Hello everyone, thank you for your patience as I said my name is Allison Burstein I work in the adult programs department of the education division here at the museum and it is my great pleasure to welcome you to what is Sure to be a thought-provoking and engaging conversation about a wide range of vital issues from our two speakers So just a few words about our speakers tonight We have Michaela Angela Davis who is an image activist writer and the creator of mad free Which is a multi-platform multi-generational critical conversation project for over 20 years Michaela has been exploring the power of beauty urban style women's politics and hip-hop culture Melissa Harris Perry is a professor at Tulane University Where she is the founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper project on gender race and politics in the south her new Progressive talk show on MSNBC called Melissa Harris Perry is airs this weekend And with this show her position on this show This will make her the only tenured professor in the United States with a cable talk show She's also the author of a new book sister citizen shame stereotypes and black women in America Which will be a large part of the conversation tonight. So without further ado our two speakers. We're happy We're happy. You're here and we But in terms of so much pressure look at the pressure that like we're talking about your practical actual work like you practically wrote a book You're practically a Professor but what you had to navigate to get there. Sure. That's the business, you know, and so we we feel that That it couldn't have come at a better time particularly, you know I'm gonna talk just briefly about the show couldn't have come in a better time because the politics are crazy right now particularly You know as it relates to women and women of color and so your lens is going to be so important like right now so that's super great, but the book and How how did you? Get to this book why this book why now and how hard was it to sell a book about American politics through the psychology of black women like who wanted that book, right? Okay So the answers are all so unsexy I don't know where to start So, you know why this book because I'd I'd written the first book and got tenure with it And if I wanted to keep my job, I was gonna have to write another book That's like that like at them at them at the least sexy aspect of it. And so So I sort of started writing a second book and what happened is I've gotten radicalized in the seven years That I was teaching at the University of Chicago So I kind of left grad school and went off to my first academic job with a race lens And really sort of seeing myself as a race woman and you know, I'm gonna write about I mean I think there's you know There are things about that first book that I really love and things about it that I find really appalling And one of the things about it that I find really appalling is that it didn't even occur to me as even slightly problematic that I was writing about barbershops as a fundamental site of discourse and black communities and where black people get together and have ideas and As part of doing that work. I initially tried to do Zora Neil Hurston kind of work I tried to do the participant observer right anthropological research in the barbershops and it was such a problem I kept changing the space so much every time I would enter it that I Partnered with a really brilliant graduate student who's actually thank God a really fantastic Intellectual and a feminist and all these things But but it was also male and sent him into the barbershop and we did this kind of ethnography by proxy, right? Which led to an interesting chapter and one that I'm very proud of in the first book But like seriously I gave up a whole part of my book because my female body could not enter into the space that I wanted to study And I didn't have a sufficiently critical feminist lens to even see that as problematic, right? Right, but then I spent seven years at the University of Chicago with Kathy Cohen and Any of you who know the work or the person that is Kathy Cohen who is an out black lesbian feminist political scientist empiricist genius who also Never like really lets you rest So at any point that you're thinking that you've done a great job Kathy's always like No, how about do a better job, right? And so during those seven years I spent with her I really developed a broader conception of the places I was missing in my own political analysis And so I knew the second book was gonna have to be about black women Because I was working it out for myself and for my own work as much as anything else But I've been writing this book forever I mean I've been writing this book for a really long time when I think about who I was at the moment that I first Collected my first data for this book versus who I was the day that it came out. It's almost I Know there was a recent critique of it that it was wild and out of control And it's you know But it's also like you know a part of the reason I've never responded much to that particular aspect of the critique But but there's a there's a there's a little bit of that That's not completely false in that I was I was in this book Like really trying to work out a bunch of stuff But the question of was it hard to sell it is surprisingly no because it's an academic book Which means I'll make no money from it, right? Right, so like I'll make a little tiny like I probably bought these shoes You know with the book or something but Because it because because because it's an academic press without a money-making endeavor associated with it Right it actually was less hard to find a publisher than one might expect and I have funny publishing stories about the book But it wasn't You know that aspect of it wasn't the struggle I think for me the single hardest part of the struggle was trying to figure out What I was writing about why I was writing about it. What was motivating me? I think that's why it ends up the way that it is. That's why it's literature and Coach, you know lit crit and Politics and all of these different things because I was working all of that out But what's it is layer, you know, but we're layer So in a way I was when I was reading it it didn't read like a straight academic book to me, right? And because also the emotionality is in there But I completely got I feel like this book is for black women like and everybody else who loves black women can get it but I So because I'm a black woman I get all the complexities and I get how you can go from Zora Neale Hurston to statistics, you know And but you do it in a clean way and there there's some broad Ideas that I just I want to ask you about and particularly this notion of the politics of recognition and Misrecognition and the recognition and misrecognition of black women in American society and politics and I want to this is my only reading I'm gonna read a quote and for For those of you who were at the last one saw me suffer because I didn't want to wear my glasses But I can read this and I highlighted it in everything So individuals denied access to the public realm or whose group membership limits their social possibilities Cannot be accurately recognized an individual who was seen Primarily as a part of a despised group loses the opportunity to experience the public recognition For which the human self strives further if the group itself is misunderstood Ding then to the extent that that one is seen as part of this group that seeing is inaccurate inaccurate recognition is painful Not only to the psyche, but also to the political self and the citizen self Talk about that You know this was this was the single hardest decision I made in the book when I first started writing it It was a book about resource disparities Which is which is the book that makes a lot of sense to write about black women. It was about the educational inequities It was about the housing inequities. It was about the The very real material inequities that African-American women face. So that's that's the book I started writing kind of mapping all the stuff we don't have right and then August 29th 2005 happened and that was the day the levies failed in Katrina after Katrina in New Orleans and It completely obviously completely altered my life but it also completely altered the book because what was happening for me in the context of Katrina was in part about resource disparities, but only in part about it and the Pain that I was experiencing watching it was About the misrecognition It was that when I was watching what was happening. I saw people who looked obviously like Americans to me like they look like my cousins and my parents and my Siblings and they look like me and when I saw them There's a there's an image that a lot of Katrina scholars have used it's of an elderly African-American woman who appallingly of course her name We don't know because her name isn't important. The only thing that's important is her body, right? So we just use black women's bodies without any knowledge of their biography But she's sitting at the Superdome waiting rescue and she's got the American flag wrapped around her and it's a huge flag right and so the question is Where in the world does a black person get a flag like that? Because like we don't do 4th of July right we don't that's not really Right, that's not that's not where and if we did like we only have done that post 08 Right like maybe an 08 were like So so so so one if your house is flooding if the water is coming up Why would you grab a flag and how would you know where the flag was like even if you did do 4th of July? Wouldn't it be up with like your holiday stuff somewhere? This is a right. This is the end of August where so what what is that flag? Right that flag is from the casket of a veteran Because the only way you know where a big huge ginormous American flag is and where you would go and grab it as you ran out of the house Right is because it was draped on the casket of your loved one Which means not only are you a citizen you're a citizen whose family has made the Sacrifice that we consider the primary sacrifice required for engagement in the American project And you're sitting there wrapped in the flag of a veteran waiting for people to rescue you and they're calling you a refugee Right, and it's not even that there's anything wrong with the language of refugee In fact had we in fact been refugees we would have been better off word Right because the because there are international policies that Required that you don't for example put a refugee on a bus with a one-way ticket, right? But in IDPs internally displaced persons don't have those same rights So it's it's not even so much that it's that there's something about being called a refugee that is in and of itself inherently Degrading but it is simply a misrecognition. It's false right that that woman and so and so many of the other Men and women around her were citizens and so I was it was watching people say that black men were raping babies in the Superdome When that that was exactly the opposite of what was happening black men were saving babies all over the city because nobody else would And the fact the reason they wouldn't save babies is because they said that criminal activity was more important than life-saving Activities so they literally shut down all life-saving activities and went to lawn or like I it was watching how the Misrecognitions had real-time material policy life Consequences and on the one hand wanting to talk about that but also just wanting to talk about the fact that it hurts And nobody cares that it hurts like you know when you say oh that experience is painful for black women people like So I mean like so why am I meant to care that an experience is painful for you So why should I care that you know we misrepresent you with a so-ho abortion Commercial why should I care that we misrepresent you on a Super Bowl commercial as irrationally angry or why should you know Why should I care that that your feelings are hurt? And so part of what I wanted to make a claim for is like our feelings being hurt is politically relevant Well, and that that's that that in all of this is in the book y'all She's not just saying oh I was inspired by it like she breathed the whole Katrina thing is broken down So you need to get with the book, but but but also that I was struck by again by the Emotionality and you talking about black women having this quest to craft meaning out of their lives Inside of these really literally dangerous terrain whether it's physically dangerous or sexually dangerous or psychically dangerous but also that their emotional lives how their emotional lives lead to political choices and I have not Seen that connection may be for first of all I didn't have the distinction called the politics of recognition like even though that's what I have as an image activist That's really what it is. So I just thank you. You've given me some more language, but to give context, but But this idea of having to talk about how emotional lives lead to political choices like that how Yeah, I would say we get it right when white men are angry after 9-11 we go to war, right? Right, right, so so it's not that we look that we don't understand at all the idea of Emotions leading to politics, but no one's talked about it in terms of black women exactly, right, right? so like we get that the Tea Party is angry and because they're angry they're going to do a set of things that we get that You know that that elderly Americans are scared about social security, right?   We're just we're just angry, right, right? Just like in hand like in our being we just are angry, right? Yes, and and you and and There's some really healthy context that you provide about You know being able to understand these myths and realities about black women, and you know and you can have it sort of classic Jezebel Mammy and sapphires as you know as a construct But it goes it goes deeper in terms of like breaking down these myths and realities and What I found really interesting because you know we've studied, you know the Mammy and Jezebel stuff But this idea of you brought in another term that the politics of respectability and Talk about it like this idea of and you get and you you give real Context to why we feel this way But also can you sort of speak to that this idea of the that the politics are responsible respectability, right? So I mean get that's that's borrowed from previous black women academics and again one of the insights here, so I'm coming Just at this moment, you know, we're coming off of black HIV day when we're sort of thinking about the continuing Role that HIV and AIDS are Having in black communities and so again, this was just bring back to Kathy Cohen for a second So her argument is in part that because we're so wrapped up in a politics of respectability this notion that you deserve to be a citizen Not just because you deserve to be a citizen, but because you somehow earn it by being sufficiently respectable So like to me the most recent kind of clear iteration of this is You know Bill Cosby remember when he went crazy, and he told like black young people they were Right, he's like I mean like I really think he went great like literally like probably post-traumatic stress kind of yeah Yeah, like something half something snapped Yeah, right, right.  Like if you're looking for a little Q word about politics of respectability, it's sagging pants you Because I'm just telling you that you know in Jim Crow everybody's pants were up And they still had to sit on the back of it like it's just it's a read It's just such a ridiculous sort of statement almost also always whenever you hear somebody start talking about hip-hop Like if they're talking if they have said something racist and then they begin to talk about hip-hop They're employing this politics of respectability right where you're not allowed to be free and equal just because of who you are You have to actually earn it and by Conforming to certain sorts of norms so what that did for us as a community coming out of for example the civil rights movement Is much of the mid-century civil rights movement was powerfully a politics of respectability, right? It was it was an I was looking again at the pictures of Ruby Bridges and of Elizabeth Eckford in In New Orleans and in Little Rock in their starched You know skirts and the going off to school and the bows in the hair and part of it is how could you know the racism? That was displayed against those Little six-year-old girl bodies and their starched skirts and their bows in their hair was so appalling because they're obviously Little respectable citizens, right? But the fact is that when we display that same kind of racism against a 19-year-old with his pants sagging It ought to still invoke for us the same level of discomfort So we allowed in many ways HIV to go unaddressed as a political and social issue in black communities because we didn't want to talk about what we saw as Disreputable aspects of the community, right? We didn't want to talk about LGBT Individuals within black communities. We didn't want to talk about prison. We didn't want to talk about Intervenous drug use like because we didn't want to think of those as arenas in which the contemporary civil rights movement would be Operating we just sort of like the idea that your identity has to be a secret, right? that and That's so we have to we have to kind of work on the top level because it's so well Broken down in this book. So if you if you get it, you'll get it but what one of the things that You also do which is which is helpful particularly for young scholars, too. Is it you? you you sort of underlie or you lay out actually the social Benefits of the larger community or white society from these myths, right? Like you make it clear for instance you you you make it clear how you know black women's hypersexuality Gave room for the white purity myth, you know, and so there you do that several ways So it doesn't what it does is it brings some dignity to these myths because you see why they needed to happen in order for the society to to promote Their desires and everything from welfare to like you really help Understand and the more you it's why Mammy. It's why Mammy always shows up at very particular moments, right? It's like, you know, Mammy shows up right after the Civil War. There's no Mammy myth before the Civil War, right? She shows up in Reconstruction because she has to heal the nation, right? So you need this sort of Romantic remembrance of the happy slave, right? Mammy showed up this year, right? Mammy showed up. Mammy's like it She's like came out, right because we're because we're in an economic crisis, right? And if you're in an economic crisis, what you need is Mammy, right? You you if people for example are asking for Labor rights, right? If labor unions are battling for fair working conditions Then you need to romanticize someone who worked just because she loved you or she need no Mammy didn't need a contract, right? Because Mammy was part of the family She just wanted to see you succeed, right? And let's say let's say you have a difficult, you know, sort of economic structure You're not quite sure how to navigate it and social roles are changing I mean who better than a magical Negress, right? Who despite the fact that she has no No control over her own resources or very few resources of her own Really, really the only thing that fulfills her is making sure that your household is in order Your children are well loved. Your spouse is well fed, right? Like I mean who doesn't want Mammy, right?  There is a Mammy restaurant They have lightened her complexion over the years. It's fascinating But you right the restaurant is in her skirt.  Um, so so I mean when the help came out. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that really took me over there. It was a QVC had Products in sky You don't have a Mammy meal Chicken, that's right products inspired by the help which if you identified with the white woman in the movie meant they had like cute Outfit said adorable shoes But but they also had waffle irons and No, I Wish it were a lie. I wish you were not true Wouldn't you like some products inspired by the well, you know, we hear there's coming to Broadway So we might have a help the musical but but Okay, and the thing is like I'm actually not the fun police like I actually wish that there were Some place I could go and just like sit and watch a movie. Yeah, or yes Watch a television show or listen to some music and not be assaulted. I mean, I think I think that's part of It's you know, I'm not I'm not asking for everything to be daughters of the dust, right? I mean, I'm like I'm really not and that's that that's not the standard But the fact that every sort of like black family movie is actually a movie about how black women are Temptresses and you know how if anything can just be like You can't there's no there's no comfort like you there's some part of your body that's having problems, you know and and There's also a part in the book that you do that you talk about the stress of shame Yeah, you know, and I you know, I've read about the the stress of you know poverty and stress But the actual stress of shame and and even as and you're speaking to that a little bit Like there are times when I feel stressful Watching these images being perpetuated or these conversations about us or that, you know, this whole idea of mr There's there's a stress related to that and Physiological cortisol. Yeah, there's a charge everything. There's a chart No, it so I mean it really it's helpful because it also helps to you know Liberate some of these ideas and and I and you sort of end in this place with of course with Michelle And you know this and the journey of Michelle and also making all the comparisons to Michelle to Jezebel and Mammy and Sapphire and And also what was interesting of this idea of the angry, you know black woman in the White House and and also how Michelle sort of How you related to Michelle with your experience in the Academy and at Princeton like can you talk about that?  I mean Only that really you know you remember the moment when Michelle senior thesis became public during the 2008 campaign and there was this narrative about her as sort of un-American because She'd been very critical of her experience at Princeton right and and basically she makes a statement that says something like My teachers will always see me as a black Princeton student Not just as a Princeton student and so all I do is I take one of the sort of segments Passages from her book and I try to set it next to Du Bois talking about double consciousness, right and just you know Just to sort of say that like for audiences that had ever either actually experienced or knew the scholarly work of Du Bois It's not really that surprising to hear that a black woman in an environment like Princeton would feel a sense of double consciousness right both that attachment to but also that concerned about always being seen through the You know the eyes of pity and contempt from others, right? So so that we just sort of like you could hear that and it would just sort of wash over you almost like a non-event like oh, yeah You know Michelle felt alienated at Princeton and today is Wednesday. I mean it wasn't But but for other years the idea that an African-American woman from the South side of Chicago Which is of course an exceptionally middle-class community, right? But you know out, you know up from the South side would would would come to Princeton and Feel anything other than absolute gratitude, right anything other than you know, dare I say a boot-licking gratitude, right that someone had taken her out of her circumstances and placed her in the hallowed halls of the Ivy League and For me it's that kind of That's again a kind of moment of misrecognition like you just couldn't even Hear what she was saying which wasn't I hate America it was I experienced a sense of Du Boisian double consciousness Which again is sort of such an ordinary part of black women's life experience that it it was you know The other moment was when the the fist bump, you know post-north Carolina and everyone's like oh Yeah, the fist bump and then kind of moves on but then the next day it becomes the terrorist fist bump, right? And then there was just to see okay, so I'm not even going to the other way, but So I think But I think again that's kind of I just want to reconnect that just a little bit to the politics of respectability Because part of it has to do with the claim that we might within black communities possess resources that are Valuable for esteem building that don't have anything to do with What is supposed to be important to us in a in a broader sense? So The thing that irritates the poo out of conservatives when they look I know that's a very technical term It's a conservative poo irritation You'll often hear that the reason that African-American children have an achievement gap in school is because they are teased By other African-American children for academic achievement, and so you'll hear them say things like oh You know little little Jamal did not succeed because little Leroy called him white, right? Okay, so I just want to break this down real quickly Nearly every person who's ever told me a story about being teased about their diction or their cultural choices or anything told me this story of Childhood teasing from a seat in my college classroom Like like literally almost everyone was like they tease me with me in too white like said that to me at the University of Chicago As Princeton at Doolain so although there may be painful personal experiences there There's clearly not holding back from right achievement, right? That's the first they're there because there they are right there They are the this the second thing is Does anybody think that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs were popular? No, right, right? So so the so you know one of the truths of statistics is you cannot explain a variable with a constant So if all smart children black white and otherwise are teased ruthlessly for being smart Achievers and yet some go on and become Bill Gates and others go on and don't right then you got to look for something other than that Constant to explain it, right? But I think the thing that really irritates them the thing they really just can't get their heads around is the idea that white could be an insult Because what it suggests is that someone's like, okay, that's it's funny Right that you know, yes, you control all the resources all the power all the political influence all that But but over here we have a set of things that we measure each other by right that are not those things over there Yeah, and I you know like I was watching all the soul trains post You know, yeah, I mean that was like a whole you don't know What is the longest-running music show in history in history and it was all about we don't really care We'll see and that is gonna be cool in a whole you know, I know the other way and that's that was I mean That's kind of what black cool is about and actually my little cranky essay Really talks about about that like the value of cool and that That a white gaze takes the cool out of things so and that that is currency for us that is an intelligence for us that black cool is an intelligence that is ours and It it doesn't make people and it makes it does it makes them so uncomfortable They'll create an entire educational policy who every single school's only Responsibility is not actually to teach you anything except to conform to the other norms to literally kill the cool in here But we can't it don't die. No, I know but that but that's right But but in the meantime, but that is the goal rather than just teaching cool kids to read Right the idea is to is to kill the cool because if they could just conform So like that that's why that politics of respectability is so dangerous It is because it literally can take away that what I think of as as the very resources that we have So this is the part in the program where I do what we call the 10 I asked 10 questions to our Conversationalists very much like the inside actor studio and after that we get into the community conversation So I'm at that part now so you can start to think about your questions and there's There are Microphones on either side for you for your questions. So oh, I can't I'm giving the 10 to Melissa. This is exciting. Okay, so What was your favorite toy or game as a child?  Yes, I really I Played a lot of hours of trouble. You could tell a lot about a person by their by their game of choice trouble, right? Yeah, that's true. I did I played a lot. That is so buddy. You can talk about that later. So What were you afraid of when you were a little girl and what are you afraid of now? Hmm how the I had a very sheltered childhood in certain ways Probably like I can remember being really afraid kind of in my Late elementary years like third fourth fifth grade my mom would do lots of periods of un-and-under employment And I can remember being being very afraid of like losing the house. We didn't we didn't own a house We rented right but a being kicked out or of like losing the place that we might live And I didn't I didn't feel that in like kindergarten first second third But at the end just before my mom and I moved when I was in middle school She was really experiencing a lot of employment Difficulties and so I can remember feeling a lot of angst about that And gosh, you know the thing I'm probably most afraid of now is failure, which is which is probably why I pursue it So I mean the part of you know my thing around shame is the only way you get over shame is to just kind of throw yourself out There yes, and so because I'm so afraid of failure I just like take on bigger and bigger projects where I'm more likely to fail more and more spectacularly More and more people so as to somehow manage the the fear of it. Yeah, if you could cure one chronic Social injustice, what would that be? Just one, huh? Yeah, one chronic social injustice Well, I mean I almost want to say I would just make everyone actually call President Obama President Obama instead of like but that but that seems That seems to solve it seems like I'm thinking too small. It's just the one that's bothering me the most today Yeah, you know I think I think that I think it would be I think it would be inequity in schools like like for me You know, I don't know how like I would take away racism or sexism. I mean those would be big ones but For me if there was if it was just completely clear that every five-year-old had the exact same You know opportunity for quality education is every other five-year-old that would that would work for me What woman in history would you like to have a conversation with? No, I know that one Okay, that's Ida B. Wells all right now. Yeah, it's been all I'd all the time right The past six weeks. I have been reading a lot You know Paula getting says the the brilliant Biography of Ida Wells sort of among lions and it's you know, it's about that huge and I first I looked at it I kind of you know set it down and that I've but you know, Ida went through she went through it No hashtag there She went she went through it and and she shopped the whole time like one of the things I love about Getting descriptions of Ida is how imperfect she is so like at various points She's like freedom fighting and but then she'll take her whole paycheck and blow it on a bag And then she will write on it. Oh no, I have spent my whole paycheck on a bag. My family is going to be hungry I love everything about her for all of those reasons What it what are your What are your dreams for the next generation of women of color like for for the all the young sisters that are out here What are you dreaming for them and Parker?  I mean it's it's 2012. Oh Yeah, yeah, I mean it's 2012 and we're still like having core what is on our head pain So we never got to I mean this is Never got to the root of it really really really no really we haven't so until it's healed It's gonna keep coming back It's gonna keep coming back to ask to be dealt with and black hairs are repository for all our dreams and pain and history and everything Okay, and everything everything so but but honestly For me it would be if I could imagine a world where there was no sexual assault period Like if I knew that my daughter and every daughter could just it would never happen Right, like I never had to think about it or face it or try to think about how I was gonna talk to her about it or prepare her For it or manage it or she just skipped a school like that just was never that just was an impossibility That's that's what it would be Where do you look for? Inspiration and where do you go for protection? Where do you go to feel safe? No to my husband? I know it's a terribly unfeminist answer I wish I wish it were some other answer I do I do or sometimes I just like you know, just purposely just like be mean to him Just I'm feminist. I can't like you this much Yeah, I mean that like that I'm sorry I didn't even really mean for them to pop out like that But yet to feel safe like that's that's very much a kind of James space You know my my very best girlfriend in the world who if you are a Twitter follower You know like Blair and I she is my best see bestie But Blair is not safe because because Blair because Blair always asks more of you like Blair's like Oh, I'm sorry. You feel bad and tomorrow you will do what?  It would very much be that Blair is incredibly inspiring and that she pushes pushes, but like James is like it's alright I mean at one point I said to my number going on TV again. He was like, okay Oh Right, but Blair wouldn't Blair be like what you have a plan you are going on TV again, right? So right and you sort of need you need but you need that balance. So Melissa Harris Perry. What makes you beautiful? Well It probably is because I am irrepressibly myself even when I try really really hard not to be like I just come like pushing out the sides eventually and What is it that you can't live without that's a really good question. Um, I mean the past four weeks Lifting answer You got you got a what what over there for them that might actually just be the answer Okay, that's all right. That's what it is today and What makes you powerful? The the team right it's definitely like both both the home team like Parker and James right that are like the team Yeah, and and my mom and then like I'm thinking right now I was late getting over here, but as much as I was late getting over here There are 12 people right now like writing for me for setting like we were working working working to the last second And I ran out, but they're still right. So at every point there's always a team It's part of the point of the acknowledgements. Yes, nothing nothing happens. Nothing is powerful without like a whole crew of people Yeah, I know that's right. I got a whole crew right there in the stride sweater This is my favorite question. So Melissa Harris Perry, who do you think you are I am a whole TV show Which is really not choose that name. I find it Extremely bizarre that the show and I have the same name and and at one point So Rachel's show is her name. It's the Rachel Maddow show. That's true. See how it's a different Ah, there's Rachel and then there's the Rachel Maddow show right my show is named Melissa Harris Perry So there was a conversation one point like does it have a hyphen? I was like, I don't know did it get married? So it has my name which is a weird sort of like like taking my identity in a way that I find very strange But apparently that's who I like I am I am two hours on Saturday and Sunday tend to know So and that and that's and that starts this weekend. So aren't we lucky to have this conversation with her before so, okay? So now it's your turn here the mics you can nothing's off the table Thank you so much. Of course. I was really looking forward to this conversation. It's wonderful and I'm so proud of you Dr. Harris Perry and of course, I'm proud of you Micaela and Well, I had two quick questions one is my piece actually on ebony.com about you just came out today So y'all check on ebony.com. Thank you. And but it's actually about it's entitled a Black woman's life of the mind is her own and so I wanted to ask you if you would talk a little bit about how you see Your ideal academic situation and where you see the Academy going for Sisters like us who have witnessed everything that you've been through and you've definitely held it down But what but what's the ideal situation? What do you dream about for us? And the second question quickly is just What do you think about black Twitter? Oh? Yeah. Yeah, okay, so um on the first one I mean that that is really hard and Part of what makes it so difficult is Sort of watching both my own experiences in the Academy and my best girl from Blair's right So I have at every point taught at a well-resourced private institution Where I always had even when even when it seems like I just am being attacked. It's never that way right? I always have like a team like a whole crew of lions Standing there and helping me and pushing and making all kinds of things possible And then there's my best girl from Blair who is I think most days smarter than me more diligent than me more careful than me at least as insightful often more like One third of what I say our insights glean from conversations with Blair and she has always been at an under-resourced public University and has not had the senior colleagues doing for her what so many of my senior colleagues did for me Right, so my first academic job I was up under Michael Dawson and Kathy Cohen and Michael Dawson is one of the very few there were a few there was Like when I think about the only people who I'm really sad or missing this weekend There's only a few and one of them is manning like manning not being here for this weekend makes me very sad because I Would have asked Manning what to do and I would have asked Manning what to do about the other stuff that happened And Manning would have told me because there were a few people Michael Dawson manning Marible few black men in the academy Who never treat you like their daughter or their date never they only treat you like their colleague, right? And that's who Michael was to me and to have that Was was my expectation then of what I would encounter in the world So for me, I think part of what I would say is I wish that the academy was for for all black women scholars And for all scholars period much of what it has been for me that that you know There's always gonna be And that's you know, that's just how it is but if if people had around them so much of what I've had was just to say feminist colleagues that in both male and female bodies people who Open doors for you without asking anything for themselves people who read your work when it was garbage and saw the little Negative insight in it and focused on the little negative insight and not the garbage that was all around it I mean, I can remember John Aldridge saying to me my first year of graduate school You know Melissa, I think you might be really good as a political scientist I mean, I remember that because I walked around that for the rest of my career. It's like John Aldridge told me And and like we're so engaged with being critical that we fail to just say You know, yes, he wrote seven pages and six and a half were nonsensical but this insight right here might turn into something valuable and so like if I could imagine an academy it would be an Academy that did that and especially an academy where it was not exclusively black women scholars We had to do that for up-and-coming black women scholars because I also used to think that all the black women tenured professors Who I was encountering as a grad student were horrible like I thought they were mean and nasty and But many of them were we're just protecting themselves in ways that I now recognize like they just because we were eating them Because we needed them so better like please please please please and so they had you know They had kids from the entire campus at all points sitting. I mean I sat outside my name a Lubeado's door like I must have had something else to do and I was just in her face at all points, right? And and and so so I guess that that would be it and you know, I love to like I go to Twitter I come back from Twitter. I'd be really careful not to believe Twitter because Twitter will tell you Well and Twitter would tell you to do things that you shouldn't do like go on TV and say You shouldn't do that, right? But but overall actually I find Twitter to be a really interesting place for Generating ideas find it very democratic with a little D and I and I like that about it Hi, hi, I am Mia Dunlap. I don't know if you remember me, but I was in your class at the University I remember you so well, and I'm so thrilled that you are here. I was that student gleaming at your door Which is of course why I remember you at 13 years old So I'm here, and I'm really excited to you're gonna see me was in my class like not not my call like like right Yes, like 13 years old. Okay. Yes, so We we are I'm here. It's young. They're young people here And we're just wondering what should we be doing? What can we be doing in this upward mobility? We hear all these things about Where the Martin Dr. Martin the kings of our generation or the Malcolm X's of our generation, right? So what should we be doing now and what can we be doing? Oh my god? I don't know I'm sure you know better than me. I mean, I'm like one of the things that I'm y'all are trying this mess. I cannot believe me a Dunlap is here. I Assume that The very fact that you say to me there are some young people here. Can you tell us what to do? It's first of all evidence. I'm apparently no longer one of the young people Which is really it's kind of hard for me to take for a second But it's also evidence I probably don't know like I've been having this I've been having this ongoing conversation about like what do you need to teach black kids about racism, right and there's you know There's the know your history part and there's the wanting to talk about Structural inequality and the ways which racism is operated historically But I also don't want to assume that the racism that you will encounter or that my daughter Parker will encounter is the same racism Right and so in certain ways. Yes, I can teach her about my racism But I can't teach her about hers. She will actually have to teach me back about hers because she's encountering a whole series of things that I don't know so You know if we are for example, you know saying oh that the You know we did we did away with Jim Crow So therefore, you know black youth go out and do whatever you need to do because we've done away with Jim Crow We've got you the right to vote and you're raising your hand and saying well I don't know but maybe you haven't noticed the prison industrial complex You guys didn't so much do away with that and that's having this huge impact on me, right? So I guess what I would say is when I think about what I would like to see happening among black young people is I would Really like to see black young people stop blaming themselves for the set of Circumstances in which they find themselves one of the things I really dislike is when black young people will say Well, if we were more motivated or if we were You know if we listen better in class if we I just I've encountered so many very privileged white young people Who don't do that to themselves? Who get high and come to class and become you know, Supreme Court justices, right? Like they they don't because they they they have a sense that they have a right as young people to be To fail sometimes be young experimental to be young to move through the world So, I mean, I think that's part of it is like I just I hate to see how much we police Yeah, black young people and encourage black young people to police themselves because I assume that you have like a whole like expansive Hugeness about you. So So here's the last thing I would say Stop letting people come and talk to y'all like everyone wants to go talk to the young people talk to you You should you should like not allow any of those people to ever come anywhere around you Really really the impulse should always be I would like to go listen to some black young people I like to go listen. I wonder what some young people have to say to me And this is this is part of what we have talked about for the show is You know a lot of political conversation these days is about oh the deficit is going to burden our young people or young people need This or that and almost no one actually bothers to talk to someone under 30 on air And so, you know part of what we've been talking about is trying to think about useful ways to actually stop and listen To what young and I would add that you create community be with each other and tell the truth and Support each other but like half like because she's noted like her girl Right, how many times did you talk about Blair? Like I think it's important that that you get your girls or your boys your friends create your own community and tell the Truth when you talk about things first of all just like that Thank you, and I'm just so happy to be here to see I did run into you in Florida an airport My question is to you This business with Cornell West and how would you like to address that because I really want you to like You know, you know his negative statements about you and acquiring your show and such And I just wonder if you have any ideas of what you think may be going on with him because he's been a little off I just want to know What do you think? So, um, so I I mean like I have made a decision I'm not going to address it for example in writing or in the press or anything like that that said I feel like that's a Question offered in good spirit, and so I'll just offer this. I really when I say I don't know I really honestly don't know Professor West and I have had a long-term Academic relationship that has included a lot of disagreement about politics in various ways But but we disagreed with each other politically Before I came to Princeton University, so it's not as though I came and then we began disagreeing We'd we had had what I think of as a very spirited ongoing Set of disagreements it seems clear to me from what I read that he believes I have in some way betrayed him I mean that's like when I when I read that I I feel like he thinks I've done something that is a betrayal I don't know what I when I tell you I don't know I literally do not know what that is I know what I might be able to say I felt like it was a betrayal from him, right? But I don't know What it is he feels like I did that betrayed him because I because I don't know how he Characterized that relationship or or any of that right so I honestly I don't know What I will say is I do find it very very personally hurtful and and I say that in this context because I you know part of what the book is about is pushing back against the The notion of a strong black woman and so I don't want to appear to be impervious to any of this You know, I I have cried many many times From the time that I found out that the African-American studies program not the not the Lily white Department of politics that has never had a full professor in its entire history since since the 1700s that that program that has never had a Black full professor since the 1700s voted to promote me to full professor the Center for African-American Studies chose not to that was excruciatingly painful and then to find out as I had no knowledge of previously In a article right because no one ever told me anything about the vote and then to find out in a public article that that was a unanimous vote of every Colleague that I had there That no colleague that I've that I ever had there at any time has ever at any point since I've left that university So much has sent me an email that said, you know Congratulations. Good luck best wishes. It was nice knowing you not nothing and so that's not professor West, right? He he's a very powerful and important man, but he can't he doesn't control the entire You know university, right? So so I don't so I clearly must have done something or did nothing or did something that was unrelated I really don't know but I will just say that like I would never want to give out the Notion that it's not painful to experience loss and betrayal and public hurt It is and then you take a breath and you kind of go on, right? But you know, it's not it's not a fun It's not a fun experience One last thing I'll say about it I absolutely believe in the relative autonomy of ideas from the personalities of the people who have them and so any Person who thinks well Cornell West I disagree with him or I dislike how he's talked to professor Harris Perry So I'm never gonna read race matters again.  So that I mean, I think that's that's all I would Hi congratulations yet again on your show. I'm really excited to be here and I will be brief I don't want to be too controversial, but I do work with young people. I work at Columbia University So I'm surrounded by them all day and I am in the process of reading your book And I have to say that I was a little struck a little bit about what you wrote in the book as well as what you Said here about the politics of respectability. I do run a program called sister circle where we talk a lot about How stereotypes we had a conversation about, you know, the ish media says about women of color stare, you know Asian dolls Jezebel's and Spicey Latinas and a lot of pain came out of that and a lot of Stereotypes that came up about, you know, I have to sort of code switch or do X Y or Z in order to be taken seriously and To a certain extent I feel and my students have said there is some about there's some truth and validity to that So I'm just wondering if you could talk whether or not you feel like there is some positive aspects of this politics of respectability Not necessarily in earning citizenship But just about how we present ourselves and how others perceive us in this idea of recognition Sure, sure, sure. So code switching is like learning a second language and and I think one ought to Or even being fluent in the language of one's country, right? So I code switch all the time president Obama is an exquisite code Switcher, yes, he is absolutely a ninja code switcher So no no one is right No one is suggesting that we shouldn't particularly arm young people with the tools of code switching But even the fact that that you can label it is that is indicative that you're not performing the policies Respectability because what you're not doing is saying this is what is good conform yourself to it Well, you're saying is this is what it's it's is expected Perform this right and when you help people recognize that they're actually performing it like if you actually put on a mask You're not experiencing it the same way as like if it's molded onto your face and you can't breathe through it And so so no one is suggesting that we don't teach those tools what I am saying though on stereotypes is really important In this sense, it doesn't matter If you're not a whore Jezebel will exist as a stereotype that will be used against you as a weapon Period it doesn't matter if you're not a mammy Mammy is a stereotype that exists. It will be used again like you can't Behave your way out of it when they arrested Henry Lewis Gates in his house Like if you ever thought that the public politics of respectability would save you that should have reminded you that it cannot There there is no more respectable Negro in all of America Then Henry Lewis gates. They're just isn't I mean they're just a bow tie for real I mean he rides a tricycle through Martha's vineyard That's not that is not a joke. That is an empirical description And they arrested He is the head of the do I mean like whatever you thought you could respectable your way out of no When when I when I read it on Twitter I was like they must mean like Cornell or Dyson or like there are black professors who had they been arrested I'd be like well That seems about right but skip right so so so that so that's that's the only thing I guess I'm wanting to push like you teach the code switching But then you also teach that that is that's actually not you and that performance of it can't save you from the realities It come down because the danger for me is if when we for example accept the mantle of the strong black woman Then we don't ask for help because who needs help if you're impervious, right?  Hi. I want to say congratulations on the book in the show I know a couple of us really gonna watch it But I wanted to ask you and pick your brain on a question that I've had numerous conversations My friends about is the popularization and the change of hip-hop culture into pop culture That now we have the McDonald's 360 commercials and they're rapping car auto commercials and the dollar band Yeah, like how do you feel about it? Is it like a relieving sense like finally hip-hop culture is being recognized as you know something current and active or is it kind of Insulting and the change that it's made to a cartoon typecast situation, right? I mean so this is the part where I'm old right because I basically think that tribe was the last quality hip-hop So like I but I get that that is my you know I get that every person who's older always looks at all young people's music and finds it You know, right preposterous right ridiculous except that I do like Nicki Minaj And I don't care what you say.  So there's there's all kinds of ways in which The embeddedness of everything everything that is uniquely American was created by black culture And so it's not really that's that's probably a slight overstatement. I'm a little punchy, but pretty close to that, right? I mean jazz blues hip-hop everything that just actually got created here and didn't get imported Happened in the black Atlantic diaspora of blackness in a global way, right? So it's not just like American domestic Negroes But black Negroes with you know, West Indian ones and African ones, and you're doing the whole thing that is the black Atlantic So the fact that it becomes American when it is so American sort of makes me shrug I'm like I'm not that terribly surprised by it But what you could always bet is that then there will be a backlash against it, right? So we're seeing it now with Lynn Sanity, right? So I love Lynn Sanity who wouldn't love Lynn Sanity Great, it's basically bringing like everything we love about college basketball to pro basketball Like the idea that something amazing could happen never happens in pro basketball But it's getting read in this cultural way that he's going to be this model minority that will teach You know all of these out-of-control black men with all this swagger how to like bring their game and their cells back in line now Black swagger is what makes the NBA the multi-million dollar Say that Right That actually is the thing that makes all those white men rich is the black swagger But it's but you can bet that they're gonna both co-op it and police it at the same time And so so they're gonna so and I guess so for me I would just want to be aware of that like I don't want to stop it I just want us to be able to read that so when we see it happen We go, oh, okay. Well, I'm a root for Lynn and y'all not gonna talk about my you know The brothers that way right like both of those at the same time Hi, so we have time for two more questions. Okay. All right. I'll go faster. Hi, bro. Oh, no, what's your turn? I'm sorry. I got excited. That's my friend, Russell. Oh, okay. Hi. Um, I teach high school English in a district that believes it's suburban, but it's urban and and This is a this is a district where the volleyball Participants felt that it was okay to name themselves South and put 1860 on the back of their shirts. Okay How do I help the girls and the boys actually I mean we had such an uproar about this The student of course the all the black students said they're not gonna get punished and they didn't they weren't suspended had it been us We would have been suspended immediately for 10 days and blah blah blah But the principal actually got on the PA system the next day and made the apology For the players of the volleyball team, you know, what do I do and my The black kids that I have, you know, they're almost Campbell You're always teaching us about black history and you always want you need to know Trust me what I'm teaching you. Okay, and they are fighting it tooth and nail But yet they'll get so angry when something like this happens. So, okay, I'm sorry. So they Call themselves They were initially gonna call themselves the rednecks, but that was they would they were told that they couldn't do that Okay, so they call themselves south. They just put south and then they then the 1860 so we know a couple things, right? Yeah, they actually know when the Civil War occurred I Job history teachers at your school and then they align themselves with the team that lost Right there they're an athletic team, correct. Yes, but it's it's it's volleyball. So right, right, so they I'm not really sure why y'all a man I mean like I feel like y'all should wear shirts to say North 1864 So, I mean, I'm sorry. I mean like I don't mean to make light of it, but but I will say I yeah, I mean I will just say look This will be true the the fact that and I think it's part of what belies the notion of us in a post-racial America And this is why because their their knowledge of that cultural artifact of that ability to do that is Indicative that people are continuing to be socialized into racism. So the the the most Exquisitely interesting thing about the general Louisiana moment for me was not so much that it happened But why would kids of that age know the lynching nooks like why why would that be available as a trope like what? There hasn't been a lynching of that sort, right? There was there have been some modern listening, but they weren't lynchings You know on the tree sort for a very long and and as you undoubtedly know, we don't teach it really in school So where did that come from? How does someone know that trope? How do young people know to deploy racism in those particular ways it tells us that there's an active process of Socialization into racism right and so you know so because that's happening because that's true so they when I was in college the black fraternity first black fraternity got a house on the yard and In response one of the white fraternities went over to the porch and lynched squirrels, right? So there were all these hanging squirrels, right, and it was you know was the 90s and We were listening to tribe And and you know again There was one of those moments where you know we wore the black arm bands and we were mad and all that But the fact is I now being on college campuses. I mean it's it's rhythmic like every year There's going to be some experience where young white people who should be at this point two to two and a half generations out From even knowledge of these things not only do it, but they deployed in these really what I find hilarious Like I think South 1860 is hilarious. So so all I will say is you know you need the North 1864 shirt or or Take the Confederate flag and recast it in red black and green and put the South shall rise again Because so rarely men ask questions, I'm going to I'm going to stretch this and and have a rust and Also ask a question so we could so both be so everybody brief so we can get to two brothers in So I am very excited and been a huge fan for a long time as someone who's worked in television But I also understand I'll keep this short. There's a business side to what you do. Oh, yeah, and So two part question What is the measure of success for the executives who? Supporting your show and understand that smart TV takes smart people And what is your measure of success for this show? And is there a gap between the two yes, that's a really really good question so And this is you know, I'm relatively naive of a lot of this stuff, but I like I just got it today So I'm telling you all kinds of inside business all and down to be fired for but So like I found out today, you know We're launching the show Saturday and as you might imagine We have been thinking about every minute of what this show is gonna sound like and be like we're writing we're doing research and pulling and and You know the show runs 10 a.m. To noon. Anybody know what's happening at 11 30 on Saturday morning So I've been given an edict about what happens at 11 30 Saturday morning on my show. Yeah Now luckily This particular Edict comes with an ability to talk about really interesting things that I care about race and gender and popular culture and pop I mean Whitney Houston is Actually a worthy Reason to pause and think about all of these things and can still open up lots of conversations But whether or not it will open up conversations or whether or not I'm gonna have to actually turn into anchor girl and say There is I mean it seems like more than slightly possible that that's that that is going to be what will happen because what's going to happen is I'm going to be on a Cable television network and there will be an actual news event happening and all of our competitors are going to be doing wall-to-wall coverage of it And you know I had a plan with a black girl talking about Whitney, right? It's not even that like if it had been happening during Chris A's the show They just would have broken to Chris's it just but there's a particular thing about you are the expert on black girls Yes, and this is America's sweetheart black girl that was really complicated and crack is whack black girl Yes, so you're You yes, yeah, so this is so this is like so I am experiencing it like right at this moment Yeah, and my sense of like oh and so we took the little segments that we were gonna do that day We put a little folder and now we're not doing those segments at that point. Is it ratings? Is I assume that for them it is ultimately ratings although there's a weird way that cable news works It apparently is not purely about ratings But something to do with pickup and blah blah blah and what I do know is I've been given sort of a six month Window where they say you know nobody expects you to have ratings in the first six months because in the first six months If people don't even know really know the show is on blah blah blah. I literally don't know what the ratings I don't know where one finds them. I don't know how to look at them. I don't know what they mean I'm actively trying to stay naive of them I think success for me would be getting fired pretty quickly because I have a two-year contract that has to pay me even if I don't go to work and I'm a pretty strong believer that getting a paycheck if you are not traveling back and forth between New Orleans and New York is a Very good measure of having made a successful life choice Good evening. I'll make this really quick Thank you for being here It is clear that you are a thinker and I think we could use more thinkers in this world And it seems to me that your work is dedicated to making us and challenging challenging us to think so The thing about thinkers is is when they're let loose everything is at risk So including why I wear what I wear why I think what I think why I'm a part of the community that I'm a part of Why I tend to associate with black people not white people not Asian people. So with that respect my question is how do you negotiate the relationship between on one hand being Engaged in the free disinterested thought that is designed to get to know yourself and grow yourself and on the other hand Associating or or wanting to be a part of this These communities these larger communities of woman black woman man black man and so forth Yeah, yeah, again, that's not a small thing like I As much as I was so thrilled to hear you I am so nervous that y'all are gonna hate some of the stuff that I do And expect you to and sort of want you to right? I mean there are moments when I'm gonna actively hope that That black women watching are gonna be irritated by some of what I do because I'm trying to never it's never disinterested But but I do like the idea of free. I wish the name of my show was mad free instead of But the thing is like you you actually do feel that desire I mean, you know, literally when I'm writing sometimes I'm thinking to like especially when I'm writing for the nation I think to myself, okay Is if I'm saying what I Fully believe or think that data are showing me in this moment But also wanting to balance that against the realities of all the power and politics So the clearest example of this is how I deal with President Obama, right? I mean it will extend to how I deal with black women and all kinds of other things but the fact is My opinions empirically or personally about President Obama do not exist in a vacuum of Disinterested intellectual thought they exist within a political milieu when we are in an election year And he's being attacked at every point and any criticism can be deployed in a way that I don't mean it to be So I just had this kind of free-ranging conversation about LGBT questions with Metro weekly where I said Oh, you know, which president basically President Obama would evolve already on, you know, marriage equality Like I just I don't actually don't even buy that President Obama isn't quite sure about marriage equality I should think that personally he's probably right there But that like politically he won't be and I kind of get why he won't be politically but it irritates me and so Now that's that is what I believe to be empirically true It also is not without real political dangers and real political costs in this environment And so I guess all I can say is I'm gonna be balancing them at all times and I'm gonna get them right sometimes and wrong sometimes But always with the goal of at least making people feel like I didn't do it Offhandedly or flippantly that any choice I'm making that I'm actively making it as a choice Even if it may in any, you know, given case end up being the wrong choice Wasn't this good y'all? I just really want to thank The Brooklyn Museum again because I mean, I know that all of you all come to the Brooklyn Museum But they they get the community and you you've given us you've given us space to have these Conversations and share the work that we do and you support the community and you support us and We love the Brooklyn Museum. So thank you On behalf of the Brooklyn Museum I would like to thank both of you for what was truly an inspiring engaging thought-provoking conversation So Melissa Harris Perry, Mick Kale, Angela Davis. Thank you so much And I also want to thank all of you for sharing your voices and for being open to participating so actively in this conversation And I want to draw your attention to the fact that there's many counterpoints to the conversation that we just had in our special exhibition question bridge blackmail which is on display on our second floor and Will be the conversation will be continued at what we're calling the question bridge blueprint roundtable on May 19th Which will be a community open forum to discuss many of the conversations that We've started here tonight and within the blackmail community as well


Good morning, everyone. Basil Chapman here on this 24th of January, Monday. This is the Tiger Financial News Network 10 a.m. update. Dows down 556 at 33706. Trying to find some kind of a bottom. Are we getting so oversold that we could have a decent bounce? We are very close. Look at the volatility index screen this morning. All the way to the 35 80 level above the high that was made, and that was December the 3rd, I believe, at 3532. So everything is in place to at least attempt some kind of a rally today. We'll see. Wow. This is really bad. We're looking at the S&P down 88 at 4307, almost at that low that was made back in October. It wasn't the first, the week of the 8th, at 4278, and with the low today so far is 4299. Looking at the QQQ123, there we go. NTX100 trading vehicle. As I said, to subscribe to an opening call on my market overview on Saturday and my video. The QQQs have gone to a sell mode in the day, and a sell signal that is almost certainly a sell mode in the weekly chart. The monthly chart, still looking, I mean, there's a huge red candle, but we can't talk about that when it's, we have to wait for the end of the month. So down 6.60 at 345 with a little potential doji candle, right? Yes, stochastic at 1%, 1.6% for the stochastic. That is extremely oversold. The on balance phones at an oversold level, MACD still looking terrible. The night period has already started to widen below the 14 period. Very ugly. IWM, same thing. IWM is down 357 at 193, way below the key support levels. And now what we're looking at is Gold Tractor Rally. It is not up just a fraction, a half a point at 1832. Seems to me struggling for a reason because look at the dollar. The dollar is acting really well here. Look at that. 39 cents at 96.03. Don't complain, they are longer dollar. Looking at the TLT, the TLT is in fact up a little bit, up 54 cents and 144. A lot to discuss when we get back, my take a technicians hour, take an opening call, my take a newsletter. I'll be back in a moment. There's a lot to discuss. Even Kudo, Kudo is pulling back.


I'm P.C. Reese Edwards, I'm based at Bridgend Police Station and I've been a police officer for just over four years now. I'm P.C. Chris Black, I'm also based at Bridgend Police Station and I've been a police officer for 20 years. March 2016 last year we called and addressed at Bridgend information that a female had mental health problems, had barricaded herself into her room and would threaten to set herself on fire if anybody went near her. So we've forced the door open a bit and on looking in we've seen her then on a bed, lighting bits of paper or tissue trying to set herself on fire on the bed. As a result of that then we've forced the door and gone in. In her hand pointing into her mouth is what he thought was a metal hanging at the time.  That moment when you go to a call you don't really think about your own safety as such. You've got to get in there and do it. Most important is to get that person to safety and worry about yourself later. Being nominated for the award it's obviously nice with a bit of recognition but at the same time there's lots of people doing what we do. As I said there's other people that do equally as important stuff and put themselves at a lot more risk but it's nice to be recognised also for what we do.