Hello, and a warm welcome to The Peace Studio's final "Conversations that #OfferPeace" event of this year called "The Power of Words to Heal and Restore."

Again, I am your host, Trymaine Lee.

But before we begin, I want to say what an honor it's been to serve as the guide of this exciting new series over the past year.

The guests have been nothing short of remarkable, and we are indebted to them for their time that they've given us.

I also want to give a huge thank you to PBS All Arts and Now This for helping us amplify the important stories and messages that our participants have been sharing.

And of course, a huge thank you to each one of you, our live audience, who have been with us from the beginning of the year until now.

It's really been a pleasure.

Once again, we have an absolutely extraordinary panel joining us today.

Coming to us live from Sarasota, Florida, is American civil rights activist, journalist, and former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, CNN, and the Public Broadcasting Service, Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

Hello.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you for being here.

From New York City, American political adviser and speechwriter Cody Keenan.

From London, British poet Zaffar Kunial.

And joining us from Portland, Oregon, is American writer, podcast host Cheryl Strayed.

Thank you all for being here.

Hi, everyone.

So, today, we'll talk -- we'll be talking about both the opportunity and, perhaps, in some ways, the responsibility that exists for those who work in media, in the arts, or in general work of storytelling to restore hope, to challenge injustice, and to bridge divides, which is at the core of the Peace Studio mission.

So, my first question I want to come to you, Ms. Hunter-Gault.

Love to start with you.

You began your career at the height of the civil rights movement.

So I want to ask, what drew you into journalism and how did your lived experiences shape you as a journalist, but also the stories you told?

Well, thank you, and again, I'm happy to be here with such a distinguished group of people.

I don't want to talk long 'cause I want to hear from them.

[ Laughs ] But you know, I was at a lunch the other day planning a conversation with Henry Louis Gates, who's coming here to Sarasota in a few weeks.

And one of the people, I had not met before, but she had obviously looked me up.

She said, "I brought you something."

And I thought, "Oh, wow, a sandwich, maybe?"

It was lunch time.

And she handed me a comic book of Brenda Starr.

Now, she'd obviously looked up my history because I've often talked about how one of my first inspirations was Brenda Starr because my grandmother used to read the newspapers every day and I'd wait till she finished so I could read the comics.

And I just loved the comic-strip character Brenda Starr, 'cause she traveled all over the world doing all these wonderful things and having a great romance with a one-eyed mystery man.

I was too young at that point to appreciate that.

But that inspired me.

And then because I went to a segregated school, we were taught Black history.

And so while Brenda Starr initially inspired me, I think that my past, subsequently, once I began to really prepare to become a journalist, I was inspired by people like Ida B.

Wells, who was an African-American.

She was... She fought for equality in so many different arenas.

And so this also inspired me.

And so here I am, a multiple person.

I'm an African-American, now, Black with a capital "B."

I'm a woman, I am a journalist, and I'm what they call a PK, a preacher's kid.

And so words -- and that's why I was so drawn to this panel -- words have been so important not only in my career but in my life, because as a very young child, my grandfather, who was a preacher and an elder in the AME Church, taught all of us -- my father, his brother, me, my aunt -- words.

He said, "Study words, because that's going to be the key to your liberation."

And so in all of my identities, not just as a journalist, but as all the ones I just mentioned, words have been important, and that's why I was drawn to participate in this panel, because I think that as we debate teaching Black history and so many other things associated with that, I think that one of the critical things these days is having the right words to help us have a more perfect union.

Ms. Hunter-Gault, as a journalist myself, obviously, I've looked up to your work for a very long time and as a Black journalist in particular, it's special to be here with you.

But I do want to ask you as a journalist, you know, we were always taught to be arms-length with our subjects and our material, right?

But as Black people in this country, we can't help but to experience this, right, and oftentimes reflect that, which brings up this idea of objectivity.

And I want to quote something that you said back in 2007 in a talk at the JFK Presidential Library.

You said this.

"Those who take our work responsibly try, I think, our very best to be fair, to be balanced, but we simply cannot be objective because we're human beings."

Can you talk to us about this notion of objectivity and exactly what you meant there?

This instrument that we're on the air with this morning is a computer.

It's a machine.

It's subjective.

I'm not a machine.

I'm not objective.

I come out of my experiences, and part of my experiences, as I said earlier, is as a Black woman, as a woman, but also as a journalist.

And so I try to communicate with people, even people who might not agree with me, but I want to give them what we call [Chuckles] -- I hate this double entendre, but the "true facts," you know?

And I think that if we do that, we don't turn people off.

We bring people -- You want to bring people in.

I have -- I've met someone -- let's not say who it is -- who is a -- well, who has a different political perspective than mine.

Jim Lehrer, whom I worked for many years ago at "The News Hour," never even voted.

He wanted to be such a true journalist to represent the "facts" to people.

But this person was not of the same political persuasion I was, but we were able to have a conversation because the words that I used with him were not challenging him, even though he had identified himself as something completely different from me.

But we had a conversation about it, and, you know, it was revealing because at the end, he said, "Well, can we stay in touch?"

And so I sent him all of my podcasts, all of my programs like this.

This was going to him when we finished.

But I think that, you know, what I try to do is present -- like, I have a book coming up and it's called "My People," and it's all about the Black people, primarily, that I have covered over the years, but they're not one-sided.

They're just presenting the people as they are.

And at the time that I started writing, back in the early '60s, there weren't many stories about Black people that didn't involve somebody who was either a sports -- you know, a renowned sports figure or a musician or, you know, somebody who did something unusual or a criminal, which we have a lot of today.

Stories like that.

But there weren't stories about ordinary people and their ordinary lives.

And so I didn't have to be not "fair" or not "objective" to write about Black people in their -- the way they were.

Just like in Africa, when I covered stories in Africa.

I wrote another book about how we have to get away from the four "D"s -- death, disease, disaster, and despair, because that's not what the majority of the people in Africa, you know, experience.

They're people who live just like the rest of us.

So I don't think that's unfair or not "objective" or...

It's just to be fair and balanced in your reporting.

And I think that's how we bring people in, no matter what their political persuasions are.

A true reflection of people where they are, which is kind of a perfect segue into the question I want to ask Mr. Keenan.

And since I'm quoting folks, you once said this.

"One of the greatest qualities in speechwriting is walking in your audience's shoes and reflecting on their hopes and dreams."

And I want to ask, in a time where we've been kind of conditioned to soundbites and social-media posts, does a great speech still matter?

Does it still have that power?

Oh, yeah, for sure.

I mean, I get this question all the time, especially after the last president.

But you know, I'd put it succinctly -- as succinctly as this.

Tweeting is speaking before you think, and speechwriting is thinking before you speak.

You know, the point of a great speech, like any other piece of writing, is, you know -- and I'll just speak as President Obama's speechwriter.

It's the way he makes an argument.

He takes the time to put it down on the page, make sure that it's logical, that it has a flow and a narrative arc to it, that it's backed up by logic and reason.

You know, it's really the best way to see his brain on page.

Now, does it matter, as in, does it drive everybody to a cause?

No, I don't think any less than it ever has.

You know, the success of a speech ultimately depends on the audience and whether or not the audience is moved to act.

You know, and you can -- There are plenty of lousy speeches that don't move the audience to act.

I mean, we wrote almost 3,500 in the White House, and only a handful are memorable.

But it does.

It's difficult to reach an audience, which I think is an offshoot of your question, you know?

We no longer live in an age of Walter Cronkite, right, where he tells you what the news is and gives you seven minutes of President Kennedy's speech on the air.

I mean, you kind of have to go find it now, and we can create these self-curated news cocoons where we only see our own opinions reflected back at us all day long.

So it's a challenge to reach people.

That's much more difficult, you know?

Like, State of the Union viewership, for example, has been down every year for like the last 40 years.

But I would argue, yeah, a great speech matters as much as ever.

This idea of reaching people is not just, you know, them hearing the words or seeing the speech.

And as you were a director of speechwriting for President Obama, you know, your work served as words to lead a nation, and your responsibilities included writing speeches that could define a moment in history and touch people.

But I wonder, from your vantage point, what does it take?

Like, what do you summon to find those words?

Yeah, it's hard.

I mean, some times harder than others.

You just kind of touched on something important about White House speechwriting, is that sometimes, you know, words felt like a live bomb in our hands, and you have to be very careful with them.

You know, the wrong word can move armies or markets.

And you know, with a country like ours that's just kind of teeming with all sorts of different people and, you know, identity politics is at the fore unlike any time in my lifetime, words have a real... Well, we've seen how easy it is to turn people against each other and to purposely stoke division.

Bringing people together is a much harder thing to do.

And you know, you teed on this when you mentioned empathy in the last question.

And it's not just empathy, you know, to feel good or to make sure, you know, you say what the audience wants to hear.

It's "A," probably the most important aspect of speechwriting behind just being able to string a sentence together.

It's so that you actually understand, you know, people's lives and what they've been through.

But empathy is also critical to a functioning democracy, you know, so that we're not only advocating for our own narrow interests, 24/7.

You have to be able to, you know, identify with all sorts of different people in order to, you know, craft legislation or anything that kind of helps the country as a whole.

And all of those words again, chip away at our divisions, you know, at their best, which leads me to this question I want to ask you, Mr. Kunial.

Your series of poems published by Faber called "Us" explores how we're all connected to each other through family, across history, and across geographical, cultural, linguistic, and even racial barriers.

How have you utilized language to transcend or, at least, navigate cultural systems that often divide us and open the door for your readers to see one another from fresh new perspectives?

That's a good question.

I was just thinking how my words don't move markets or armies.

But yeah, I move the occasional one or two people that read my book.

And with me, I think it's more me trying to make myself whole through the words, really.

And I grew up in a mixed-heritage family.

My mum is kind of white English, and my dad's Muslim Kashmiri.

And so there are different languages at home.

And so words were kind of a place for me to put two opposite things onto one page.

And that's what I'm always trying to do with my poems, is put different things onto the one page and hope that they kind of make a kind of music, really, that at least feels right.

And that private, intimate act sometimes connects with people, no matter how different they are and where they are.

So, yeah, that's what I try to do in a small way.

You know, you mentioned this idea of music, right?

And poetry has motion.

There's a musicality to it that you don't always find in other forms.

And I want to ask you, do you feel a poem can do things that other forms of writing simply can't?

And is poetry in particular positioned to help build peace?

Oh, that's a big question.

Seamus Heaney said poetry is the music of what happens, and I don't know if -- and Auden says poetry makes nothing happen.

And I have a lot of sympathy with the idea that poetry makes nothing happen.

But sometimes, I suppose if the opposite of peace is war, then making nothing happen might be quite a good thing.

Mm-hmm.

And maybe poetry just creates a kind of space.

I'm not sure if it does.

You know, it doesn't have the -- if you like, the remit to change a lot of people at once.

But it makes an individual kind of look at things in a different way and perhaps add a bit of space to the situation.

But I wouldn't make any big claims to what poetry can do, although in places like Eastern Europe and the old Soviet system, I think that was really affected by poetry.

But I think Twitter probably affects things more now than a good, well-crafted sonnet.

And you talked about poetry not necessarily moving markets but can move people, you know, personally.

Do you recall the first poem or a poem in your early life that actually, like, helped shape your world view and moved you in some meaningful way?

I'm not sure I do.

I remember the first poem I tried to write was when I was really young, and it caused an argument between my parents, and I remember that very strongly.

And I often write about conflict and how to at least resolve inner conflict.

And I remember my parents actually had an argument because I wanted to write a little rhyme for my father.

And I wrote -- I wanted to tell him that I loved him, and the only way I could do it was to say, "When you die, I will cry."

[ Laughter ] And I remember hearing my parents arguing and my dad saying, "Why does he want me dead?"

So that was just -- that may have stuck with me, the idea that words -- like Cody was saying, words have a lot of power and, you know -- and they can cause conflict.

And they can be so easily misunderstood.

And so [Indistinct] to say something to embellish your feelings can go quite the wrong way sometimes.

And so, yeah, I share that sentiment that words are very powerful.

But yeah, with me, the search is to try to make me feel that I've got everything down that I want to say.

What other people make of it is up to them.

A conversation with yourself, and other people can listen in and perhaps take something away from it, which you guys are great, giving me these perfect, like, lay-ups, these segues into my next question.

Ms. Strayed, speaking of, like, the personal dialogue, with your memoir, "Wild," you've exemplified resilience through life's adversities.

"Wild," in its essence, is a story about your healing, and over the past decade, it's helped readers around the world gain the courage and strength to move forward and find hope amidst trauma.

Why was it so important for you to tell your story the way that you did?

And what do you hope other writers might consider as they tell stories in this especially challenging time?

Well, I want to first say it's such an honor to be here on this amazing panel with all of you.

And the first thing that I want to say is, you know, it wasn't important to me -- in writing "Wild," it wasn't important to me to tell my story of healing.

I think that every writer who decides to use the self as the conduit to make literature has a real obligation to figure out, how does this story transcend the self?

A question I get a lot about "Wild" is -- I went on my hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995.

The book wasn't published until 2012.

I didn't begin writing about that experience until many years later.

And the reason for that is just what I said.

I was looking for that universal thread, that I didn't want the story to be just like, "Look at me, I'm grieving terribly.

I've messed my life up, and so now I'm gonna go on a wilderness adventure."

That is an interesting conversation to have with friends.

It's not worthy of literature.

And I say that believing that all of our lives are worthy of literature, but the making of art, the making of literature is about making connections and building that bridge of experience between me and the readers.

And so, you know, when I began to write "Wild," when I understood that I did have a story that was really worth writing as a memoir, it was all about asking those bigger questions.

How do we bear the unbearable?

You know, I used that I couldn't lift my backpack.

That was a metaphor for me of how it is that we do the things we believe we cannot do.

And so the minute I tapped into that is when I began writing the book.

And I think that that's the key piece about the ways that literature -- and art in general, but literature specifically -- words specifically are always powerful.

I do believe that our sentences are always live bombs in a different way than Cody spoke of.

But what I can say is every time I've written about something that I felt deeply, that deeply wounded me, that deeply mattered to me, that deeply moved me, whether it be beauty or sorrow or loss or triumph -- every time I write about that experience, other people -- readers say, "Me, too.

I felt that live bomb go off in my heart because you spoke my truth."

And I think that that's the way, for me as an artist, that I think of literature being healing, words being healing.

And to that point, for you personally, what was more healing -- like, writing "Wild" or actually hiking through the wild of the Pacific Crest Trail?

That's a great question.

Both things.

I mean, when I was a younger woman -- I've been a writer all my life, really.

And when I was in my 20s and early 30s, I would often say -- I would deny the cathartic or healing aspect of writing, because, especially as a woman writer, a lot of people want to say, "Oh, you know, you're just kind of journaling or, you know, discovering the self," and that's often diminished.

It's not considered kind of the high work of literature.

And of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

This is what writers have done through all time is, in so many ways, as we're writing, we're working out those issues that we're grappling with, the questions we have, the sorrows we've suffered, the wounds that need to be, you know, opened up and examined and healed.

And so both of those things.

You know, the hike was absolutely a healing experience.

And then I got to relive it and understand what it meant to me as I wrote the book, and I'm still understanding.

I can't remember which one of the panelists said something about the ways that you make the work and then the readers make of it what they will, right?

You're either moved by a speech or you're infuriated by it.

And it's the same speech.

And I'm very aware of that when I'm writing.

I am not trying to make somebody feel a certain way.

I'm trying to offer a deep excavation.

And then how that lands on somebody else is not up to me.

Ms. Hunter-Gault, I want to ask you this.

We're having this conversation on the same day that "The 1619 Project," that book, is being published -- like, an expanded version of the essays that appeared in the "New York Times" magazine.

And I wonder if you think we could ever have true peace and healing -- in a racial context, certainly -- but more broadly, if we don't tell the truth about, you know, where we've been and who we are and center our narratives in a way that we haven't done in the past?

Well, you know, again, thinking of words that have been important to me.

And one of them is, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

And I think that those of us who communicate vis-à-vis words, or whether it's in print or on television or radio or whatever, have to keep that in mind.

And we nowadays have different... challenges because of the different ways that we're communicating.

I mean, TikTok [Chuckles] and all of these things that, you know, I just don't have time for these.

Some of these younger people on the panel might, but I just can't go there most of the time.

And so I think that what those of us who've been in this business of words a long time, whether it was through fiction or poetry or speechwriting, whatever it was, we just have to keep in mind these eternal truths.

And there are eternal truths.

The long arc of the universe.

The universe is long -- "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

And I just participated in a panel with Jelani Cobb from "The New Yorker" about his new -- he and David Remnick's new book, "The Matter of Black Lives."

And when you go through those articles in that 813-page book, you find history, in a sense, repeating itself.

But you also find hope because some of the things that are recorded in that book changed.

I mean, look, Barack Obama got to be president of the United States.

Who would have thunk it?

[ Laughs ] You know, back in the day?

I mean, our brother here wouldn't have had a job, at least not working for President Obama.

And I remember telling him, when he came to Martha's Vineyard one summer and spoke, as he came off the stage, and a friend of mine, whom he had worked for as a law clerk out of Chicago, Allison Davis, had sent me his first book, "Dreams from My Father" -- is that right?

And he asked me if I would blurb it.

And I said, you know, "Lara and MacNeil and I, we just have so many requests like this.

We just don't do it.

We just -- it's not a -- you know."

And he said, "Well, could you just read it?"

I read it.

I loved it.

I blurbed it.

So when I met President Obama for the first time, during his first... first term as president, instead of saying, "Hello, President Obama, I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault," I said, "I blurbed your first book!"

And he didn't miss a beat.

He said, "You should be getting royalties."

[ Laughs ] And so it's like... you tune into things and you embrace things that you think are important, and your own history helps you to know that.

And so when I read his book, especially about the role his mother played, when he was a young boy not wanting to go to school and she she had to go to work early in the morning and she'd wake him up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning to make him study, and he'd say, "Oh, I'm aching, I don't feel like it."

And she would say, "You got to get out of this bed and study."

It was more eloquent than that, but our history is so important.

And I think the big challenge for all of us on this panel is how we communicate good trouble and good truths and true words when we have so many -- so much competition now in five or six words or 10 words on a tweet.

So we have challenges, but when you go through this book, "The Matter of Black Lives," or you go through President Obama's book or other books -- I'm sure that Cheryl's book is one of them -- you find the way forward.

You know that you can't -- you've got to keep keeping on, speaking of phrases.

We have to keep keeping on because that's what our history teaches us.

And that's why this debate right now about teaching history in school is so important, because I wouldn't be where I am now were it not for what I learned in my segregated school.

And that was our Black history.

And a few years ago, I learned that 85 percent -- this was just four or five years ago, I learned from the Southern Poverty Law Center in an interview I was doing, 85 percent of the schools in this country don't teach Black history.

So what are people bitching about?

Pardon my French.

[ Chuckles ] Was that French?

It didn't sound like... [ Chuckles ] Thank you so much.

I want to ask each of you this question.

You know, I'd like to hear from each of you about the words we use in everyday life, right?

We're not all writers and poets, but do we have, as individuals, a responsibility to use our words responsibly to avoid causing pain or trauma and stay contributing to societal healing?

Ms. Strayed, I'll start with you.

Is there a responsibility that each of us carry?

Well, it's complicated because, of course, sometimes words rightfully cause pain and trauma.

I think a part of healing is using words to tell the truth.

And that is sometimes uncomfortable.

It's sometimes... you know, it feels painful to be on the other side of, for example, conversations that many white people have had to have over -- really, way too late, but about white supremacy and their role in perpetuating that culture that is racist at its core.

That's a truth-telling that is painful and traumatic for some people, but it's important.

It's ultimately healing.

And so I don't think the question about how we use our words is, do they do they cause anyone to feel hurt or uncomfortable or sad or scared?

The test is, you know, what is -- You know, I feel like, as a writer, what I'm always trying to do -- I think I used that word "excavation" before -- that we open the wounds and we excavate them.

And the only way to do that is to tell the truth, and of course, to tell it with empathy and to tell it with compassion, with complexity, and with the understanding that there are many -- in some cases, there are, you know, multiple truths.

There's not one perspective that prevails.

But I don't think that the first question to ask when using our words in the course of healing is, you know, should we avoid it if it hurts?

The answer to that is no.

And so I think that the best way I try to use my words as both a writer and a citizen is to be as open as possible to understanding the errors of my language, the errors of my perceptions, trying to listen as well as use words, and try to tell the truth -- the deepest truth -- as often as possible.

Mr. Kunial, what do you think?

Is there some universal responsibility to not speak harm into the world and use our words for peace-building and not trauma and hurt?

I think if I really thought about that a lot, I think I probably wouldn't speak again.

I think I'd be very cagey about saying anything, and I was a bit like that when I was younger.

I stuttered, and I think that was me taking on-board some of the sense of how words can be very powerful.

And I don't think I'm very good with words.

I don't feel like I always know what the outcome of the sentence is going to be, both with myself and with other people.

And that creates some of the energy, I think, that made me a poet and made me sit down in front of a page and try to work something through.

But yeah, I think words do have energy, and how we use them also has energy.

I think there are some words that always sound good and there are some words that always sound bad, but how we use them is also really important, you know, and how we connect to them.

And I don't know if I'm very good at getting the words out in the right order, but I think a lot about the distance between me and myself from those words.

And I think that's something we can think about, is the distance between us and what we say and how close we feel to what we say.

And, you know, when an audience is moved by someone, whether it's a politician using rhetoric or it's a confessional poet talking about their own feelings, I think there's some kind of connection between oneself and the words.

Like, you know, you were saying very clearly about Barack Obama's brain being on the page.

And if you really can put yourself on the page, that's the thing that we want, isn't it?

That connection between oneself and the things that come out of us, which is words.

That's really profound, this idea of considering the distance between ourselves and the words that we put into the world.

That's beautiful.

I see why you're a poet.

That's a very important idea.

[ Speaks indistinctly ] [ Chuckles ] Mr. Keenan, what you think about this idea of the responsibility we have in terms of the words we use and put into the world?

I have this debate with my students right now.

I teach speechwriting at my alma mater, Northwestern University.

And young people now...

I just turned 41, so my students are about half my age, and they're different than I was at that age.

There's a younger, more left kind of quadrant of the country that is less inclined to agree with Dr. King -- the line you used, Ms. Hunter-Gault, that the arc of the moral universe is long and bends toward justice.

They want it to be shorter.

You know, they're kind of more with, you know, the Malcolm X sentiment, and I'll garble the numbers, that if you stick a knife in 6 inches -- into me 6 inches -- and pull it out 3 inches, that's not progress.

You know, they're more inclined to think -- The way Barack Obama saw the world is it is that longer arc.

It is, you know -- to be a Black man in America right now is indisputably better than it was 50 years ago.

That doesn't mean that there's a lot more work to do.

It means you lock in that progress and you reach for the next.

There is a segment that doesn't -- that's not quite as inclined to believe that the march in Selma has finished yet, you know?

So, what I see with my students is and there's this kind of -- there's this, you know, especially online, kind of this tendency to -- I hate to fall into the trap of cancel culture, but if somebody says something wrong, that's it.

You don't get a chance to learn why it was wrong, admit error, and, you know, then, using some restorative justice, do better.

So I tell my students, you know, this is not a safe space, 'cause that's what a lot of them want in college.

This is not a safe space.

This is a place where you're gonna hear ideas that might make your blood boil.

And what I'm teaching you, I hope, is to come up with an argument to counter that argument you don't like.

You know, that's what political rhetoric should be.

If somebody -- you know, someone's argument just drives you nuts, come up with a better one.

You know, and that's how you win more hearts and minds.

So I'm kind of in agreement that you shouldn't shy away from -- not using words to intentionally harm people.

I mean, we've actually -- we just had a live demonstration for four years of what that can do from the presidential pulpit.

It can inspire violence.

It can drive people to murder.

It can, you know, spread conspiracy theories that leave large parts of the country unvaccinated and dying.

So if anything, you know, yes, presidential rhetoric and speeches still matter.

And kind of to blend into the last question, I'm -- you know, and in a shameless plug, I'm writing a book about this right now.

We thought a lot about how Barack Obama's words could move the country 'cause in a way, you know, you're president, and part of that is being storyteller in chief.

And, you know, you can't just impose kind of a new story on everybody, even if it's the true one.

We were we were thoughtful and careful with that.

I think, you know, one of the best examples was the speech in Selma, Alabama, on the 50th anniversary, 'cause, you know what he did there, what he always excelled at was talking about progressive change as a validation of American history and not a repudiation of it.

You know, the idea that we're a great enough country, we're strong enough to be self-critical, to change and right wrongs kind of in accordance with our flawed but lofty ideals.

And it's because of those values that, you know, imperfectly defined our founding that previous generations fought and died for.

Righting those wrongs are what makes us great.

And that approach kind of gave people, even if they disagreed, space to be proud of their American identity while seeing change as part of what makes us American.

You know, it's part of the work of being American.

So the book I'm writing right now is about the 10 days between the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, and Obama's eulogy in South Carolina, because also in those 10 days, we had this kind of very public debate about the Confederate flag, and it started coming down around statehouses across America, we had -- the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act for the second time, which answered the question of, you know, do we guarantee some fundamental security for poor people?

It upheld a right to marriage equality.

And, you know, telling the story of those 10 days is kind of also, you know, what I want to answer is the question of who's gonna win this battle between two fundamentally opposing visions of America -- the kind of, you know, Obamaian vision of a multiethnic, multiracial democracy and whether it can endure or, you know, kind of the opposing Bull Connor Trumpian vision of it.

So we were -- I don't want to necessarily say careful with our words, not as careful as I am when I'm on camera.

But you do want to -- you don't have to, but you do want to tell stories in a way that can make everyone feel good about them, because that's a better way to bring more people to your side, to give people the space to change rather than say, you know, "You're wrong," even if they are, and even if that's a hard thing to ride around.

Thank you very much.

Ms. Hunter-Gault, what do you think about that idea of a universal responsibility to use our words a certain kind of way?

What do you think?

Well, you know, I'm so pleased to be in this conversation because it's so full of, shall I say, wisdom from every direction.

And as I was listening to Cody -- Can I call you, Cody?

Yes, ma'am, please.

Don't say "ma'am."

[ Laughs ] [ Laughs ] But I like that.

You're a southern boy, right?

Chicago, Illinois.

Right, right.

No, no.

But I use a -- it's become a cliche now, but I talk about a coalition of the generations because I think that we have a younger generation now, like my own generation, that thought they knew the answer -- had the answer to everything, and many in my generation did have answers.

They had answers to racism, they had answers to segregation and laws, and they demonstrated and got rid of those laws.

And you mentioned Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, but Peniel Joseph has written a book, and right now I can't think of the name of it.

Maybe you can, Cody or Cheryl, but it's about how over time, those two who had different opposing views of how you live in this country and how you challenge race, in the end, they came together.

And so I think again, to go back to the importance of history, we need to look at things, like I was -- I mentioned... Jelani's book, "The Matter of Black Lives," and in it, he includes -- I think it's the very first article in the book -- James Baldwin's "Letter from a Region in My Mind."

And to prepare for it, 'cause I do try to prepare for some of these things in advance, but I read various articles in it, and if you'll just give me one minute, I want to share something with you that I think is relevant to this moment.

He's talking about, you know, there'd been police killings just like we've just had and other events like we've just had.

And he said, you know, "We have to realize that whatever goes up must come down.

And here we are" -- and now he's writing this in 1962.

Check this out.

He said, "And here we are at the center of the arc, trapped in the gaudiest, most valuable, and most improbable water wheel the world has ever seen.

Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands.

We have no right to assume otherwise.

If we, and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious Blacks who must, like lovers, insist on or create the consciousness of others, do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare and achieve our country and change the history of the world.

If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy recreated from the Bible in 'Song by a Slave' is upon us.

God gave Noah the rainbow sign.

No more water.

The fire, next time."

Now, if that's not relevant to this moment, [Laughs] I don't know what is.

You know?

It's... What goes around comes around, and that, again, is why history is so important and the words that we use, those of us who are in a position to recall things like that, have to do it or build upon it, as Zaffar does or Cheryl, in today's world.

But it's building on our history that will help us communicate with these younger people that Cody is teaching as well as reinforce our own beliefs about what we think is moral and just.

Ms. Hunter-Gault, thank you very much.

For anyone interested in that book from Peniel Joseph, it's called "The Sword and the Shield" about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King's kind of opposing but unified vision of what they want out of America.

Yeah.

I want to thank you all so much for joining us for The Peace Studio's "Conversations that #OfferPeace," "The Power of Words to Heal and Restore."

We hope this conversation has been inspirational and serves as a reminder to choose and use our words carefully in order to heal and restore.

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