lee is going to reduce the racial wealth gap but it is toĪgain. and so that's not to say taking down a statue of robert e. they're reflective of the stories that we tell and these stories embed themselves into narratives that communities carry and narratives shape public policy and public policy shakes the material conditions and people's lives. the reason that one community looks one way and another community looks another way is not because simply the people in those communities, but often is because of what has been done to those communities generation after generation after generation because symbols, they're not just symbols. about why? the society our society collectively looks the way that does today and i think why one community. when you learn this history is that it provides a sort of clarity. and and this was my middle school, but but i think part of what happens when you gain. i don't think i knew that russia was named after a confederate leader until maybe two years ago.

things that we just saw and attempt to tell us that things are not about what the people who have engaged in that behavior say that they're aboutĪnd so i learned about these things many of the stuff i learned, you know in the process of writing the book.

and it's eerily parallel to some of the things that we see now where people are claim to try to tell us that we're not seeing.

and they were like, what are you talking about? we were we were there we saw you it was in the paper. and then in 1865 comes back and people are like well, what do you have to say for yourself? you just like, you know, you lost the war you were the vice president of this this country that attempted to secede from the union and and you said all these horrific things about slavery and he was like i never said that. Actually were and we see that in somebody like alexander stevens who in 1861 writes the famous cornerstone speech or the infamous cornerstone speech where he says that the confederacy is founded on the principle of african inferiority and the attempt to engage in shadow slavery and perpetuity.

Dr clint smith how the word is passed