PowerPoint; National Dialogue on Race

Production and broadcast of PowerPoint is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is PowerPoint, an Information Age clearinghouse for issues affecting the African -American community, the nation, and the world. And now, PowerPoint's Kenneth Walker. The dialogue on race, an important idea and one that deserves considerable exploration. Just how do we begin sustain and benefit from such a dialogue? Tonight, during our premier show, PowerPoint ignites the national dialogue on race, searching for ideas and answers with special guests. Nikki Giovanni, Roger Wilkins, and you, our listeners nationwide. Our exploration into the past, present, and future of race relations in the

United States begins in a moment. But first, here's PowerPoint news. This is PowerPoint news and information to empower the community. I'm Verna Avery Brown. When thousands of AIDS activists took to the streets of Washington, D .C. today, their goal was to raise money to battle the epidemic and to remind the public that the disease continues to claim lives. And well over one third of those deaths have occurred in communities of color. Despite the good news recently, that the virus is slowing overall. The less reported news is that African American and Latino communities didn't experience the same decline. Analysts say part of the reason for that is fear, fear of doctors, fear of discovering they may have the disease, and fear of others knowing. Actor Greg Allen Williams of the television series Baywatch has made it his business to help inform the community about AIDS through a national Red Cross AIDS campaign. My personal opinion is that HIV and AIDS is still perceived by

many in the African American community as a public relations issue. What do you mean by that? Well, you know, that oh, oh, you know, let's not let white folks know that black people have AIDS. You know what I mean? Oh, here's another, what was the term? I think stigmatizes the African American community and for me, that's neither here nor there. Stigla is not the issue. Life and death is the issue. And then we're talking about policymakers and we're talking about politicians who spend a lot of time dealing with the majority population or folks of European descent. I wonder very often if their perspective on HIV, AIDS and the African American community isn't more about saving face at the dinner party. According to 1996 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, African Americans make up 41

percent of the people with AIDS in the U .S. A special repertoire of the United Nations has arrived in the U .S. to conduct a full -scale investigation into the use of the death penalty and police brutality in the U .S. A previous investigation of this country's use of the death penalty as it's applied to youth and to the mentally retarded placed the U .S. squarely in violation of international law. Admiral Luima Haitian immigrant Sotomize recently by a New York City police officer remains hospitalized today in stable condition. His case is a glaring reminder of the racism that thrives across this country. People of color, or those who speak differently or follow a religion outside the mainstream, are constantly victimized. But unlike Luima's case, the majority go unnoticed. In Fort Myers, Florida, a postal worker was charged with child abuse for chaining his teenage daughter to offence outside his house. The man admitted he was trying to keep her from hanging out with their Haitian neighbors. A Palestinian couple in Gathersburg, Maryland, was recently the target of hate crimes. We are afraid and we are living constantly. Samira Hussein is an Arab

-American who practices Islam. She, her husband and four children, are constantly targeted. Someone opened the cars and slashed the seats and wrote a graphic language. And the message was out there, like, go home, and the swastika was drawn in one of the cars. And the words pigs were wrote on both cars. Hussein says events in the Middle East, such as the Gulf War, seem to precipitate the attacks. And after seven years, police have yet to arrest anyone for the crimes. Very angry and very disappointed and very frustrated because I think we have so much to offer to the community. And we have been able to reach a lot of people, change a lot of minds. When people understand you, know you, they will change their mind and they don't judge you by your name, by your color, by your appearance. The local chapter of the NAACP is among the groups condemning the hate crimes against the Husains. Its president is quoted as saying, we must all work together to eliminate racism. All over the country, people

of color are forming coalitions to combat racism. Recently in Austin, Texas, when a white law professor insulted Blacks and Latinos with disparaging remarks about affirmative action, it was a multicultural coalition of students that responded with a major demonstration, including the rainbow coalition and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Oscar de la Torres is with the students for access and opportunity. People realize right now that there's a backlash against, you know, the civil rights movement and that is hurting all of us, you know, women, people of color, the gay and lesbian community. I think most of these communities realize that we're under attack and that the only way that we're going to move forward is if we build coalitions, broad -based coalitions that can support each other. But that multicultural approach is being called into question by some throughout the African American community. When President Clinton's commission on race relations met to discuss their agenda, one of the earliest debates was over how much emphasis should be placed on Black -wide relations. Noted author Dr. Julia Hare weighed in on the debate during last week's Congressional Black Caucus legislative weekend. There's not that I do not like coming,

especially from South from California, my people of color and third -world friends and people from another content and ethnicity and multiculturalism and diversity. Let me tell you, when we sat on the back of the buses, you didn't sit on the back of the bus because you were multicultural. You didn't sit on the back of the bus because you were Asian, you didn't sit back there because you were Latino, you didn't sit back there because you were a white female or a gay. You sat back there because you were black and that's who this discussion ought to be primarily between is black and white because as usual, once we open the door, the others are going to walk in. Now I know this may sound a little bit harsh, but I didn't come all the way here to tip through the tulips, but at least to stay exactly what needs to go on. As we look to see some of the things that's going on now, we can see many scams that have been played upon us. Affirmative action, as you well know, did begin for black people. I was a part of a drawing boy and now that affirmative action is almost afraid to complete, we know that most of those jobs went to upper middle -class white females and to Asians who put

that money with their husbands who made more money than we have. I know that's kind of harsh to say, but we have to look at that. The debate will likely continue as the presidential commission draws the national spotlight to the issue of race relations. This has been PowerPoint news and information. For PowerPoint, I'm Verna Ivory Brown in Washington, D .C. Welcome to the premier edition of PowerPoint, the first African -American news and information talk show on public radio, nationwide. And everyone's invited. I'm your host Kenneth Walker. Tonight, PowerPoint accepts President Clinton's challenge for an honest dialogue on race, with a lot of help from you, our listeners, who will always be the most important guests on this broadcast, we'll begin a search for difficult answers. As always, PowerPoint will not be the scene of a

lot of ranting and raving. Whatever the issue, PowerPoint will seek out the solutions, a way to heal rather than harm. Tonight, our search begins with two special guests, here in our studio in Washington is Roger Wilkins, who is a professor of history at George Mason University in Virginia. On the line from Richmond, Virginia is poet Nikki Giovanni, an English professor at Virginia Tech. Mr. Giovanni Howard. Hey, good morning. Good afternoon. Well, I'm fine. Welcome to both of you. Mr. Giovanni, let me begin with you. When the President called for this dialogue in a speech in San Diego, he said the most profound question facing us is whether we can become the world's first truly multiracial democracy. I gather from reading your book, Racism 101, that you're fairly optimistic on that score. Is that the case? I stay pretty optimistic. I try to, because you can always go to pessimism. You don't have to, you know, start at that particular spot. I think that Clinton has a point that

if we would be successful in the United States, we will have created something new. If not, we're going to go the way of all other failed civilizations. I can handle either one, but I would like to go towards something new. Roger Wilkins, where is this conversation likely to take the nation if any place? Well, I hope it would go exactly the way Nikki Giovanni hopes it will. The only thing, the only syllable that she uttered that I disagree with is she said, I can go either way. We can either succeed or we can go the way of other civilizations. I have a 14 -year -old daughter who, when she gets to be my age in her middle 60s, will live in America in which we don't have 73 % of the people being white. There only be about 52%. The other 48 % will be people who are now called minorities. 25 % of the population will be Hispanic.

13 and a half will be African -American, 10 % Asian -American, and then 2 % or so Indian, Alaskan, so forth. We don't have an option, really. If we're going to have a civilization in which the poorest blacks, who most of us really say we care most about, have any shot at all. It's going to be because we make some multicultural peace because we figure out how to get along across racial lines, how minorities figure out how to make coalitions with each other, and stop attacking each other, and start making the kinds of claims on the society that will put the resources where

they are most needed into poor kids, into their education, and into the parents of poor kids so that the poor kids have a decent chance. In just a moment, I want both of you to help me understand what you see on the horizon that gives rise to this optimism because there's an awful lot of pessimistic stuff out there. But, in the meanwhile, I want our listeners to be able to join in this discussion. Our number here is 1 -800 -989 -8255. Powerpoints number here is 1 -800 -989 -8255. Please pick up the phone and join our discussion with Roger Wilkins and Nikki Giovanni on the past, present, and future of race relations in the United States. Nikki Giovanni. Hi, Roger. Hi, Nikki. How you doing? I want you both by the way to feel free to not wait for a particular question for me if a point strikes you and you want to answer someone who's on the line or in the studio, please feel free to do it. But Nikki, I don't, a lot of people would say they don't see any cause for

optimism. They don't see this multiracial coalition that Roger was talking about. They don't see an increased inclination on the part of the political power in this country to begin to do justice for these poor black people that you both are talking about. What do you see that gives you optimism? I'm sincerely just optimistic because, to me, it's the place to start. If we're not dead, we must be alive, so let's go forward. And what I meant, Roger is always so well thought out, but what I simply meant was that if the United States makes it, I'm glad, and if it doesn't do, damn bad. Because I think that black people have spent a lot of time wondering about how we're going to keep this ship afloat, how little sink. If it doesn't include everybody, if everybody can't get on the lifeboat, it's not going to make it. It's that simple. Now, you can have, you know, you're stupid people like Jesse Helms, but you have your marginal Negroes like Clarence Thomas. If you have to be bothered with those people and if those people have to be convinced, it's not going to go any place because they will not be convinced. So, either the good guys, you know, get on the horses and start to do something or the bad guys are going to win.

And the thing that bothers me about President Clinton really is that I wish he were as passionate about his goodness as Richard Nixon was about his evil. Roger, what gives you this sense of optimism? What do you see really? I can't, you can't, I mean, is this optimism only a hope, or do you see something? It's, it's ancestor worship. You know, you cannot live just in the moment. I had ancestors who never breathed a free breath in their lives. They were born slaves and they died slaves, but they held themselves together somewhere or another against those dark times because they believed something better was coming. Something better did come. We all had ancestors who were born in the hellfire time after reconstruction. Same thing, they held themselves together and they struggled. And they, they, most of them, now they were, as Nikki says, always, marginal

Negroes like Clarence Thomas and others. But most of them listened to what Frederick Douglass said and that is he had a struggle. You cannot stop struggling. And I'm optimistic because 65 years ago, I was born in segregation. My first educational experience was in a one -room segregated schoolhouse. My father died in 1941. He was buried in a segregated cemetery, a wonderful man, wasn't even good enough to be dead with white people. I live in a very different country. My children were born in a very different country. Why? Because black people, even in those dark times, they could have looked up just like we could look up now and say, oh, it's awful. It's terrible. There's old men, old Jesse Helms, there's men, old Pete Wilson. Proposition 209 is awful. They're rolling back affirmative action. They could have all quit. But they didn't because they had that poetic spirit that Nikki talks about. If you're alive, you're not dead. So you got to be

optimistic. So you struggle. And struggle has paid off from black people in this country. That's why I'm optimistic. Our PowerPoint member here is 1 -800 -989 -8255. We're going to Samantha, who's coming to us out of WCLK in Atlanta. Samantha, you're on the air. Welcome to PowerPoint. Samantha? I think we may have lost Samantha. Let's try Bill at W -E -A -A in Baltimore. Bill, you're on the air. Are you with us? I'd like to say hello to each of you. Thank you. Tell my race relation, unfortunately, I'm not as optimistic in terms of race relation. I'm optimistic in terms of African people deciding to get up and wake up and do some fans to create some change. Why are you optimistic about that? Well, for one here in Baltimore, I think that with the death that just recently took place by the hands of the police, there's been some movement around

that. And I can see some graduate organizations constantly connecting, recognizing the fact that our powers and our unity, and that's the only way we're going to change our conditions is to make that decision. But let me just say in terms of race relations as a whole, I don't care if it's president Clinton, I think dialogue is always good, but until people include people that really need to be apart, the process, the dialogue, as long as it's a clue there on people, then I don't think that we got more forward and made no progress in terms of race relations. As a example, if Clinton, I'm talking about race relations, I think it's injustice. If they don't have a Mr. Fair kind of bench save as a somebody who the downtrodden feel good about is going to negotiate for the benefit of themselves, and they choose the leadership that they want to be there, which in my opinion, it's not moving as far as the race is not, and it's not no true dialogue in terms

of race relations. So until we include it in the process, I think that we're in some very unfortunate times, and I think that this country is facing some serious revolution problems and riding problems that could be quieted down. But the people that control power don't have no concern to let people feel poor the process. Bill, let me try to get, thanks for your point, but let me try to get both Roger and Nick Jivevani to respond to what I think is the larger point, and that is that who decides who participates in this dialogue? Right now, you could argue that Minister Lewis Farhan of the nation of Islam has more popular support among African -Americans than anyone else, yet him personally and his prescriptions are anathema to much of the established Black and White establishment. Who decides who participates? I know who doesn't decide. Who doesn't? Bill? You're right. Bill from Baltimore, Bill

from Washington, the decides. Bill from, no, but that Bill that just called in. Yeah, that's Bill from Baltimore. Bill from Baltimore doesn't get a vote and he just made a very good point. How can you have a dialogue on race without having Minister Farhan? How can you have a dialogue on race without having of course two -packed Shakuris did? So one of the great voices of his generation was assassinating nobody even give a damn. How can you have a voice and you're not going to invite the young rappresents or some of the gang members? How can you have a dialogue without having a talk with the people that you don't like? Roger. Well, I think that's right. I think the president really never thought this out carefully, but one of the things he thought out was that he didn't, he wants to make an omelette without breaking the eggs. And so I love John Hope Franklin, he is a great inspiration to me, a friend and a mentor, but John and John Hope should be involved and John Hope brings a lot to the table. That's John Hope Franklin, the

chairman of the greatest historians in history. Right. But John Hope would himself say that he is a stern and hard moderate voice and the president didn't want any radical voices and he hasn't, they haven't figured out how to have this dialogue in a way to make it inclusive to represent the points of view that Bill is talking about. And I agree that if you have a dialogue for a year and at the end of that year, Bill and many others like him, including people who are much more moderate, will say, well, if you have that dialogue for a year and it's been too narrow, way too narrow, it hasn't worked, it hasn't anything. That does seem to be where it's headed. Well, nobody knows where it's headed because it hadn't

gone anywhere. 1 -800 -989 -8255. That's 1 -800 -989 -8255. We're going to justice from Montgomery at WWAS, justice are you with us? Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you for the correction. Welcome to PowerPoint. How can you help us? I'm not optimistic about race relations. In fact, at this point, I don't think we should waste time discussing it. What we need to do first is to come together among our own people, understand who we are, learn to love ourselves, love our own people, learn the value of our unity, unite together as a strong nation, restore the manhood and our Negro males. Then we send our best representative who are represent our best entries. It can be nobody else except Mr. Farrican and some people that the system mentioned there. Send them to negotiate or to dialogue with white people for establishing better race relations. And it

will have to more or less begin here in the South because in the South, in spite of segregation, Negroes and white people have always had a closer relationship and a better understanding of each other. But then when the integration this came forth and they began brainwashing the white people, I will people as well. But if we would sit down and assure those people that we're not going to force ourselves on them any longer, we're not going to uproot their neighborhoods and et cetera. All we want to do is control over our own communities. We want to police our own patrol our own communities when we establish a community that is. We want equal justice. This means we want quotas in everything in America. We want reparation. We want justice. And one day it realized that we're not a threat to them. I think they would be more inclined. When I say they, I mean to or Caucasian people in America, meaning to original ones who were here before 1776. And I agree with a comment you played by assisted there. These other monarchists, we are free to say that I don't want to say it. They are not to even be discussed because they have been riding on our

backs. They have been practicing the race of hatred, division against us. They have been mongrelized on our race. Justice, let me hold on a second. I want to try to get either Roger or Nikki Giovanni in here on a point that I think you touched on, which was that this whole issue of integration, Roger and Nikki versus more inward looking. You can call it segregation if you want. Roger, you, your family, you as an individual have spent much of your life, your family spent much of their lives fighting, struggling, leading this whole notion of integrated integration in America. Do you see today many black people becoming disassociated with that or turning away from it? Yeah, I hear voices like justice. I don't think there is, I don't think there is either horror. I mean I agree with everything that justice said in this first five or six sentences

about black people coming together, black people developing pride, black people struggling together. That's been our history. That's the only way we've gotten ahead. But then as he went on, he sounded a little bit like Booker T. Washington. We'll have our own place. We won't threaten white people. We'll develop our own situation. And if we don't threaten white people, we'll have a better shot for justice. I don't think that's right. I think that there is nothing, this is my country, as much as it's anybody else's country. I don't want anybody ever to tell me that there's any corner in this country that is denied to me, to other people who look like me. Just in this morning's paper, Roger, you have

two white guys and Brooklyn young white guys and Brooklyn arrested for taking a baseball bat to a black guy who was trying to use a pay public phone. What do you mean? You don't want anybody to tell you there's no place you can't go there. Neighborhoods, you can't stumble into it. No, it's not their neighborhood. It's our country. No, Roger, it's right about that. That's right. You just can't decide that we're going to make white people be comfortable. If white people would have left us where we were, none of this would have come up. I don't want to hear about their neighborhood. They don't own a neighborhood. That is exactly right. In the 1790 Congress, the first Congress of the United States, they tried to declare a lie. They said America is a white country. The fact is that at that point, about one in five Americans was black. At that point, there had been 5 ,000 black people who fought in a revolutionary war. At that point, the whole revolutionary war had been funded on loans, based on products that had been produced by slave labor. This was not a white country then. It never was a white country. It's

never going to be a white country. And those guys with those baseball bats are fighting a rear guard action. And I will tell you something. They also reflect the power realities today, do they not? My brother. When you were a baby, there was nothing in this world like an Oprah Winfrey, a Whitney Houston, a Colin Powell. So tell me that integration doesn't work for black people. A Tiger Woods, a black guy going around winning a golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia. My brother, just because there are goons with baseball, there have always been goons in white sheets and all other things. Say, Nigger, you can't come here. And there have always been black people with courage to say, you are damn fool. I'm going there. And some black people have gotten hurt. And some white people have gotten hurt, opening them doors. But they got there. This week we are going to celebrate the 40th 50th anniversary of those kids going to Little Rock Central High School. If you want to see anything that moves your heart is the picture of Elizabeth Eckford, about

16 years old, walking through a bunch of white races screaming and hollering at that child. But you know some, they opened up in schools in Little Rock. They moved the heart of this guy who's in the White House. Now, he's no gem, but he's better than Oral Farbus. Our number here is 1 -800 -989 -8255. I'm going to try to get a one quick call here before we have to take a break. We're going to Al Verda in Silver Spring, Maryland. I gather she's listening with W -E -A -A. How are you today? Fine, dear. How are you? I'm fine. Welcome to PowerPoint. Fine. And how is Nicky G? I'm hanging in. How are you? Fine, my dear. How are you? And Roger? Hello. How you doing? Fine. Well, I concur a little bit, but I just want to get off by saying it. Al Verda? Al Verda. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Do you want me to hold on? No, go right ahead. All right. Well, you know, and I'm quite sure these eloquent people here know the bickering and the fighting amongst our own people at the turn of the century, W -E -B -The -Braw. We can go on with Booker T, as you mentioned. There was great debate in fighting amongst the scholars even at that time after that period. And we were more fighting with each other and not agreeing on philosophies and what the white man, you know, so we really have to play the cards and just throw it out on the table. We were always racist at that time. Al Verda. Al Verda, I want you to hold on with this. Hold on. Don't hang up. We're going to take a break. We'll be right back. Internet services for PowerPoint are provided by World African Network, providing news, entertainment, and information for people of color. You can access World African Network at www .WorldAfricanNet .com.

PowerPoint is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's radio program . Welcome back to PowerPoint. I'm Kenneth Walker. We're joined with Roger Wilkins, a professor at George Mason University here,

Nikki Giovanni, a poet who teaches English at Virginia Tech Enrichment. We also are going back with Al Verda out of Silver Spring, who is in the middle of making her point just before the break. Al Verda finished your point. All right, but I want to get back. You know, we tend to sometimes look and we tend, we don't mean it, but we tend to wallow an emotionalism. And we'll name call and we'll say, well, we don't need this in our community, or we're all in this together. You know, we're all a part of the Black experience, whether it was from the Renaissance era in the early of century, 20th century, or after during the baby boom. We're all Black people, so we have to stop attacking each other. It's an emotionalism and it's not going to work. What we need is the word that Malcolm Lewis, Frederick Douglass, even Marcus Garvey, tried to instill in our grandparents, my great -grandparents and yours. And that is the word

discipline. We do not have it as a race of people. Other races, when we look at other groups coming into this country, multiplying by the numbers, this Roger already eloquently stated by the year 2020, look what's going to happen, folks. So I'm just saying we've got to be realistic and stop the emotionalism drama play and understand that we are becoming the minority, the hysterics would be the greater population. Alverda, Alverda. Why don't this discipline go that Roger and Nikki eloquently referred to, you talked about among our ancestors, where did it go? Well, I tell you where I think it went. Now, Roger may disagree a little because we're around the same age. I'm a couple of years older than Roger, but I think it's hard for me to say because I know Roger's not going to agree, but when we ended segregation, we don't know what we lost because we had treasures and entrepreneurship as black people.

We had a multi -pot of businesses, beer gardens, you name it, grocery stores, convenience. I mean, I'm going back to the 30s. So we have to understand what happened when we the liberal acts, and let's put the cards on the table. They were the ones along with the liberal rights who run it to be, they call this being free to go any place they want to go into the Bohemian clubs and the different clubs in California to put the right people. They want to go to the clubs and the... Alverda, you make... Alverda, you make an excellent point. I want to try to get Nikki Giovanni or Roger in here on that, but I... We have got to be realistic and stop blaming, because Clarence Thomas, he got in there legitimately by the way of George Bush, and politics, that's the way it's played, whoever is the president. I understand, but before you go on to that, before you go on to that point, Alverda, Alverda, before you go on to that point, I want to try to get some reaction to this idea about this loss of discipline, this

disintegration perhaps of the African American community beginning at the end of legal segregation and the flight out of the black community of black businesses, black professionals, much of the black middle class that existed at the time. Where are we on that, Roger and Nikki? Where are we on that question? Well, since Alverda said I'd be unhappy with her, I don't disagree entirely. There were things in the black community that I enjoyed in Harlem when I was a kid and Detroit when I was in college that don't exist now. There was black baseball, which I loved, which doesn't exist anymore. No. And those are losses. There's no question about that. The question really is, are the gains, do the gains offset those losses? You do have black business people now, women and men.

I think many of them are more powerful and more significant players in the society than any of the small black business people who were permitted to have their businesses in a small domain. And I don't think that people wanted integration because they wanted to go to white people's clubs. You and I, Kenny, got to know each other working on one of the countries really great newspapers. And we changed that newspaper, the fact that we were there. We saw things that our white colleagues didn't see. We put those things in the newspaper. We made the entire society better, our own people, white people. A generation earlier, my father had been a journalist.

Smart guy, just as smart as you and me, could have had as broad an impact as you and I had, except he was a black guy who was limited to a black newspaper in Kansas City. And so smart as he was, able as he was, he didn't have the reach that you and I had. Now, I think that if you could bring my dad back here and ask him, what would you rather have? The life your kid had, the professional life your kid had or the professional life you had, he'd say there's no question. I'd rather have, I'd rather have the life that my son had. We had 1 -800 -989 -8255. We're going to the phones. We're going to Brian in Raleigh, North Carolina. Brian, are you with us? Yes, I am. Good evening. Good evening and welcome to PowerPoint. I appreciate it. I can't really help you. Yeah, man, go on. Go right ahead. Yeah, I guess I'm sort of outside the loop in the fact that I am a Caucasian, that going back to the earlier point about... You're still welcome. Yeah, well, I appreciate

that. Going back to the earlier point about who participates in the dialogue and whatnot. Yes. Of course, I mean, whoever's pulling the shots, who has the power, the media, what not, the fact that a dialogue has started at some level, at some discussion that can hopefully filter out. I do think it's a positive. And I'm 33 years old. Right now, I'm back at Duke Law. I went to Duke undergrad. And I grew up in the South East. You know, my grandfather used the N word and awful lot. My father's side of the family had a maiden. But when I grew up, you know, I was working summer jobs, working, you know, convenience store, fat two type things. Next to guys like Curtis Houston and Thomas Woods and Wilford Tudor and Elmer Prichett. And those guys taught me an awful lot. I mean, I probably learned more hanging out with those boys and playing ball and working than I ever did in the classroom. Brian, what do you expect is going to... You say you think the dialogue's a good idea? What do you hope it will achieve? Well, for me personally, educational integration, all right? I'm from privileged, you

know, white suburban, you know, upper middle class background. But for me, my eyes were open to the fact that a skin color may, how to put that, that I grew up with an appreciation and an understanding that skin color doesn't determine anything about how a person is. And for me, as a white southerner, I was a generation or two ago. I mean, I would have a different view. Now, you know, I had a civil procedure law professor this summer. He was a 30 -year -old black woman from Rockville, South Carolina. And I've got the utmost, all -high admiration, respect for her. So I guess what I'm saying is it will lead to an understanding and a dialogue and a mutual respect that I think is really lacking right now in America. I think there's a lot of hostility, a lot of animosity. And basically, I'm saying if you can get people to interact on the human level, it can't hurt. Now, people might walk away from the table more frustrated and upset. But, you know, you got to start opening the doors. Well, thank you very much, Brian. I hope that over time you'll visit

us once again and help us research some of these answers, some of these questions. We now go to Gerald in our Houston affiliate at KTSU. Gerald, are you with us? Yes, I am. Welcome so much to PowerPoint. How may we help you? Okay. I just want to give a little comment all about the question you asked. Okay. Who should be included? In the conference? In the discussion. Yes, the discussion. Okay. I think that, personally, I think that it should be black and white because we have been discriminated against so hard, but so long. And it has left a mark on our children, on us, and it hurts. When you see, you know, something that you can't do anything about, it hurts. Okay, this is an opportunity to bring us closer to one another, right? Okay, so what I think should happen

is we should be, okay, we should have this talk. And they should, you know, they should listen to some of the ideas that we have. Okay, like I said, we've been discriminated against so long. Okay, I look at, like Nikki was saying earlier, that all the other races, the third world and whatever the hitspannings have been discriminated against, that may be true to some extent, but I don't think it is as we have been, because we would only race brought over here against our wheel. We have been treated like dirt. I mean, dirt, okay. So, so I gather, then, that your basic point is. Let me, let me come in here for a second. Okay, okay. At the beginning, hi Houston, I love Houston. Tell everybody I said hello. Oh, okay. At the beginning, you heard Dr. Julia Hare. Oh, it wasn't me. Okay, okay. I heard that I was just talking about what's going on. Nikki said, call, it wasn't me. Call, but anyway, no problem. And Kenneth, I'm in Blacksburg. You're in Blacksburg, Virginia. I'm like, I tell tomorrow that if I let you say Richmond one more time. Well, I heard that. I want, I want to thank you for the correction. But Gerald,

before you go on to your next point, I want to try to get Roger and Nikki to address your larger point. What I think may be part of your larger point, but is the point of this dialogue, this discussion, to bring us closer together or, on the other hand, do we try to achieve some justice? Can I respond for a bit? Go right ahead. You know, not knowing, I mean, Roger is a historian here. I'm just a poet. But one of the things that nobody wants to be in, the poet or the ones who bring us truth is discriminating against somebody else. And that's what I don't like about the whole idea that somehow another, the American Indians are somehow another for that matter, gay people, white women, Hispanic, or whatever we can come up with. Somehow I know that they don't have a right to be a part of this dialogue, because what we end up being is the people at the door saying, not you. And that is a terrible position for black people to be in, because we know what it's like when they say the doors, man. This is not a black and white question, because of really essentially what Roger said. If white people disappear tomorrow, we still

have to get along with people. So why wouldn't we include them and whatever dialogue is going on right now? I like black people. If it's one thing I have presented maybe a little bit in this discussion is that people are calling in like, we don't have discipline. If we didn't have discipline, we would have been dead. If we didn't know what we were doing, we would have been dead. And I listen to that stupid blood on the fields and it made me so mad because, and I like Winton, but he had that line. He has the man saying, don't ask me for love. If men and women didn't love each other in slavery, we would not have existed. How can we look at the achievement? Because black people have achieved against all odds, the fact that we are, the fact that we raised our voice and song, the fact that we were the people who did the farming, we were the people who laid the bricks. We are a wonderful people. And we stand around and compare ourselves with these barbarians and all of a sudden we're like, oh my goodness, we didn't do anything. We did a lot. We have held ourselves together. And I think that as we open up our dialogue with a lot of other people, we begin to see the beauty and the total wonder that black people represent. Nobody on earth is like black Americans. I think

we're fantastic. And I don't say anybody can look at us and not say damn, that's a great people. And we did it without bombs, without bombers, we did it without killing people. We are the only people to have achieved on earth without a decent army. We're, hey, listen to the poet. Listen to the poet. We're at 1 -800 -989 -8255 -1 -800 -989 -8255. And we're going to the phones with Alfred in Jackson, Mississippi from Radio Station WJSU. Alfred, are you with us? I am with you. How are you doing? I'm doing fine. How can we help you today? Well, I just wanted Mike call and make several comments here. And I just been listening to the various one that has been made. One is concerning the calls about, well, the comments about who chose who to be on the panel. That thing, overall, what we want to do is get a dialogue established. I mean, because we can make the same premise of arguments here tonight, who

chose Mr. Giovanni and who chose Mr. Raw Wilkinson to represent the views. Roger Wilkins. Nice. The other point. But what do you think needs to be talked about? I think the thing that needs to be talked about is how, you know, we can go back and say, how do we get to the point where we are? But I think the call they call in and say that one thing that we need to do as a cultural people is sure that, make sure that we try to clean our own slate before we can even go forward. Because there are so many things within our community that need to be dealt with that I think does not have a racial connotation to them. And the other thing is, as a group of people, we have allowed the media and emotions to determine who our leaders are. Now, why Farrakhan may be articulate and he may express views that I think are both specific and yet not represent every particular cultural people here. I don't think that he, ever, overall, is the leader of the Black folks. And, you know, speaking from somebody here in Mississippi,

Sweatland of racism, I think that we need to allow the dialogue to take place. Now, there are going to be adjustments along the way so that if we are not being inclusive, at some point we could modify the panel so that we could be inclusive. But I think more importantly now, we just need to allow the dialogue to take place and try to figure out how do we get to this point. Thank you so much, Albert. Albert, thank you for your point. Roger and Nikki, I'm interested in whether or not this dialogue focuses almost exclusively on, in the words of Rodney King, can we all get along, however you define all? Or at some point do we get to talk about justice? I think part of the reality of race discussions and dialogue in America, one of the reasons it's so hard to have one is that the majority population doesn't want to talk about the damage that's been done because inevitably that leads you to talk about damages. So, at what

point do we bring justice and damages into this dialogue? Well, I think that the dialogue is here. I mean, we're part of the dialogue. We're sitting here talking about it tonight. I mean, we didn't ask Bill Clinton or John Hope Prankland if we could talk about it. You decide to have a program about it. This is the dialogue. You can't have a dialogue about race and not talk about justice because the issue of race in America is the issue of injustice in America. And while part of the dialogue has to be educational as the young man who is the student at Duke Law School said, and that's useful because there is so much of white America and other parts of

minority America that would deny all this damage that you're talking about. And they would say, well, we solve the racial problem in the 60s and we have a colorblind society and let's go on to the next thing. Let's go to Jack and cook stadium and enjoy ourselves. But we know that we aren't near justice. So, when the young man says he has been educated by his contact with black people or his contact with a black teacher, and this takes me back to that question about integration, you know, part of what integration has done, it has put white students in seats in front of Nikki Giovanni, you know? And has opened their heads, you understand? And white students in their seats in front of me? Yes. So, integration works in, it's not just about going to class. And by whole that thought, Roger, we're going to have to take a break, we'll be right back.

Welcome back to Power Point, I'm Kenneth Walker and I'm joined by Roger Wilkins and Nikki

Giovanni. I want to go quickly to the phones. Our number here is 1 -800 -989 -8255 and we're going to Aaron at Atlanta's WCLK. Aaron, are you with us? I am. Welcome. What's your point tonight? Well, you have the question, what gives me hope and who should be included? I just left the Mississippi Delta Blues Festival. And to my, I didn't know what to expect when I was there. I liked Blues, but I didn't know what kind of crowd to expect. And I was surprised that it was 60 to 40 % young white people there. And their looseness, their well -aid to a step through music, they're all just, and people who were there just getting along and how that was. That really gave me hope that the young whites are, like they heard the gentleman from Duke was talking. They think they are getting ready to accept a real dialogue and communication. And I just saw that communication exposing through that long night session of Blues down the Mississippi Delta, which was very surprising to me. And I just wanted to make that comment to you. I want to thank you for sharing that with us, Aaron. This is the whole idea of popular

culture that Aaron raises. I think Cornel West makes the point that he thinks there is an African -Americanization of popular culture and the youth. Well, look at rap, sure. Who listens to who buys most of the rap records? Young white. And I think it's fantastic, because I like the young rappers. And it broke my heart that Tupac Shakur was assassinated. And I hated to see Biggie shot down like that. And I know when any change these things happen, I know a lot of it's about money, and I know nobody. And any kind of responsible position is going to look for it, which is why I think we need a better police force. I think murder should be a federal crime. I think it's time that we stop this sort of theory that the states can handle it, because the states are in too many cases prejudice. And in too many cases uninterested in following up. If I were Tupac's mother or Biggie's wife, I think I would be very upset right now, just that nobody seems to care to those two young men have been killed. But when you look at popular culture, you don't see young black boys running around with crew cut hair and bow ties, trying to be

polite. You see white boys, you know, and Biggie Boppen, of course, they all shave in their heads. And I like Michael. Biggie Boppen down the street, listening to rap music. Blacks have always controlled the culture. And that's what I've loved about. I teach the Harlem Renaissance Project. And one of the things we talk about so much is that we won that one. Because the sound and the look of America is black America. I love it. So this sound and look of America is an integral part of this dialogue, I gather. Well, I mean, so you have to give an all fairness to everybody. And I'm a woman. And I understand what women go through. But black men are a wonder. Because I don't know anybody else that could have held themselves as well as they do under the kind of pressure that they have. So you have to kind of give them credit and inspire all of them that they can come out with something. Biggie Boppen Boppen. I was doing Charlie Parker that day. Despite it all. And we recognized that Bird had a lot of pain. But despite that, that he could put that pain in a saxophone and play between the notes, you can't beat it. But you know, you can't. To

talk about the popular culture, you cannot imagine the Beatles without black music. There could not have been an Elvis Presley without the Mississippi Blues. We've got to go to the phones. We're going to Melvin at Baltimore's WEAA. Melvin, are you there? Yes, I am. Thank you very much. Welcome to PowerPoint. Thank you, Mr. Wilkins. I respect you very much. And Mr. Giovanni, I've always loved you. Thank you. My question is, especially in terms of talking musically right now, haven't the whites always accepted us musically even though they didn't want to be a part of us. And the other comment that I have to make is basically one of economics. If we're not sitting down talking about the money, then I personally believe that we're wasting our time. What do you mean by that? Well, talking about the money. The economic situation. We look at the downsizing in this country. We look at the situation where Black unemployment is at an all -time high. And essentially, if you look at the

times with Mr. Wilkins being a historian, looking at where we were 10 years ago and looking at where we are now, I would have to say we're going backwards. Thanks. Thank you so much, Melvin, for that observation. His larger point about the economic base, political power, all kinds of power in this country is always proceeded, it seems to me, from economic power. No question. Well, then in the absence of that power, what possible hope can African -Americans have of achieving any kind of social or political power in the United States? Well, a few minutes ago, you asked about whether this dialogue can lead to justice. It seems to me if the dialogue does not and with a larger national commitment to full employment, then it's been a waste of time. The young man is right that our unemployment level is very high, has been high for the last quarter of the century. And as long as that is the case, there will be terrible destruction in our community. The second part of that point, however, is

that some African -Americans are prospering in this economy. You got a whole new class of black millionaires who we didn't have a generation ago. Now, their athletes, they are not politically attuned people. And somehow or another, those people have to be politicized. But there are other people who are making money and you're beginning to see them behave in astute political ways. So we're seeing a beginning that we didn't have years ago. Regina in Houston, Texas from KTSU, welcome to PowerPoint. Thank you. I have a question. My question is, I want to say hi to Nick Giovanni and to Roger Wilkins. Hi, how you doing? Fine. Nick, I just want to mention I read your book, Poetic Equation, and Margaret Walker, many, many years ago. Yes, indeed. I'm from the Mississippi Delta. OK. I went to school this day, Louis.

OK. And I've been living in Houston for about 11 years. My question is to both of you, what are your expectations after the dialogue? What do you expect to happen after the dialogue? The dialogue will be continuous. I hope that it won't just be a question of, let's have a dialogue on race. Oh, yeah, we talked about that last year. It is a continuum. And as I was trying to say earlier, I think we as black Americans have a responsibility, if I may acosmic responsibility. I'm a Christian. And I think of whatever it is that makes sense out of whatever reason God let us be here, it's to continue a dialogue, not just with white people, because they've wronged us, but also with the possibility of continuing to do some good. We have to keep reaching out, too. And it's one thing that I like about the South is that in the South, everybody always had enough to share. Right now, people they called in for Mississippi, people they called in from Mobile, Alabama. It's Sunday. Today, after church, somebody took a plate to somebody that didn't have enough to eat. I think that that's good. And that's what this dialogue represents. It doesn't say we took a plate

last Sunday. We have to take a plate every Sunday to the sick and the shut -in, to the people that don't have anything. And I like that about black people, because we've never had so little that we couldn't share. And that's the attitude that has to keep coming out of this dialogue. Roger? Mr. Wilkins? Yeah, I think that the dialogue is not a discrete thing, but we need a renewed commitment to struggle. We need leaders who are serious about leading black people instead of being there. Some people who just want to be celebrities and are not serious people. I think we're going to have to leave it there, because we're running out of time. I really want to thank you, Roger Wilkins and you, Nikki Giovanni, for participating with us tonight. You're welcome. Tonight, on PowerPoint, we've opened a national dialogue on race, and next week we'll look at solutions when PowerPoint looks at racial healing. Giving credit where it's due, the award -winning makers of PowerPoint are executive producer Reggie

Hicks, show director and senior producer Tony Regusters, program producer Dottie Green, news presenter Verna Avery Brown, associate producers Debbie Williams and Tom Woodward, technical director Steve Brown, PowerPoint's marketing coordinator is Candy Capel. Legal services provided by Theodore Brown, special thanks to National Public Radio and the Washington Bureau of Pacificas Network News. PowerPoint's announcer is Candy Shannon. Our theme music is from the CD F -STOPs by Craig Harris. For PowerPoint, I'm Kenneth Walker. PowerPoint is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Radio Program Fund. This is PowerPoint, a production of Hicks and Associates. Music Production and broadcast of

PowerPoint is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Music This is PowerPoint, an information -age clearinghouse for issues affecting the African -American community, the nation and the world. And now, PowerPoint's Kenneth Walker. President Clinton's called for a national dialogue on race, an idea that cannot be allowed to fall between the cracks. Tonight, during PowerPoint's premier show, we're having our own dialogue on race and race relations, our special guests, Tom Wicker, former New York Times columnists, Angela O., a member of the President's Advisory Commission on Race and Dr. Yvonne Scruggs -Leftwich, executive director of the Black Leadership Forum, and, of course, with

you, members of our listening community. Our conversation begins right after this. Music Welcome to the premier edition of PowerPoint. Tonight, PowerPoint accepts President Clinton's challenge

for an honest dialogue on race, with a lot of help from you, our community of listeners, and special guests, by phone from South Carolina, journalist and college professor, Tom Wicker, formerly a national affairs columnist for the New York Times, by phone from Los Angeles, Angela O., a member of the President's Advisory Commission for the Initiative on Race, and Dr. Yvonne Scruggs -Leftwich, executive director of the Black Leadership Forum, here with me in Washington. We'll ask questions and seek solutions to one of America's ancient and perennial problems. Race relations. For our listeners, our number here is 1 -800 -989 -8255. Everyone, welcome. Dr. Scruggs, as the executive director of the Black Leadership Forum, you've called even before the President did for more dialogue on race. What do you expect this dialogue will achieve?

Well, I think that there are some real distances between reality and perception for many people, and that certainly includes African -Americans, but, assuredly, it includes whites, and Hispanics, and Asian -Americans, about the circumstance and conditions in which we all exist. There have been some polls recently, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, did a poll, which it announced in July, and just before that, the Gallup poll, announced their findings, and they were both consistent in their determination that Americans know very little about each other. There are discrepancies in the number of Americans, who are Black Americans, and a number of White Americans, and Asians, and so forth. But even more importantly, there is a lack of familiarity

with the achievements of African -Americans. There is a lack of familiarity with exactly who represents the downtrodden in America, very consistently. The face of welfare is Black, and welfare, the face of welfare, indeed, is not Black. And I think all of these kinds of misperceptions are exacerbating the relationships between blacks and whites, and between and among the races. And while we're talking, I was listening to the earlier segment, and I really have to, at the very beginning, associate myself with the feeling that the core issue is between blacks and whites. There is also issue involving Asians, Hispanics, et cetera, and they all are disadvantaged because the basic issue between

blacks and whites remains unresolved. That brings me to Angela O, an Asian -American attorney from Los Angeles, who is a member of the President's Advisory Commission for an initiative on race. Miss, oh, are you with us? Good evening, everyone. I don't know who I'm on with. You're on with Kenneth Walker, myself. Dr. Scrugg's left -witch, who is the executive director of the Black Leadership Forum, and former New York Times columnist, Tom Wicker. All right, good evening, everyone. How are you? I'm fine, thanks. Glad to have you with us. When, at the first hearing of the Advisory Commission, you attempted to suggest that the commission needed to move the dialogue beyond the black -white paradigm. I think is how you refer to it. Yet others, including the Chairman, John Hope Franklin, thought that that was not the way to go. I think Dr. Franklin said this

country cut its IT on racism with black -white relations. First of all, where is that dynamic within the Advisory Commission now? Well, you know, this was... That was a good object lesson in how inadequate our language around race relations is. Because, in fact, I did not, in any way, intend to suggest, or even in any way, intonate that the black -white chasm is no longer significant. It certainly is. And actually, Professor Hope Franklin, and I think are very much on the same page. I was rather surprised, I guess, to see the way in which the media responded to what I had to say. I guess what I more accurately needed to say is that we need to take this opportunity to extend the paradigm. But I have no quarrel with their continuing to be an emphasis and a focus on what occurred without African Americans in this country.

Okay, but how do you then begin to fold into this discussion? This new and growing reality in the United States of growing numbers of Hispanic and Asian -Americans and others? How does that then, in your opinion, become part of the structure of this debate? Well, first of all, when you ask how do we begin to include the experiences of Asians and Hispanics in this nation, you got to begin with making a commitment to gathering some basic information and data about which we have only begun to do, and share it with the rest of the country. It happens that I live in Los Angeles, a place where there is a new majority, shall I say. And it is composed of people of color, not just blacks. In fact, the demographic

trends suggest that the African -American population is declining, and there's a very dramatic Latino or Hispanic population increase. I'm told that our next board meeting we will begin our discussion with looking at the composition of this nation, where we are today, and where we're headed in the next 20 years. Tom Wicker, are you with us? Yes, I am. Welcome. It's a pleasure to have you here, Tom. In your astonishing book, Racial Integration in America, Tragic Failure, you don't seem to be calling for a lot of dialogue at all. You're calling for a direct action. In fact, some rather radical direct action by African -Americans. What do you think of this dialogue in the light of your recommendations in your book? Well, I don't think it will go very far. It can't help but be useful if people say what they think more frankly and

learn what other people think more frankly. But I don't think dialogue really is going to settle the problem. I don't think anything is going to settle the problem only time and the passage of time and step by step. I think one thing you used in your introduction to this program or to this segment of the program, you spoke of a solution. I don't really think there is one. I mean, the word solution tends to make us think that, you know, if Congress had just passed the right law or the President would follow the right policy or both, the thing would be solved. I don't think that so long is in the Congress and policies by presidents and so forth and governors and state legislators are important, of course. But they're incremental and somewhere along the line, maybe we begin to pass a point where there's less suspicion and hostility between the races. But I don't think that's going to come back anytime soon. Well, talk a little just if you will, Tom. And first of all, I want to invite both Miss O and Miss Kruggs left to it to

not feel that they have to wait for questions here in this dialogue and this conversation. Let's have a real conversation and when you want to jump in, feel free. But I do want to hear from Tom Wicker about some of the radical solutions that he's recommending in tragic failure. For example, he recommends that African Americans start an independent third party. Talk a little bit about that, Tom. Will you? Well, I'm not sure how radical it is. I'm not protesting the word. He's radical in a sense of being a sharp change. Yes. How radical it might be in ideological terms, I don't know. And a lot of people have suggested to me that, well, you know, third parties in America are always losers. And that has been historically true. And I don't suggest for one moment that African Americans could take the lead in forming a third party and even if Hispanics and Asian Americans and poor whites join in. I'm not suggesting necessarily that they collect the prelude or majority in Congress or anything of the sort. But I'm taking peculiar enough for, ironically enough, perhaps I say. I'm

taking a page out of George Wallace's book. The George Wallace Third Party campaign in 1968, though it certainly didn't win. I believe Wallace in the final analysis got 13 % of the vote. That campaign in my judgment really changed the tenor of politics in America. It really almost brought to an end the policy of the Democrats to support integration to support very strong civil rights policies. The Republicans have ever since been angling for the white middle class vote. The Democrats are now the Me Too Party after 1996, angling for the white middle class vote. And so what I'm saying is that if blacks took and minorities in general took matters into their own hands, did not in the longer support the Democrats or the Republicans, that very quickly in my judgment in particular the Democrats would come knocking on their doors and try to win those votes back. And if they would try to win those votes back, the only way they could do it would be to begin or to return to policies of use to poor people,

to minority groups, policies that move towards those segments of our population rather than towards the white middle class. And in that case, then we might begin to get the kind of incremental action that I spoke about. Well, Tom Wicker, it's Ivonne Scrugg's left which, and I have agreed with you frequently when you were writing, and I certainly agree with your premise now. But I think one of the things that's missing is an understanding that the political process isn't always about winning the office. The political process is about, in part, influencing the balance of power and I fully agree and have said this also, that until African -Americans and people of color are willing to build coalitions and to create real choices in politics, we're not going to get anybody paying attention to our issues. That's one summary. The other is that we tend to think of

politics at the national level. I don't know why. Nobody lives at the national level. We all live in our communities. But the paradigm for analysis is national politics. And in fact, there's a lot going on at the local level where a third party would be quite influential. Now, of course, you know that the established parties have gone out of their way to make sure that third parties have a very high barrier to climb over in order to get... I mean, there are all kinds of new rules and that sort of thing. But still, in spite of that, the obstacles couldn't possibly be any higher than they are for some kinds of understanding and attention to issues, particularly those that are important to Black Americans. We're at 1 -800 -989 -8255. Call in and join in with this discussion. There's a lively discussion that involves Dr. Yvonne Scruggs, left which the executive director of the Black Leadership Forum, former New York Times columnist

Tom Wicker, and Angela O, an Asian American attorney who is on the President's Advisory Commission on the initiative on race. Miss O, let me try to bring you into this. Both Tom and Yvonne here are starting to talk about coalition building and how it's necessary for people of color and poor whites to begin to cooperate toward policy solutions and political solutions in this country. First of all, what's your view on that? And do you see any of that kind of thing going on, both either in LA or elsewhere around the country? Well, I'm a very local, sort of locally -based person. I think my value on this advisory board stands from the fact that the community out here is so extraordinarily diverse. Not just in terms of, yes, we have a few people from different groups here. We have significant numbers of many different groups in the Los Angeles

Unified School District, for example. There are over 84. This is one school district officially recognized languages with which there has been some planning and strategizing around how we begin to accommodate bringing these kids into our education system. I'm a very strong believer in coalitions. I am also a very strong believer in working locally that you have to build the infrastructure in your community. And so here in Los Angeles, yes, we have several examples of successful collaborations. Unfortunately, the media does not take this stuff up. Instead, focus is on the strife or the tragedy that occurs. We have programs involving youth. We have programs involving community build and infrastructure efforts. We have programs that are directed at developing human relations strategies that allow for conflict management at a neighborhood level, at a community

level, and even interfacing with local politicians. We are working with corporate. Here in Los Angeles, there are some very enlightened corporations that are interested in reaching markets that they know are yet untapped. And they have the opportunity to work with organizations that have already developed sort of strategic alliances here. You know, when I came back from that meeting last July, a group called the Multicultural Collaborative can be in the meeting immediately. Because people saw the reaction. They came to my one statement about moving beyond. And I guess, again, I think that the way in which I put it was partly at fault for the misinterpretation. But the MCC convened a meeting. And they said, you know, if five or ten people show up, cool. If not, you know, we'll talk with whoever's there. Well, 25 people showed up.

And they were from all different communities. They were ranging from social services types to advocacy groups, to employment assistance groups, to citizenship groups. And basically one person chimed in and said, you know what? If we had a video camera in this room right now, this visual of who is sitting at this table could be captured. And Angela, you could take this back to D .C. We're in the East and in the South. It does appear that there is no understanding that there are other populations, significant populations, that are starting to change the shape of community. And they would get it, you know. They would begin to see. Our listeners should know, for those for whom this issue is important, that our panel here, including Dr. Skrag's Left Witch, Tom Dwicker, and Angela O, includes an African -American woman, Dr. Skrag's Left Witch,

a Caucasian -American male, from the South, Tom Dwicker, and an Asian -American woman. Angela, oh, we're going to go to calls now. We're going to go to Halima out of Baltimore's WEAAFM. Halima, welcome to PowerPoint. Yes. Good evening. How are you? I'm fine. All of you. Please forgive me. I'm not very good with names. But I'd like to make three points if I could. I'm hopefully official to everyone. First of all, I would like to say that for one, the writer, and I don't remember his name, but he said there's not a cure for this disease, which we have so much of a problem with, and the upbringing of our children, let alone us as adults, that are still fighting with the struggle of slavery. Slavery has a great denomination of many different nationalities that have been in slavery in many different forms, and that's to say that. We need to get to your second and third points pretty quickly,

Halima, so that we can take some other calls, but could you move to those? And that also with the history, we can go back to the history of when one was saying something about being barbaric. That 95 % of the slavery people were Muslims, and I'm saying that to say that they learned a whole lot, meaning the right man, if you want to bring him to that understanding, that he learned a whole lot in our ancestry tribes. And he may have been more attracted to the entertainment opposed to the education, which in some instance has been inferior to them as far as the upbringing of how the children were disciplined and reared up to keep from fornication and adultery and things of that nature. And... Halima, before you go on to that point, let me

try to get some of our guests into the comment on some of what you said. Dr. Scrugg's left -witch, for example, the damage that our caller indicated that slavery has done. How do we, in the course of this national dialogue, in the course of the advisory commission that Ms. O is a member of, deal with this damage, and if we deal with that, how do we deal with damages? Yeah, well, that's a very complicated question, but I think at the core of it is something that's been bothering me as we've been talking here, and Angela O mentioned it, and I've been thinking about it all along. And it is that the one missing ingredient in this commission that will begin to make a difference or that has some responsibility is the media. You know, there's nobody on that commission representing organized media, and she's talking about how she was misinterpreted. We are talking now about the damages of slavery which have to do with a communication problem and the

process by which this information is shared and understood from the corner commission. There's a clear understanding that a lot of the misperceptions about races and about racial relations, about who gets along with whom, and who sits in the room together and talks constructively. A lot of that has to do with what the media is not willing to report. So I really want to emphasize that because... And I want to be... Exactly. I thought that... We keep talking about what we're going to do in this dialogue and what we're going to do with this initiative, but if the media still goes out and takes pictures on Saturday night of Black youth being arrested or misrepresent a perfectly logical intervention by a member of the commission, we're going to end up further behind the eight ball than we started. Tom Wicker, you've spent a lifetime for some people in the media. You deal with many of

the transgressions of the media in your book. What chance does any dialogue have, given the stereotypical generalities indulged in? Yeah, well not very much in my judgment. I've spent or missed spent a lifetime in the press and I don't want to be either a critic or a defender of the press, but I think to the extent that Ms. O. or anyone in her position or in a political position is relying on the press to make the case here, they're leaning on a very weak read because the press in America is not an intellectual press. It has its virtues, it has its faults. She spoke quite critically and I understand why about pictures of Black men being arrested for crimes, that sort of thing. The problem is the press is very good at that kind of thing. That is what happened yesterday and what happened last night. What is happening now? Action events reporting on that. It's not very good and there has been very good at taking a longer analytical intellectual look at

situations because that's not what it's set up to do. You can argue until the cows come home that it ought to do that. But what it's actually set up to do is to report the news what's happening now and that's what it does and what those guys are trained to do and what they're good at. So I think that if we're going to rely on the press and I personally don't, then we're not going to get very poor here. I agree with you. I'm not suggesting that we rely on them or that we be dependent upon their reportage of the process of racial reconciliation. I'm just saying we've got to hold them accountable and we've got to figure out a way to stop them from stereotyping relationships since they are, in fact, the most immediate and proximate distributor of information we've got to do. No, no, this isn't it. But you say we've got to figure out a way to stop them and you're not going to be able to do that. You can go to a television station manager now and say, or a news manager at a television station and say, well on earth, are you putting so much emphasis on crime? And he'll say, well, because the public wants it. And you might well say, well,

maybe they want it because you're putting so much emphasis on it. It's a vicious circle. Mr. Wicker, that was not Angela. That was Dr. Avon Scrugg's time. But I'm sorry. going to be into this conversation a little bit because you're going to pick up the voices. I'm sure Matt is more devious. Yours is definitely more deceptifiable. Let me pick up with the idea that I threw out there about the media because I want to say that I accept that the media has a business aspect to it. Those are the reporters that have to look for a story to print day in and day out. But there are some of the writing members of the media. And when you ask what comes out of this dialogue, I for one has had an extraordinary two months or so having requests from all corners of business, education, community, politics, locally, asking

for my participation in dialogues that were set long before the announcement that the president had an initiative on race in mind in which dialogue was one component. And it is only one of three components in this initiative. I sort of accept that the media will do what it will do in various parts of the country in different ways, depending on what aspect of the media one is involved in. But there are some what I call enlightened members of the media who really want to dig deeper and who want to serve as channels through which are meaningful exchange and deeper understanding around a very critical challenge for us. And that is racial reconciliation. Oh, certainly they're of their enlightened members. Trying to do their best. But what I'm trying to say is that the press in general is not a very good instrument for the commission or any group to carry this debate to the general public. I don't think so. I think we need to though

hold them accountable by calling them. I'm being held accountable. I'm being held accountable by the clock. If you two guys can just hold that point, we need to take a break, we'll be right back. Internet services for PowerPoint are provided by World African Network, providing news, entertainment, and information for people of color. You can access World African Network at www .WorldAfricannet .com. PowerPoint is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Radio Program Fund. www .WorldAfricannet .com

I'm very fond of saying, you know, y 'all change your name about every 11 and a half years. And white people get very confused and don't know what they call us. So in the discussion, you know, when I was born, 1936, so my birth certificate is colored. By the time I got to high school, I was a Negro. When I went to fifth university, I was for a moment in Afro -American. I came up here to Howard, I got black. By the time I got back to Florida and Em University, I was an African -American. So the easiest way for all the white people that may be listening, if you don't want to offend any of us born in this century, is just say you black Afro Negro color people, so you can get it all out, and we'll be done.

Welcome back to PowerPoint. I'm Kenneth Walker. That was Congressman Al C. Hastings at the recent Congressional Black Caucus Town Hall meeting that you heard there on tape. Once again, in our discussion on race and race relations, we have Dr. Yvonne Scruggs, left which was the executive director of the National Black Leadership Forum, Ms. Angela O, who is a member of the President's Advisory Commission on Race and former New York Times columnist, Tom Wicker, who has written a fascinating book called Irracial Integration in America, a tragic failure. Oh, you mentioned that this dialogue was only one of three parts of this initiative. Could you quickly just bring us up to date on what the other two are? Oh, certainly. We approached this initiative with sort of three prongs, one being the dialogue, another being the study, thoughtful engagement in gathering information that we know is out there and is available to the nation and presenting it. And then the third is action. What

kinds of steps can be taken that are realistic and that are appropriate for federal action? Well, yes, I think those are very important points and that really sort of leads me to comment on an observation Tom Wicker made earlier, which had to do with his pessimism about which of the various strategies might be effective and my inclination is to say to him all of the above, because a problem is intractable and as enduring as racism certainly is going to require all of the resources intellectual, social and economic resources that we can muster. And it isn't going to respond to any single approach or strategy. It just won't. It seems to me and I've shared this with Judith Winston who is the executive director of the Committee of the Initiative who is a very bright lawyer, African American woman who

has been committed to this kind of work for many years that I think we need to do four things and that is not instead of the three, but there are four things that can happen nationally. I think we do have to talk. And the caller who earlier said that we didn't need to talk. We just need to, and then he began to describe all these things that need to be done that you can't do without talking. We've got to talk. We've got to express our feelings and we've got to know where people are in this relationship. And then we've got to enforce existing laws. You know, I'm amazed at the extent to which people in general, not the commission, I know the commission is addressed as, but people in general are not aware that there are still in spite of the assaults on affirmative action. Some very effective laws on the book that have to do with the way that people of color, particularly African Americans, but all people of color are treated by others. And those laws have to be enforced. And that is a responsibility of the justice department. It really does mean

getting out and looking at the issues of redistricting. It means looking at this increased amount of police brutality. It means looking at discrepancies like sentencing for crack cocaine and powdered cocaine, for example. There's a whole panoply of actions at the justice department. Well, there is it. What? Can I just finish the other two points? The other is data and Angela O mentioned it. I think that it's very important that people be reading from the same page and the criminal and not just in intellectual circles. We've got to find ways of popularizing these facts and these data, so that people can read and can understand. And finally, we've got to share what is going on already across this country, so hamlets and towns and cities, bringing people together in ways that can be replicated and are effective. Tom. I may add there, not just talk, but something that I mentioned previously

is that we also need to listen to each other and learn. Because this is where the growth will come from. And this is where we can make some progress. And as I look around the table at who the other advisory board members are, I see that these are people all of whom possess tremendous ability in that area. They're good. They're articulate. They're thoughtful. But they're also really incredible listeners, because they wouldn't have been able to accomplish what they have been able to accomplish in their lives without that skill. Tom, Tom, to what extent does this advisory commission have to get beyond mere dialogue, is for the sake of dialogue and discuss practical issues of justice? Or I think it's been said that one of the reasons it's difficult in this country to have an honest discussion on races, because if you talk about, start talking about the damage that's been done to people, you have to get to damages. To what

extent is the commission really obligated to tackle with this issue of justice? Well, I think it's obligated to do that along with all the other good things that we've been, that's been said here, that it should do, and that we need to do. But I think that we've talked long enough in this country about the things that we should do and the things that we ought to do. And we ought to begin to try to force some action on it, because I should think that if you took, say, the mid -60s when the major civil rights bills were passed and the courts were clearly on the side of the civil rights movement and the government wasn't, if you take that, it's a starting point with 30 years' own, and there hasn't been much action in between, and I don't think there's going to be. For example, you take the commission that we're talking about here, and I am in turn 100 % behind its work, and I think it will do good work. John Hope Franklin is one of the great Americans in my experience, and he's chairman, I think. So I think it's going to do good

work. I'm all for it. I just think that in the long run, he's going to be like so much other good work, it's going to go down the drain without action. And one of the things that's needed here, one of the voices that's missing, is the single most powerful voice in America, one that the press will pay attention to, is the voice of the president, and it's the voice from what Theodore Roosevelt had to call the bullet pulpit, and it is missing. It is absolutely missing. Calling for a commission to discuss things is not the same thing, as the president himself taking a lead. And I think he could do a great deal if he would. We are assured by people who know him far better than I will. We are assured that his heart is really in the cause, really poor black people, but his heart is also in getting reelected. Well, Tom, it sounds like good. I don't think he's as long as he is the head of the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party is trying to win back quite middle -class food, which he does not carry since the days of London Johnson. He is trying to win back the white middle -class food. Bill Clinton is not going to be speaking from the bullet pulpit about the things we are speaking about here tonight. Tom, it sounds like you're saying what John Hope Franklin

said publicly, which is that the president needs to take these speeches on race that he likes to make and make them in front of white audiences. And he needs to make them repeatedly. He needs to get to the point. He spoke on this subject in Memphis in 1963. I think it was 93 hours before. And he laid out the need that is really the most imperative. It seems to me on this whole subject that is the need for putting jobs, jobs in the hands of what is called the underclass in the inner city. He spoke, he mentioned that three times. That's what we need, but he didn't say one thing about what we are going to do that. How to do it? Or what lead I'm going to take? Or what lead the government is going to take? Absolutely. We are going to get that. Then we're going to have a lot of talk and we're not going to have much action. We're going to go to the calls now. We're going to go into Carl and Fayetteville, North Carolina with W -I -S -S Carl. Welcome W -F -S -S. I'm sorry. Welcome to PowerPoint, Carl. Hello. Thank you. I appreciate you taking my call. And I just wanted to make

two points quickly. And one of them was, I really don't understand, have a lot of confidence or put a lot of stock in a national dialogue on race. Because traditionally, minorities have seen change by using the majority's agenda to progress the minority call. Such as in the Civil War, the majority's agenda to keep the states together was an opportunity for the minorities to gain freedom. Such as in the Alabama boycott of the buses was the majority's agenda to make money was a catalyst and us writing anywhere we want to on the bus. And a great good point that Angela O -Made was that major corporations desire to strategically reach markets that they haven't touched. And so they're coming to the table. They're agendas to make money. And it's an opportunity for the minority to use that to further or progress our call. The second point that I wanted to make. Hold on, before you move on to that point, sir, we really do need to get someone to one of our

guests to respond to your larger point about these opportunities, the corporate search for dollars in our communities present. I think Angela O -Made was talking about some of that earlier in Los Angeles. Yeah, well listen, I don't see this as a majority of observation. I think that my concern is with equity and justice by any means possible. And I think that if there are motives that cause the corporate community to value diversity and hire black folks and other people of color, so buy more power to them. I want the equity, I want the access, and I want the glass ceiling to crack. And if we have a shared benefit from such behavior, that is the whole point. We've been trying to make that point for 200 years. The black people have contributed significantly to this culture and we've all shared in those benefits and we need to do that more effectively so that we can move to the next plateau and we

don't have these barriers still between whites and others. We're going to Donald out of Baltimore with W -E -A -A -F -M. Welcome to PowerPoint, Donald. Good evening, everyone. I was listening, I believe, to Miss Oha, one of the other sisters talking and was talking about the, with the dialogue as far as discussing race in this country. She was talking, one of them had mentioned the thing of beyond the dialogue they will look at the historical documentation and research. I think that the record is very clear. It would be, I found that kind of strange that you would have a dialogue without bringing up the research and evidence first. I think the record is clear what is happening in this country and what have happened to this country because black folks have lived it for 500 years. And I think that it is a waste of time for a dialogue unless the president has another agenda, a hidden agenda in place of bringing this topic in

discussion up. Maybe is it that they wish to hold black people a little quiet for a little while while they do something else with black folks? We see that. Let's get somebody to comment on it. One of the things I'm sure Angela wants to comment, but let me just say one of the things that I want. Let Angela take the lead on this and then you come right behind her on that. Angela, go ahead, go ahead ahead. Let me begin by being clear about what the study component here is. Here we are in 1997, close to 1998. We're on the cusp of the new millennium. When we talk about the study, it's not historical study necessarily. We're engaged in, I guess what I call an auditioning process. You know, it's where we go from here. Where are we going to go in the next millennium? Now, the study part I agree with the college that staff is really best equipped to set up the process by which information will be taken in. They are there to synthesize that information and to present it in a way that is

meaningful for us in our particular task here. But when I talk about study, I don't mean historical analysis. I mean, you're right. There's a lot already out there. We know a lot already. It's been on the backs of people for 500 years. African Americans, for the most part, but others as well. And what we are engaged in doing at this point in time is visioning the future. And when you sort of lay it at the doorstep of a Bill Clinton, I just think that he's not enough. He alone is not the answer. Even the President's best intentions can't affect real change without the rest of us. Well, you know, Miss Oh, let me put the question to you directly that I've been trying to raise with some of the others throughout this discussion. And that is, how can the advisory commission in any discussion of the damage that's been done to African Americans and the damage that continues to be done by discrimination and racism in this country

without discussing damages? Thank you. I wish you'd explain that. You've asked that question. You've asked me several times. I don't understand what you mean. I mean, how do you, uh, is justice? Is there some compensation? Some, some, some, some immigration? Some reparations? Right. Or for, for, for the, uh, is, is that any, is, or is people have come up with all kinds of proposals? Anything from an urban marsher plan to no taxes for the descendants of African slaves to, to something like the 40 acres at a mule. And my basic question is in terms of compensation or assistance or amelioration, what does the, how does the commission deal with that issue? Well, I take it as a practical political matter. If you're expecting any of those things to happen in this country, let's say, uh, within the next century or so, uh, you're, you're way out in a limb. It's not gonna happen. Why Tom? In the case of Asian Americans, Japanese Americans to be, to, to be

exact, just 25 years or so ago, this country compensated them for the internment during, uh, World War II. Now, the principle has been well established. The principle has been well established, but if you think, for one moment, as a practical political matter, I'm not talking about morality or any of the sort. At this country, he's gonna pay anybody, reparations for slavery a century ago. You, you, you're not talking practical politics. But you see, but one of, that's one of the problems. And while I probably, as a practical matter, uh, agree that any kind of substantive payment isn't gonna happen, the very reason that I agree with that is, if what is at the core of the problems between blacks and whites in this country. If there is such, uh, and, uh, in, in, in trench determination, not to recognize that there can be a translation of the, the pain and suffering of slavery into some kind of, uh, recompense, some kind of, of palpable, uh, reparations.

If that isn't in trench, uh, position, then you're probably right, Tom. When you, when you spoke at the beginning, saying, you know, all of this is so much down a black hole because that mindset is what drives racism. Well, I think that's right. And I think when you, uh, when you, when you put it that way, uh, you're, you're expressing the truth here, which is why it's so much beyond, the problem is so much beyond, it seems to me, dialogue, not to dialogue is not an essential part of it. But, you know, uh, someone spoke a moment ago about the millennium, the coming millennium and so forth. Well, you know, the Census Bureau has told us a lot about that. That by, uh, the year 2050, and believe me, if you're my age, you know, that's not very far off. By the year 2050, this country, uh, what we now call minority groups, taking all together, are going to be very close to a majority. And when I say very close, I mean like 14, 49%, very close to a majority. Well, now that that offers tremendous political opportunity, but it also offers

tremendous political difficulty because we know whatever may be, uh, the manifestations here that we know that what we call minority groups have not always got along well together and have not always worked well together. Uh, the first, uh, black state governor in this country would have been in California. Had the Hispanics, uh, supported a black candidate as much as, uh, as they, as they might have, or they should have not blaming them. I'm just saying statistically, that's a fact. So one of the things that could happen in the next half century, which is not very far off. One of the things that could happen is a combination of minority groups to exert, to exert tremendous political power. But one of the great difficulties in getting that to happen is to get minority groups to work together, not to mention, uh, poor whites. And that will be extremely difficult. And I don't think there's any point in having the dialogue in which we suggest that somehow that's going to be easy because it's not. We're going to the phones. We've got Pam and Montgomery, Alabama from our station, WVAS. Pam, welcome to PowerPoint. Oh, good

evening. How are you? Fine. Um, I would just like to make the statement that as far as the dialogue that everyone is talking about, I believe that is a waste of time. Why? Um, simply because over the period of time since, um, this country was founded strategically and, well, systematically, um, the powers that be have already structured the armed forces that were to take place is not like they don't know what they're doing. And it's not like they don't understand, um, anything about what they have done. Um, I think it's a waste of time that we have to constantly keep telling them how we feel. I believe that our time should be consumed as far as healing ourselves as a nation. And also, um, what we need to be busy about is economics and politics. And what I mean by that is that, um, the best way to get people's attention is to hit them in a pocket. Now, if we were to take our money, that whole,

whole that thought just a moment, Pam, because I think it leads me to, to form a, formulate a question for, uh, for a Miss O as a member of the, uh, commission in terms of how broad or inclusive is this debate going to be? This, uh, our caller Pam from, uh, Montgomery is talking about issues like economic and economics and turning inward that are champion, for example, by Minister Lewis Farcon. Who many people believe is the most popular individual in the African American community. And I'm wondering if people like that is their room for people like that in this discussion. I would say it's imperative that people like that be involved. And I want to get back to your first question, which opposed to me. Go right ahead. If they had a chance to answer. Go right ahead. And I think that redress or reparations would be a good first step, but it still wouldn't be enough for what slavery brought. To blackness country, it simply wouldn't be. And as a lawyer, I agree with compensation for damages. And there's precedence in the Japanese American experience. Japanese Americans

receive redress for a lot less in terms of damage done to their community relatively speaking. Also, I believe that reparations would be a very dramatic statement in terms of, um, adjusters that would raise the level of the dialogue. But I also agree with our writer, friend here, that politically it is probably impossible. But personally, I think that redress or reparations are not so outrageous, an idea. Now, let me move on to the question that you just posed about how extensive the dialogue will be. And are we going to get to issues that are then just talked? It happens that the two issues that we've taken up, and we decided this at our very first meeting, were education and economic opportunity. And if the Reverend Faroton had something to say about this, of course, I for once would be interested in hearing what he has

to say. No, if letters on the board are interested, but I recognize him as a leader in his community. Whether I agree, and he has said some very hateful things about my ethics community. But I happen to recognize him as a leader and a genuine one. Stand by. We have to take a break. We'll be right back. Stay with us. Welcome back to our discussion. I'm Kenneth Walker. And this is PowerPoint. Once

again, our number is 1 -800 -989 -8255. We're going to Willie in Houston, Texas, from our affiliated KTSU. Welcome to PowerPoint, Willie. Good afternoon. I just had a point to make. We were talking about racism. God didn't create but one race of people. And all this other stuff is just a bunch of stuff by the rich man to keep us fighting among ourselves when they keep going to the bank. We don't have anything really to be fighting with because the man has all the money. And he's just keeping people upset and fighting and going on. And actually, he's benefitting. Everything is going to him. One company will buy up another one and lay everybody off and everything. And we are going to buy racism. And actually, there's not going to be one race of people. So Dr. Strugg's left, which I'm sorry. Is this more class reality than race? No, it's not more class than race. And I don't want us

to get off when that tangent. I understand the caller's frustration. And I think that there is a very cogent argument to be made about the distribution of wealth in America. I think that that is a different argument because if we had that argument and if we came to some consensus as things now stand, we'd still have a problem with race. And that is my concern. And I just wanted the other caller who was talking about the turning inward, which is not an unfamiliar strategy that is discussed particularly in the black community. But, you know, my response to that, my reaction to that is much like my reaction during the Vietnam War, you know, when people were saying that the flag belonged to the conservatives. And I was sort of listening to that nonsense. And suddenly I realized, wait a minute, this is my flag. And this is my country. My ancestors, both Africans and Native Americans, shed blood in the soil of this country as did everyone else's

ancestors. And I am absolutely, I agree with Roger Wilkins earlier. I am absolutely not going to roll over and play dead and go find myself some corner, some place else to be in. And any corner that's here belongs to me. And I think what we have to do is assert that in creative and positive ways that on the one hand recognize that there's got to be a discussion about reparations. Now, however impractical the outcome might be, that discussion has to be held every time you're in any group, I do a lot of speaking, I talk to people every time I do that. Someone asks me a very pointed question about reparations and it's got to be dealt. Tom Wicker, help me out here with this. What do you see in the so -called white communities of the United States on this question? I gather from your book a lot of pessimism here, but point if you can to any points of light. On the question of reparations? No, just on the question of racial reconciliation or race relations in the United States. Well, I don't, I couldn't point

to any particular part of light except that I think there's been a notable and substantial increase in the black middle class, which is an economic gain that I think is very important. I think that for the long pool, and it would be a long pool, that the black community in this country, the minority community in general, but we're speaking primarily of blacks. The black community is not going to gain the respect and the status that it wants and deserves until it gains more economic status than it has. And that's why I've advocated what you call a radical idea of a third party, which would have minority group interest in heart. But before I close up here, I want to return to this question of reparations because I didn't say it was an outrageous idea. I might even be in favor of myself in some ways what I said was that it wasn't a practical political idea. And I don't think that we ought to be fooling around here with things that aren't practical political ideas because that's what I think. I

have to, I have to seize the mic here. Tom, Tom. We, we've just about run out of time. I really do have to thank each of you, Miss O. Tom Wicker, Dr. Scruggs, left which I want to thank you so much for your participation here. Next week, please join us when we continue this subject and try to expand it into racial healing. I'm Kenneth Walker. Join us next week. God willing. Giving credit where it's due, the award -winning makers of PowerPoint are executive producer Reggie Hicks, show director and senior producer Tony Regusters, program producer Dottie Green, news presenter Verna Avery Brown. Associate producers Debbie Williams and Tom Woodward, technical director Steve Brown. PowerPoint's marketing coordinator is Candy Capel. Legal services provided by Theodore Brown. Special thanks to National Public Radio and the Washington Bureau of Pacifica's Network News. PowerPoint's announcer is Candy

Shannon. Our theme music is from the CD F Stopps by Craig Harris. For PowerPoint, I'm Kenneth Walker. PowerPoint is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Radio Program Fund. This is PowerPoint, a production of Hicks and Associates. Thank you.