In week two, I try to focus on the historic legacy of race and American life and culture, really to demonstrate the ways in which it is a constituent part of our society, part of the essential fabric of American society. I think that's important to understand because it has evolved over time, over hundreds of years, many decades, and it's changed over time. And, one of the questions I want to focus on the day is, not just is it the historic legacy of race in American life, American culture, but to take a look at how it impacts contemporary society, how it impacts everyday living in American society, and to really raise the question as to not only how race has changed, but what is the continuing effects of race in our society today? Race became interwoven into the social fabric of our society in the colonial era, and it continues into our own present. The focus today, week three, is on ways in which historically conditioned thoughts and attitudes about race continue to shape ordinary life in contemporary society. And we will examine the ways in which race, in everyday life, defines or, more or less, shapes and influences the way in which we live, the way in which we work, social relationships, community neighborhoods, and so forth. Now, it's difficult to have this kind of conversation. I recall in 1997 when President Clinton wanted the whole nation to have a conversation about race and the effects of race, the historic legacy of race and its continuing effects in our society today. He appointed a committee, a commission to do that, but it went nowhere. It really didn't get off the ground. It seems that Americans in general were reluctant, resistant to have such a conversation. And I'm well aware that people who think that race is like politics and religion is something that should be ignored, not talked about, that among friends and colleagues and co-workers, we should have a conversation about sports, about weather, about anything, but not about issues like religion, politics, and race. I think the unfortunate aspect about that attitude is that race shapes the way in which we relate to each other in fundamental and profound ways. It shapes our livelihood in ways that is more important to understand it, to detect it and to think about ways to uproot and to eliminate this issue rather than to ignore it, or even to think that by not talking about it, somehow over time, it will just go away on its own. History has proven otherwise. We have seen points in American history when there was substantial progress made to eliminate issues of racial inequality and very strong anti-racist movement. The reconstruction period is one that come to mind with the abolition of slavery. The passage of the 14th Amendment with this equal protection clause, passage of the 15th Amendment giving every male the right to vote, and later with the women's suffrage act that would include also women of color. And so there are times in American history when we have laid substantial progress, but also, those times have been followed by a backlash, a regression. Following the reconstruction was the Jim Crow era that emerged in the late 19th century and would last until the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The civil rights movement itself is one of those times in which we made significant progress to end various forms of racial discrimination and even to change the nation's attitude about issues of race and racism. And yet, we've also seen that the civil rights movement has been followed by various kinds of a backlash. As one of the most important ones is that, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was an act that we thought would eliminate any concerns about the denial of the right to vote or any efforts to buy individuals or communities from having full voting rights. We have seen in recent years attempts with voter ID changing the dates in which people can vote, change in issues, practices such as same-day registration, and the Supreme Court ruling on the 65 Civil Rights Act. And in some ways got an important aspects of it remind us that even when you have progress, as we did with the passage of that Act in 1965, in later years, we have seen contested terrain, and in fact, movements backward on some of these issues. And again, when Obama was elected president, there was a lot of talk about a post-racial America saying his election as symbolic of having put race behind us in so many ways, and yet, in the most recent election, race emerged as a very, very central and contested question, concerns about the alt-right, concerns about even the motivation of segments of the country that voted out of fear and out of a sense of being displaced. It also has surfaced and concerns about travel bans and where the groups are targeted because of their ethnicity and because of their religion. So what we've learned historically, is that even when we do make progress, it is sometimes followed by a backlash or a significant regression. So the notion that if we do not talk about it, we do not have conversations about it, and that there will be this kind of progress over time where eventually, we'll wake up one morning, and it will have gone away, I don't think it's going to happen like that. History shows us that it doesn't happen that way. And so it's important to know and to understand. What is it like today? Is it a serious problem? Does it affect our lives in profound ways? Or have we reached a point in which is kind of a distant past, and there are incidents here and there but nothing that is systemic or nothing that is customary and affects the way in which we live from day to day? So today, we'd like to address that question in a number of ways.
