America After Charleston

ANNOUNCER: Am erica After Charleston was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And by contributions to your PBS station by viewers like you.

Thank you.

>> GWEN IFILL: A summer of violence claims many victims.

>> African-Americans dying, often at the hands of police.

>> Active shooter, multiple people down.

>> A white supremacist killed nine black worshippers at a Charleston church.

>> IFILL: What ties these events together?

The killings in Charleston fell a potent emblem of racism.

>> That symbol has to come down.

>> IFILL: Yet the struggle for racial equality continues.

>> We're out in these streets to break the prison pipeline.

>> IFILL: And as we prepare to elect a new president, the nation asks, what kind of country do we want to be?

>> Hillary Clinton face-to-face with protestors from the Black Lives Matter movement.

>> IFILL: Am erica After Charleston, a PBS Town Hall Meeting.

>> ANNOUNCER: Now from the historic circular church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, Gwen Ifill.

>> IFILL: We come here tonight to wrestle with some of the same questions we confronted last year when we traveled to Missouri for America After Ferguson.

The datelines have come to define the debate: Sanford, Florida, and Cleveland, and Cincinnati, and North Charleston, and Baltimore, and Waller County, Texas.

The essential questions remain the same, too-- how do we as a nation cope with race, conflict, and our inability to see each other?

These are some of the most difficult issues that plague and divide us, white from black from brown; protectors from the protected; and protesters from the protested.

To set a frame for this evening's discussion, the PBS NewsHour commissioned a national poll conducted by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.

You'll see that we disagree about a lot, including whether different races have equal access to opportunity.

But on one key point, most of us appear to agree.

We asked if race relations in our country are getting better or worse.

A majority-- 58% of those polled-- said worse, including 60% of whites and 56% of blacks.

But is there more to this than headlines?

We want you to be part of the conversation.

Tell us what you think on social media using the hashtag #AfterCharlestonPBS.

Pollster Cornell Belcher worked for Barack Obama in 2008.

Cornell, you were in Columbia, South Carolina, on primary night 2008.

We talked about this.

>> CORNELL BELCHER: Yes, ma'am.

>> IFILL: And you were in the room when you heard the people chanting... >> BELCHER: "Race doesn't matter."

And it was remarkable, because, you know, we're right around the corner from where that flag still was there, and these young white students, these young white kids, sort of chanting this.

And none of us from the Obama campaign had anything to do with this.

They just started chanting "Race doesn't matter, race doesn't matter."

And of course, they knew that it does matter, but what they were chanting was, like, what they want America to be like.

And it was... it was a moment where I was like, "Okay, it doesn't suck being in politics all the time."

>> (Ifill laughs) Except that now, all these years later, we have more proof that it does.

>> BELCHER: Well, I think a couple things.

One is the election of President Obama, someone who has never looked like that before, I think...

I saw that, you know, worsening of race relations.

It really has sort of brought to bear what... the tribalism that is America.

I mean, for better or worse, we are a tribal America that we have to solve for.

I mean, you have seen sort of heightened racial polarization, and particularly around political lines.

There is a heightened polarization around political lines, and if we don't solve for it it's going to be real problematic for us in the future.

>> IFILL: You know, I want to talk to you about this a little bit more later in the program, but for now I want to turn to two other faces who are very interesting, and have... you both have weighed in on public leadership and our responsibility to lead through these moments.

Andra Gillespie is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University in Atlanta.

And Bill Stanfield is the leader of the Metanoia Community Development Corporation.

I'm going to start by asking you what that is, and what... in North Charleston, and what that has to do with the conversation we're having.

>> BILL STANFIELD: We're a nonprofit community development organization that runs a youth leadership development program for young people, builds homes for folks, does some economic development stuff in neighborhoods that are oftentimes stereotyped as purely deficient and negative, which is where our staff live and work as well.

I think there's a role that all of us play.

I think that all these things that are being brought forward, they're not new.

But I think cellphones, the ability to see video, has made us all much more aware, and particularly made people that were able to be comfortable thinking that they didn't happen more aware, because it's there now, it's visible.

And so all of us people in the community are thinking we do need to work on these issues in a way that's constructive.

And I think the dialogue that is happening now is really between folks who think that either something like police brutality was a one-off event of one bad officer, or it's symptomatic of something larger.

And so I think that's the challenge, to kind of get... push through that conversation as well.

>> IFILL: Professor Gillespie, you've written a lot about leadership, especially young black leadership.

Is it a national discussion?

It is a dining room table discussion?

Is it a local discussion?

Does it have anything to do with government at all?

>> ANDRA GILLESPIE: Government plays a role in it.

I think it is a national discussion.

I think it needs to happen on college campuses.

I think it needs to happen in living rooms.

It needs to happen at Thanksgiving.

It needs to happen at elementary, middle, and high schools.

One of the things that we've learned since Charleston is that people have differing views about what the significance was of the Civil War, why we even fought it in the first place.

And I thought that this was pretty standard in the United States, that everybody pretty much heard the same story in middle or high school.

We now know that that's not true, and we need to remedy that situation so that everybody is kind of coming to the table with the same historical facts.

And even if people have different interpretations, they all need to know that we can have an honest dialogue and debate.

And we haven't seen enough of that yet.

>> IFILL: The same facts, different interpretations-- that's a perfect way of describing it.

Thank you both very much.

We gather here just blocks away from historic Mother Emanuel AME Church, a congregation that still stands nearly two centuries after its founding, 193 years after it was burned to the ground, decades after it was destroyed in an earthquake, and three months after it was the site of a horrific mass killing that jolted this city and this nation.

The Emanuel shootings took the lives of nine people, and it altered the lives of many more, several of whom are with us tonight.

I want to talk to the three of you who are here with us from Emanuel, if you'd stand and join me.

Reverend Norvell Goff, you have been the interim pastor at Emanuel in these months since this terrible tragedy.

First of all, I have to ask, how is the flock doing?

>> NORVELL GOFF: Well, the healing process still continues.

And because of the random act of kindness from individuals from around the world, we take one day at a time, but each day gets better.

But we are still in the healing process.

>> IFILL: Willi Glee, you were at that Bible study the night this terrible thing happened, and you happened to leave early.

So tell me about... since then you think... do you think to yourself, "There but for the grace of God?"

>> WILLI GLEE: Well, you know, that hasn't been my concern.

For me, I've been trying to put this thing together in my head.

And what I've learned is that we need to have the conversation, but the conversation can only be had when we start to tell the truth.

We have to tell the truth about this country.

We have to say that the country was founded as a racist, white supremacist society.

And Dylann Roof was just a byproduct of that.

So we have to start to talk about the truth.

>> IFILL: Let me just play devil's advocate for a moment.

In this church, I... playing devil's advocate's a dangerous thing, I understand.

Maybe.

But there are a lot of people who would say what you are doing by demanding truth is stirring up bad feelings when there is so much good will.

>> GLEE: You can't... you have to have the truth.

We have to... our children need to know what happened to black people in this country.

They have to know that 4.5 million people were set free in this country with absolutely nothing, and were asked to pull themselves by their bootstraps.

>> IFILL: Malcolm Graham, your sister, Cynthia Hurd, was among those killed that night at Emanuel.

And you hear the anger.

You probably know Mr. Glee well enough to know that.

And you've also talked to other people who have had lots of different reactions.

What has yours been?

>> GRAHAM: I think that racism, discrimination and hatred in America still exists, and that but for the lives that were lost that night, the Confederate flag would still be up in South Carolina today.

We've got a race issue in America, and we have to look at the man in the mirror as a nation and critique what we see so that my sister, Cynthia Graham Hurd, the eight others that died, the five others that was terrorized... the attack was an attack on a race of people.

It was an attack on humanity.

It was an attack on the Christian church.

And so everyone should pause and take a look at what happened.

Now, we can't say that we're months away from it and that we forgive.

I have a forgiving spirit.

I do not forgive.

It is okay to be angry.

(applause) >> IFILL: I want to talk about the future for a moment, and in talking about the future I want to come here to Simone.

Simone Martin is the future of the church.

You are also a member of Emanuel AME, and you are still involved.

You are not pulling away from your church.

You have decided that, as a young person, it's important to still be engaged when you could be angry.

>> SIMONE MARTIN: Yeah, I would rather not look to be angry, because it's better to forgive.

But then there's another side of me that's, like, still trying to understand why someone would do something like this.

But then you have to look inside of you and, you know, really feel what God would want.

So I feel better about that.

>> IFILL: Thank you.

You make me optimistic, actually, talking to you.

Thank you.

(applause) The Charleston shootings and the emotional havoc that they wreaked were only one of several incidents that have managed to keep the conversation we say we want to have about race going.

This map includes exclusive data provided to us by Facebook.

We can see spikes in conversations about race there, starting in April, when Walter Scott was killed by a policeman in North Charleston, and in June, a week after the Charleston shootings, when 22 million people mentioned the tragic event on Facebook.

But are these incidents a sign that there is something deeper going on?

My NewsHour colleague, Hari Sreenivasan, takes a look.

>> HARI SREENIVASAN: They go viral minutes after they're posted.

Professional athlete James Blake, mistakenly identified, being tackled by a New York City police officer.

A police officer in Texas dragging a teenage girl to the ground after a fight at a pool party.

Walter Scott being shot in the back and killed as he runs from police.

What gets little attention is a statistic like this.

>> SHAUN HARPER: 1.2 million black people in a single year being put on pathways to prison is a crisis.

>> SREENIVASAN: That's how many African-American students Shaun Harper found were suspended from school in one academic year.

>> HARPER: When someone's kicked out of school, you know, that kid also falls behind in schoolwork.

The kid is also considerably less likely to go to college, much more likely to go to prison.

>> SREENIVASAN: Harper has spent his career studying the cascading effects of racial inequalities on the lives of young African-Americans.

A recent study he co-authored discovered that more than half of those suspensions and expulsions were happening in the South.

>> HARPER: In our conversations about racial justice in the United States, we have to consider the larger interconnected systems that cyclically reproduce racial inequities and racial disparities in all sorts of ways.

>> SREENIVASAN: 86% of white students graduate high school.

The rate falls to 75% for Hispanic students, and to 70% for blacks.

> HARPER: Black children are far more likely than are their white peers and peers from other racial groups to attend schools that are underfunded, unstable.

>> SREENIVASAN: As far as college, only 20% of black students will get a bachelor's degree in four years.

Twice as many white students will achieve that goal.

29% of Hispanics will do so.

>> HARPER: That multipronged system of disadvantage in schools continually creates a class of blacks who don't graduate from high school, who don't go on to college, who don't ascend to positions of leadership and authority in the workforce.

>> SREENIVASAN: Blacks are twice as likely to be unemployed as whites, while the unemployment rate for Hispanics falls in the middle of the two groups.

And that leads to a family's ability to save and build assets.

White families have seven times the wealth of black families and six times that of a Hispanic family.

Margaret Simms is an economist with the Urban Institute.

>> MARGARET SIMMS: Where do you get your down payment?

How do you pay for your college education?

Many of those come from savings and accumulated wealth on the part of the family.

And if you're accumulating wealth much more slowly, you're less likely to be able to pass it on to the next generation.

>> SREENIVASAN: Simms and other policy experts say these systemic inequities can only be solved with long-term solutions.

>> SIMMS: The problem is that when the headlines go away, the will sometimes goes away-- the will to make the sustained commitment of resources that would take us over a generation to right some of these differences.

>> SREENIVASAN: I'm Hari Sreenivasan for the PBS NewsHour.

>> IFILL: In our PBS NewsHour Marist poll we asked, do African-Americans and whites have the same opportunity when it comes to equal justice?

The divide was stark.

A bare plurality, 50% of whites, said yes, but a whopping 87% of African-Americans said no.

Then we asked, do African-Americans and whites have the same opportunity when it comes to getting a job?

Once again, about half, 52%, of whites said yes, while 76% of African-Americans said no.

All week we've asked what our viewers are thinking on social media.

Ashona Gillins tweeted, "We don't have the courage "to stand up to systems that perpetuate racism.

We simply shake our heads."

There are as many opinions about how to move forward as there are people who care.

Umi Selah, formerly known as Phil Agnew, last time we met.

He is a founder of Dream Defenders.

You joined us a year ago in Ferguson when we did this, had the same kind of conversation.

And what would you say has changed since then, if anything?

>> UMI SELAH: Nothing.

Absolutely nothing has changed since a year ago.

But what we've learned in the past year is not that black lives matter, but black deaths matter.

That's the only time people wake up.

That's the only time people react.

But in South Carolina and around the country, if the politicians who are touting that black lives matter really cared, there would be health care for black families so they could provide for better qualities of living.

There would be quality education in the schools if you really cared about black lives.

There wouldn't be mass incarceration if you really cared about black lives.

And so if you were to ask me if things have changed, I'd say there are more people that say black lives, there are surely less people that believe it and mean it when they say it, or really understand what they're saying when they tweet that hashtag.

>> IFILL: Let me talk to Dr. David Cole, because there are lots of different lenses through which to view this dilemma we are in.

You're the president of the Medical University of South Carolina, and you have an interesting kind of a cross ways of looking at this, which is you're looking at health inequities and disparities.

>> DAVID COLE: It affects all of us.

It tears at the fabric of our society.

If you are an individual whose family member or loved one or yourself, your child, your mother, your grandparent, is ill, facing chronic or maybe an acute illness, it affects you.

It affects the way you can work or not.

It affects the way you can get an education.

It affects the way you may or may not be able to pursue an opportunity.

>> IFILL: Michelle Mapp, let's talk about progress, because on some level he's talking about health care disparities, Umi is talking about not being quiet, not sitting down.

You have formed the... or you're the executive director of the South Carolina Community Loan Fund.

Tell me about what you do, and what... how that speaks to what we're discussing here today.

>> MICHELLE MAPP: So our organization believes that we have to align capital with justice, so we advance the equitable access to capital.

So we believe that we have to invest in wealth-producing assets in low- to moderate-income communities.

We value government interventions differently.

So we call a Section 8 voucher for rental as welfare, but we call the mortgage interest deduction for home ownership something different.

(applause) We call, you know, Medicare expansion, you know, black people wanting handouts, but we call bailing out the banks, you know, interventions.

And so that's the... that's the issue, the economic differences that we're grappling with in this country.

And I think until we have those conversations... you know?

And that's why we say we've got to align capital with justice.

If we don't have those conversations about how we're dealing with capital in this country, we're never going to get past some of these racial issues, because we talk very differently about capital when we're talking about capital that's being directed to primarily low-wage, whether it's brown, black, or white people, and high-income folks in the U.S. >> IFILL: It's about definitions.

(applause) As you can tell, we took great care to try to get as many different voices as possible involved in this conversation.

And now I want to come to a voice here in the audience.

Sir, tell me a little bit about what's on your mind, what you're hearing, how you're reacting to this.

>> Well, as a white man, my main purpose in life right now is to get out of denial, to unlearn the racism I learned growing up here in the South, and to help other white men especially to do that, to become part of the solution.

>> IFILL: Why?

(applause) I mean, what made you start thinking this way?

>> Grief, I think.

Grief at my own upbringing, at knowing that I was taught wrong, and that I want to unlearn that and help teach right.

>> IFILL: Thank you.

(applause) >> I would say that as a native Charlestonian I am very disturbed about this national image of Charleston being so special, so unique, because we are so forgiving.

I think it's a false message in many ways.

(applause) Mainly because the flip side of that is, we should be asking, why is a community so beat down that it is afraid to show anger?

We have a false dichotomy that says, "Either I'm going to forgive, or I'm going to be angry."

And we have to break that false di... >> IFILL: What's the middle ground?

>> The middle ground is that forgiveness, I think, is a personal thing that people have to deal with, and I have nothing but respect for the people who say, "I forgive."

But as a community, we're not forgiving of racism.

We're not forgiving of the injustices that have been perpetrated against us.

White people are sitting here saying, "I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do."

Ask questions.

You know, because we are a community that is now being asked to be the model, but we haven't gotten over slave mentality.

Most of the people, black, who have been living in this community for years and years are afraid of losing their jobs, and so therefore we play the game of go along to get along.

Now, that is the history of Charleston, and that's the race relations history of Charleston that has to be challenged.

It's giving us a freedom to say we are mad, we are angry, we are not going to accept the way things have been done.

And that starts even with the day-to-day, where's the money being spent?

>> IFILL: Okay, thank you.

(applause) "Black Lives Matter"-- a popular refrain for some, a discordant one for others.

In our PBS NewsHour Marist poll, we asked, "From what you've heard or seen about Black Lives Matter, "do you think it's mostly a slogan or do you think it's mostly a movement?"

Nearly two-thirds of African-Americans consider it a movement, while 39% of Americans overall say it's only a slogan.

So, why, the skeptics ask, aren't we all saying "All lives matter"?

Arielle Newton, you're with Black Lives Matter.

And you have heard, I'm sure, the incredible fight that's broken out just about the term, about the phrase.

How do you... give you a chance to define it for yourself as opposed to the way it's been defined for you.

>> ARIELLE NEWTON: Black Lives Matter is exactly what it says-- black lives matter.

We live in a system, we live in a society, that does not affirm black lives, that kills black lives, rapes black lives, and tortures black lives.

So we say, "No more.

That is unacceptable."

It's unacceptable to be second-class citizens in a nation that we built.

And that's why we say Black Lives Matter.

And so then I turn the mirror to those who are uncomfortable with the term Black Lives Matter.

What's so uncomfortable about that?

Why does that cause you pause?

Why are you uncomfortable when a black person steps to you and says, "You know what?

My life matters"?

>> IFILL: Why do you think?

>> NEWTON: Because of racism.

>> IFILL: Charles Waring is the owner and publisher of the Charleston Mercury.

And I am curious about what you hear when you hear that phrase.

>> CHARLES WARING: I hear an expression of hurt, of deep pain, and it bothers me tremendously.

And we can only get to the root anger by being prayerful, being deeper in our communities, being more loving in our communities, extending hands of friendship.

Those are the essentials of finding the pathway to reconciliation, because it is a process.

>> IFILL: I want to talk to Cornell William Brooks, who is the president of the NAACP.

He's also an ordained AME elder and just completed walking 1,000 miles from Selma, Alabama, to Washington, D.C.

I want... America's Journey for Justice.

>> CORNELL BROOKS: Indeed.

>> IFILL: That seems like an old-fashioned way in a new-fashioned time, marching from Selma to anywhere.

>> BROOKS: I wouldn't call it old-fashioned.

I'd call it perhaps neo-old school.

We marched from Selma, the birthplace of the Voting Rights Act, to Washington, D.C., the seat of our democracy, pushing for and under the theme "Our Lives, Our Votes, Our Jobs, and Our Schools Matter."

That was a journey of courage, because we went to Washington not to protest outside the Capitol, but we took hundreds and hundreds of people door to door in Congress to push for specific legislation, taking a strong stance against racial profiling and racialized police brutality, for the right to vote, which, by the way, is not merely being denied to African Americans and Latinos, but also young people, when they don't have their college IDs honored.

Also seniors, people from rural communities, taking a strong stand against income inequality.

Because we've got to be clear about this.

When a black man is 21 times more likely to lose his life at the hands of his... hands of the police than his white counterpart, we need laws on the books.

And from the vantage point of the NAACP, we believe you've got to put boots on the ground in order to put laws on the books.

You've got to do something.

>> IFILL: Now, we've had three different ways of looking at what we do.

We have, "We have to work toward conciliation, love."

We have, "We need to speak out and call it what it is, racism."

And you're like, "We need to go inside the Capitol and change the laws."

Is there a common thread here?

>> BROOKS: Absolutely.

In fact, everything you've heard are parts of a whole approach to social reform.

My sister is exactly right-- we have to state very clearly, very forcefully, that black lives matter.

But the fact that we have to state that indicates the degree to which society does not regard black lives as mattering.

The fact is, when we say black lives matter, that is a premise for the moral conclusion that all lives matter.

Unless black lives matter, all lives do not matter.

The first has to be true in order for the second to be true.

But we have to be strong in making that statement, disruptive in terms of getting people's attention.

But ultimately, we've got to work both within the system, alongside the system, outside the system.

>> IFILL: William Pugh, Sam Moskow, join me in this conversation.

You're 17 years old.

You're a local student.

Sam Moskow, you're a local resident.

And I'm really curious about what you think about what you just heard them saying on the panel, especially about the Black Lives Matter question.

>> WILLIAM PUGH: I feel like Black Lives Matter is such a powerful movement, especially with my generation.

There are a lot of layers to it.

There's definitely a political aspect to it, because we have to change laws, and that's definitely an important part of it.

But it also starts from a personal level, from an individual level.

A couple months ago there was an event at my school where students on the football team decided that they were going to take a watermelon, after beating predominantly African-American football teams, draw a character on it that resembled an African-American with a wide, toothy grin, twig-like hair, big nose, and then smash it after beating predominantly African-American teams.

And originally...

I'm one of 12, now, African-American students at my high school, Academic Magnet, and there are over 600 students there.

Less than two percent of my school is African-American, and we are in North Charleston, South Carolina.

>> SAM MOSKOW: One of the things that I've observed is that people don't want to hear the hard truth a lot of the time.

It's easy to shut out someone who says, like the young lady did about Black Lives Matters, that, "Oh, that's just an extremist point of view, "that's a black nationalist point of view, we don't want to hear that."

We've got liberals in this country, white liberals, who all take on this sort of paternalistic point of view that we've got to fix things for the black people.

We've got white conservatives who take on the individualist point of view that, "Oh, it's up to black people "to fix things for themselves-- this is a country of opportunity."

We've got black nationalists who say, "We don't want any help "from white people.

We're going to do this all ourselves."

And we've got the white skin privilege people who say, you know, "It's all the fault of white people-- they've got to help us out here."

>> IFILL: How do we get that?

How do we get across that?

How do we get over that?

>> MOSKOW: I don't know.

We've got to find a corps of people who are actually willing to talk about those things and listen to a white person that says, "I don't believe in this white skin privilege thing," and listen to a black person that says, "Nobody cares about black people, that's why this thing is all so messed up."

We've got to be able to listen to both of those sides and come to some common conclusion.

I think it's going to take a corps of people.

It's not going to be a radical transformation that takes place overnight.

>> IFILL: I have to say that... thank you both very much.

I have to say that I'm...

I agree with that last part, it won't happen overnight.

And I'm not quite certain how you get to the solution, but first we have to have the conversation.

>> I think we're making too much of how easy this is to fix.

It's not complicated, but it requires something that most of us don't have, and that's courage.

From parents who are raising their children and being courageous enough to say when a child is being mean or bullying someone because of how they look, or the color of their skin, or where they live, to say, "No, we won't do this."

I think it takes courage all the way up to the highest level of government.

Our elected officials should be held accountable by us.

And we have to start there, because if we don't, we can have task force, and we can have panels, and PBS can come back over and over again, and nothing will change.

Until we are courageous enough to say, "It's not hard, and we will not tolerate it," then we'll continue to go through this.

>> IFILL: What kind of courage do we have in this room today?

Please come forward.

Come stand here with me.

>> Okay, thank you.

>> IFILL: Tell me, what do you think?

>> I have a very, very heavy heart, and I know that a lot of people feel the way that I do.

And I would really love for there to be reconciliation and healing, and I know I need that.

And I've been at different assemblies with people, and people are just asking, "How do we reconcile?

How do we do that in a way that we can all heal?"

I guess that's-- I would love to see more reconciliation.

>> IFILL: We could start with a hug.

>> Okay.

(laughter and applause) >> IFILL: Thank you.

(applause continues) And what is striking a chord with you?

Tell us on Twitter using the hashtag #AfterCharlestonPBS.

As part of the PBS NewsHour/ Marist poll, we asked, "When it comes to racial issues, what is left unsaid?"

Those answers, too, broke down along racial lines.

A white respondent said, "There is no talk of accountability in the black community."

A black respondent said, "A solution to what we're going through."

And a Latino respondent said that it's always been there; now it's more acceptable to demonstrate your racism.

What do you say?

Jelani Cobb is a University of Connecticut history professor and also a prolific writer for The New Yorker magazine.

And as you've listened to this unfold, what have you heard left unsaid?

(clears throat) >> JELANI COBB: First, I would say that it is very difficult to continually have this conversation-- that we saw this conversation after Baltimore, we saw this conversation after Ferguson, we're having this conversation now, and no doubt there will be some occasion for us to have this conversation again in the future.

>> IFILL: Which breaks my heart.

>> COBB: It does.

And I think that, you know, with no ill intent, we've greatly overestimated two things: one, the power of conversation; and two, the extent of the benevolence of white people in America.

(applause) >> IFILL: What do you mean?

>> COBB: And what I mean by that is slavery did not begin because of miscommunication.

(laughter) Jim Crow did not happen-- (applause) Jim Crow did not happen because people somehow couldn't get on the same page.

These were systems that were designed to exploit one group of people to the benefit of another group of people.

And unless we're willing to talk about this-- these connections between what Dylann Roof saw as himself as part of an aggrieved group of people who are besieged by black people, which is the same thinking that animated the violent attacks on black people in this state after Reconstruction-- the white belief that black people had something that they were not entitled to, that somehow or another that they were losing out, that the currency of whiteness had been devalued, and this is what we're talking about here.

And so it is about interests.

It is about who has resources.

It is about who has excess resources.

It is about who is willing to part with those resources.

>> IFILL: Jenny Horne, you are a descendant of Jefferson Davis, and you also served in the legislature with Clementa Pinckney, the pastor of Emanuel AME.

As you have listened to this conversation unfold, what have been your thoughts?

What's been left unsaid?

>> JENNY HORNE: Well, Gwen, one of the things that was left unsaid until very recently is that the same symbol that can be a sense of pride for one race can be a symbol of terrorism for another.

And I think that's what we had to deal with in the General Assembly when the flag debate came to the House of Representatives.

And I will tell you, I was frustrated as an educated woman, and I think that's what we all need to remember.

We have to be educated about what the Civil War was really all about, and a lot of the feedback that I've gotten from around the country, quite frankly-- like, I'm going to use the children in Virginia that are talking about using the Confederate flag at school and having the Confederate flag at school.

Those children have not been educated to the history of the Civil War.

I receive letters from people across the country, "My grandparents were slaves, "and they told me about what it was like to be a slave in North Carolina and in Virginia."

And I can tell you that the feedback I got from across the country after I gave a very impassioned, very impromptu speech-- (applause) >> IFILL: Just for people who don't remember, her speech was about her decision to vote to have the flag come down.

You got overwhelmingly positive response.

>> HORNE: Overwhelmingly positive.

And for the ten percent or so that sent hateful words and racial slurs and threats, they just haven't had the benefit of a good education.

(laughter and applause) >> IFILL: Alexia Fernandez Campbell, I'm going to ask you to take a big step back and look at this more broadly.

You work for National Journal, which has a project ongoing that I recommend called "The Next America," and it's about how this country is changing, not just changing because of crisis, not just changing because of tragedy, but changing in terms of turning browner.

And that's affecting our attitudes, it's affecting our education, it's affecting everything.

Tell us a little bit about that.

>> ALEXIA FERNANDEZ CAMPBELL: Yeah, so I write a lot about immigration and Latino issues, and I think that's one thing that, you know, a lot of people are overlooking in the education system.

And people have really been making Latino issues about immigration, and there's been this blurring of lines of, you know, this growing group here in the United States, and people cannot seem to separate the Latinos here in the United States from being illegal immigrants.

And you know, until our elected officials and candidates, you know, begin to realize that, they're not going to start to see what the next America's really going to look like.

>> IFILL: If we're not dealing with these issues somehow, the issues are going to deal with us.

>> CAMPBELL: Right, and it's amazing as a journalist how hard it is to get people to talk about race and talk about how, you know, like you said, the browning of America.

It's something that people don't want to think that actually is an issue in education and economic inequality and the income gap, and it is, and it's really hard to get people to talk about it.

And until that happens, you know, people are just going to be in denial about, like, what's happening to our country and, you know, what it's going to look like, you know, in 2043.

>> IFILL: You can see the connection.

We're talking a little bit about politics, it's 2016, it is a big political year.

Cornell Belcher, why aren't we talking more about race and these incidents in a political year?

>> BELCHER: Well, one of the reasons why is right now, the Republicans are doing all the talking, mostly, and if you look at the new poll that recently came out, 40% of Republicans actually think the President is a Muslim.

I mean, there is a racial aversion that's sort of centered right now on the conservative party.

And when you look at some of the, you know, from your own polling you look at, you know, "Do blacks have as many opportunities as whites?

Yes."

You know, "Are blacks whining?

Yes."

So for them, racism is a different issue.

For them, reverse discrimination is a larger issue right now than classic, classic racism.

>> IFILL: So, Andra Gillespie, I'm curious, what do you do about that?

If you know this is something everyone is talking about, all of our social media indicators show it's a big conversation, how does that become a conversation in a political context?

>> GILLESPIE: Well, there are a number of ways that it does.

So, it's through lobbying and it's through protest.

So, when people talk about Black Lives Matter not being a movement, it is in fact a movement when, because they are organizing in ways that I think other types of analogous movements didn't organize as effectively, but also, they are making protest part of the repertoire in ways that I think we had forgotten about in recent years.

Not that groups like the NAACP weren't doing those kinds of things, but Black Lives Matters protesters make sure that they put themselves into positions where their voices are heard, and they're actually demanding that politicians take notice of them.

And so politicians act when protesters make issues salient, and so one of the things that Black Lives Matter has done is it's made racial justice issues top of the list in ways that they weren't five or ten years ago.

And as such, all politicians, even Republican ones, are going to have to craft a response.

>> HORNE: I've heard the conversation.

I am a Republican, but I am a Republican because my parents were Republicans because we voted for Reagan, okay?

One of the problems that we have in this country is we have become too polarized to the right and to the left.

Most people in this country agree on 80% of the issues that are facing us.

We differ in the solutions, but we all agree that health care is too expensive in this country, that children are not being educated well enough, and that poor children in particular are being left behind by the system.

>> MAPP: In this country, housing and land is the greatest source of wealth transformation and accumulation, but it's also the greatest source of discrimination.

And so it's easy for us to say we don't want those people to live in our neighborhood and to have those people segregated and congregated in another neighborhood, but then we question, well, why are their schools failing?

Well, they live in a neighborhood where that's all there is.

There's no economic development activity.

>> IFILL: Yes, sir?

>> We have to take personal responsibility for our community and our neighborhood.

Men, especially black men, we have to take care of our families, we have to take care of our children, and we need to be personally responsible for each one of our own children and for the children in and around our neighborhoods, and we need to take care of our neighborhood.

We're losing our neighborhoods, our corner stores are all gone, our businesses are gone.

Our community and neighborhoods are filled with drugs and illegal activity.

A lot of churches are segregated, the schools are segregated.

So, a lot of non-African- Americans aren't familiar with the characteristics of black or don't know many black folks, so they take what they see on the media and the television as the way we are.

All three of my children, no option for them.

They had to go to school, they had to go to college.

They all graduated college.

The cup is not necessarily half-empty, it is definitely half-full, and it's getting better.

The situation is getting better.

We couldn't come together in this room as we are now 50 years ago.

So we are getting better.

This gentleman right now-- this gentleman I'm sitting next to, we just met.

Just learned a whole lot about him and his family.

>> IFILL: Stand up, sir.

(laughter) >> His dad owned a steel mill a long time ago and employed a lot of African-Americans.

So we've gotten to know one another.

And until we learn to talk with one another and find out much about one another, we won't get to know each other.

>> IFILL: Well, let me ask you what you think about what he just said.

>> Well, his brother-in-law's one of my best... is a good friend of mine.

We do business together, see?

>> IFILL: Small town.

>> It's a real small town.

You know, being part of the community is so important as a whole community, and... >> IFILL: But do we ever reach...

I mean, this is as integrated a church as I have been in in my life, right, today, here, because we worship separately, we socialize separately.

We don't know each other.

How do we cross that bridge?

>> I think education is going to be the key.

And understanding the different cultures we come from is very important, which, through education, will help us.

>> IFILL: Okay, thank you both very much.

You guys can go out and get a drink afterward, tell us how it goes.

(laughter) >> IFILL: Tonight, we have two generations of South Carolina activism here to talk with us and to join us, and to talk with us in some kind of perspective.

Cleveland Sellers has just announced you're retiring as president of Voorhees College.

You have a record, decades, history of civil rights activism.

And your son, Bakari Sellers, former state legislator, representative, ran for lieutenant governor.

And the father-son provide kind of the yin and the yang of where we are in terms of movements.

I wonder if you don't think to yourself, "How far have we come in 50 or 60 years since I went to jail for this?"

>> CLEVELAND SELLERS: Well, it's not a question of how far we have come.

It's very clear that we haven't come far enough.

See, we keep going through, "Well, what we need to do is forgive and forget.

"Why don't we move on?

Why don't we not look at this?"

We have to know our history, and everybody needs to know the history of struggle in America on the part of African-Americans so we don't keep going through the same cyclical kind of motions: everybody gets excited, we're going to do something, and that's going to take care of it.

We have to go back to building communities.

We have to go back to addressing these events and activities that have occurred.

And we have to go and find a way to find justice-- justice.

And justice meaning truth and reconciliation.

So we... it has to be honest.

And so that's one of the things that I keep saying.

You know, I have been to Selma.

I went to the March on Washington.

I'm a person of the Emmett Till generation.

I worked in civil rights for a number of years.

And when I heard what had happened in Charleston, I said, "Where have we gone?

What are we going to do that's different?"

>> IFILL: Let me ask your son about that, because you raised a man who thought, "Maybe there's a way to address this through the system."

And you have taken part in the system, and...?

>> BAKARI SELLERS: Well, for me... My father is 70 years old, I'm 31 years old, and the problem is that we have many of the same shared experiences.

He was burying his loved ones, I'm burying mine now.

The symbolism is so powerful.

And the answer to the question "How far have we come?"

is that we've made progress, but we still have yet a ways to go.

My father, I found a picture of him the other day.

It was July 2, 1964.

He's sitting in the White House with Lyndon Baines Johnson after he signed the Civil Rights Act.

For him, that was his breath of freedom that stretched across generations.

For me and many others, it was a few months ago at 10:08, when the Confederate flag came down.

And yes, it was a moment, and yes, it's just a flag, but it was a breath of freedom.

It allowed us to taste it, and we'll never settle for anything less.

>> IFILL: Yes, but.

I can't help but saying "yes, but" because you represent how far we've come and how far we haven't come, perhaps?

>> CLEVELAND SELLERS: Not necessarily.

There were a lot of successes during the civil rights era.

Certainly the Voting Rights Act.

Certainly the opportunity for people who were empowered as the result of the movement itself.

Certainly the issue of identity on the part of African-American retrenchment and the affirmative action and all the kinds of programs that came out.

But we allowed those things to kind of slip away.

And there is an opportunity now for retrenchment, and get back in and do the kind of community building that is necessary to go forward.

But we have to understand our history, and we have to also understand the struggle.

>> IFILL: You see the argument... you see the opportunity, I guess?

>> BAKARI SELLERS: I do, but sometimes we just have to have these discussions at the dinner table.

You know, we still live in a community where kids go to school where their heating and air don't work, their infrastructure's falling apart.

And South Carolina used to have a corridor of shame, and overlapping the corridor of shame is the stroke belt, where African-Americans are predisposed to preventable diseases.

You live in communities where in churches like this, the women that wear the big hats that sit on the front row, those old ladies who are the foundation by which we live, they have to go out on Mondays and make decisions about whether or not they get their prescription drugs or pay their utility bills.

You know, the grip of impoverishment has placed its grasp on both the newborn and elderly alike.

And escaping that trap of impoverishment, even in South Carolina, is like the dog that chases its tail.

So yeah, we have a lot of problems.

But I guess we're two generations of people who still believe in hope and love and truth and justice.

>> IFILL: Thank you both.

>> CLEVELAND SELLERS: Well, I still believe in hope.

>> IFILL: Thank you both.

(applause) I have time for one more question.

I'm going to come over here.

>> My question is for the policymakers in the room.

I'm just curious if this event and its aftermath have affected the way that you approach your policymaking decisions.

And if so, could you give us some examples of that?

>> IFILL: Curious about what you think in answer to her question.

>> GRAHAM: Well, I think we have to have political courage to go beyond the rhetoric.

We need to expand Medicaid throughout this country and embrace the Affordable Care Act.

We need to stop putting all official barriers in place such as these outdated voter ID laws which are in place to prevent people of color and poor people from voting.

So we have to have the moral courage to find the middle ground for lawmakers.

>> You say that's moral courage.

Some people just don't agree with you.

They don't think there's anything courageous about expanding Medicaid at all, and that's where the politics is.

>> GRAHAM: Well, that's where the politics is.

And that's why... you know, health care is a human right, and so we have to identify lawmakers who are willing to do what is right and not what is popular.

It was very popular to take the flag down after the Charleston shooting.

Now that that is over and now that we have policymakers running for federal elections and congressional election and statewide election, are they willing to do what is right when there's not a tragedy at stake?

Doing what is right is making sure that every American have health care.

Doing what is right, making sure that every American have the right for a proper education.

>> IFILL: Let me try something here.

I'm curious if Charles Waring thinks that's what doing right is, if that's the definition that you see.

>> WARING: I think that there are a lot of complexities relative to grievances and needs for resources.

But I think that if we're not in communities meeting in prayerful situations and learning to have respect for our neighbors, we're going to go nowhere.

It all goes back to Paul and "pray unceasingly."

I think that's the root.

>> IFILL: Cornell William Brooks, Reverend, let's talk about praying unceasingly.

>> BROOKS: I want to be clear, I believe deeply in the power of prayer.

But as I heard a group of rabbis say as we walked 1,002 miles to Washington, D.C. to bring about change, you have to pray with your feet.

And so it's one thing for us to have a conversation, we also have to have mobilization.

Note here, in North Charleston, a man was executed on videotape.

The state responds by passing a statewide body camera law.

Important, commendable.

But we did not pass a racial profiling law.

We can pray about the first, praise the first, and mobilize and pray about changing the second.

We have to do both.

We got to be very clear here.

The only way to bring about fundamental reform in this country is to do what we did a generation ago that we have to do with this generation, which is to say we tap the power of faith, but it's faith in action.

We bring about reform by getting up off our knees and then getting to work.

(applause) >> IFILL: Umi, weigh in.

>> SELAH: No, I mean, I'm inclined to agree with the Reverend.

Faith without works is dead.

And you know, I think far too often, especially as it pertains to the black community, we've been told to remain pious, to remain quiet, that forgiveness is a burden that only we have to bear.

I think the conversations and the prayers are effectual for some, but it's time for people to really get out and realize that you can only pray so much.

People got to get out into the streets.

And I think that's what young people have been doing and are committed to doing.

We're following the example of people before us.

But just sitting around in faithful circles, even today, won't do anything for what happens afterwards.

So all the prayer in the world, all the supplication in the world, all the fasting in the world will not heal the wounds that we've got to do now.

And too often, too often we've used our forgiveness as currency, our patience as currency, our waiting as currency.

(applause) And to be frank, I think the time...

I think the time for waiting is over.

To talk about what a solution looks like, it really looks like black people holding powerful positions in cities and towns and school boards and sheriff offices and a lot of the communities that some white people are not prepared for.

They're not prepared for a policy that levels out the land, that levels out the jobs, that levels out the quality of education and health care services, because they believe that, you know, it should be a place where they live in abundance and some people live in scarcity.

And that's what a solution truly looks like.

And we've never gotten to a point, we've never truly gotten to a point where we wanted to talk about that.

We talked about it politically, we talked about it through desegregation, but we've never talked about it economically.

And when we talk about it economically, that's when it gets a little bit more uncomfortable, and we're going to need a lot more praying.

(applause) >> IFILL: And I want... camera, stay with me.

We are joined here today by one of the survivors of the Emanuel AME shooting, Polly Sheppard.

Polly wasn't sure if she wanted to come today.

She was trying to decide if this is a conversation she wanted to have.

I'm glad you did come.

(applause) >> POLLY SHEPPARD: Thank you.

>> IFILL: And... and I can't think...

I can't think of a more effective way of taking reality and combining it with theory and action than to talk to Polly these months later about what her life is, about what it means when she hears people talk about the risk she was in as a theory, about forgiveness as a theory as opposed to reality.

And I wonder where you are today.

How are you today?

>> SHEPPARD: I have forgiven, but forgiveness, to me, is a process also.

It took awhile.

>> IFILL: As you hear people talk about what we talk about and what we don't talk about in this country, what rings a bell?

>> SHEPPARD: I agree with the panel, this young man here.

Economics is the most thing that we don't talk about.

>> IFILL: What would you like to hear our country talking about in the wake of all of this?

>> SHEPPARD: Gun control.

Those automatic guns need to be off the street.

(applause) >> IFILL: Polly, thank you.

Thank you very much for the courage of even showing up, and also for bnging your moral courage to this conversation.

We really sorely needed it today.

>> SHEPPARD: Thank you.

(applause) >> IFILL: We want to hear what you're thinking, too.

Tell us what's missing from the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

Just use the hashtag #AfterCharlestonPBS.

The conversation continues.

According to exclusive data provided for us tonight by Facebook, racial issues were the number two political issue discussed in August relating to the 2016 election, second only to immigration.

Yet, it hardly comes up at all.

Should it?

That's the question we're going to be asking as we go afterward to talk to our audience some more online.

Thank you all here in Charleston for taking part.

We'll talk some more in the Web-exclusive portion of our town hall, which you'll be able to watch and comment on exclusively at PBS.org/AfterCharleston.

In closing, we want to thank the Reverend Jeremy Rutledge and the generous congregation here at the beautiful Circular Church in downtown Charleston, and also thank our partners here in the Palmetto State at South Carolina ETV.

Thank you all, and good night.

(applause) If you want to continue th e conversation, go to pbs.org/aftercharleston, where you'll find exclusive po lling data, video, and ongoing discussions.

America After Charleston is available on DVD.

To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH, access.wgbh.org ANNOUNCER: America After Ch arleston was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station by viewers like you.

Thank you.