on the table, you know, when was this civil.

You know, what did what did civility look like when we were caging people.

or engaging in war?

perpetual war.

when, when was this civil, particularly civil?

and so I think we've got to, we've got to really face what this has been for some time.

>> So as we get ready to close, I don't want to ask you to go too far afield of your your expertise as a linguistic anthropologist.

But let me just ask you to close with this idea here.

A lot of the the racial profiling and the immigration enforcement we're seeing goes to the idea of who belongs where.

And we see people wearing holding signs at political rallies.

You know, they don't belong here.

we support deportation.

You've talked about wanting students to feel scandalized by borders.

what's one way that you want people to be thinking about borders and who belongs where in the context of the current moment?

>> So the the question of of borders for me is an opportunity to invite people into possibilities for, for rethinking how we're connected to each other, rethinking you know, how we might how we might redefine, you know, redefine where what kinds of rights are fundamental redefine how it is historically that certain populations have been migrating.

Why they've been migrating.

What brought them here?

What kinds of forms of political and economic relationships, what environmental conditions led people to migrate in the first place?

so what historical conditions produced that those forms of migration and what what responsibility do we have to one another to care, to care for each other?

and to me when those kinds of questions are, are driving our orientation to these, these kinds of dynamics, then, you know, it's a fundamentally different set of questions emerge where you know, the, the nature of borders you know, and in the historically, currently and in the future you know, I think we're going to be faced with a whole different set of questions moving forward around you know, what, what borders are going to be looking like.

And the sooner we face those questions, the sooner we can get to to the work of of providing care for one another in new ways.

And you know, so when I say that the, the five categories that we've inherited as a species aren't working so well, you know, the, we're, we're facing we're facing mass extinction right now.

and so we have to get to the work of of redefining a whole, a whole range of issues.

So the sooner we get to that, that work the the sooner we can, we can provide care in new ways.

>> I'll close with an email from Charlie who says, Evan, this is a fabulous and important conversation.

Many times while teaching high school in Rochester, this conversation about race and ethnicity and what defines it would surface organically.

And wow, it was like turning on a fire hydrant of debate.

High school kids really want to know what race and ethnicity are and how each are defined.

Why does it matter so much in our society?

Who made the rules?

Am I stuck in my role as defined by society?

I would just moderate and let them work it out for themselves.

And then the bell would ring and you could see the exhaustion on their faces.

He says.

Keep up the important work that you are doing.

That's from Charlie, a retired teacher in Rochester, and I thought it was a nice way to close the conversation.

thank you for for making the time for us this afternoon.

I appreciate I know it's a it's a busy return to your to your roots here in Rochester.

And it's 7:00.

I had that right, right.

7:00 tonight.

There we go.

7:00 tonight.

Dr.

Rosa will be delivering the Lewis Henry Morgan lecture at Rush Rhees library at the University of Rochester.

It is free and open to the public.

They would love to see you there.

Thank you for making time for us today.

>> Thank you.

>> Dr.

Jonathan is a linguistic linguistic anthropologist, professor in the Graduate School of Education, the center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

More coming up in a moment.

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