(As in the prologue. Wearing a bright-colored jacket, onstage, comfortable living-room-type chair. Handheld microphone. Ms. Ifill is a public figure whose speech pattern and behavior is available to observe. Perhaps some indication that time has passed, less water in the pitcher, etc.)
At one point, we had investments in our public school system. The end of serious investment in our public school system happened with the work of my predecessor, Thurgood Marshall, and desegregation. With Brown v. Board of Education. When you had massive resistance in the South. When the Prince Edward County school board decided to close the schools in Virginia for five years rather than—rather than integrate. Close the schools for five years. We—we broke our contract with education and we’ve never been able to get back to where we were. And so we’ve taken the mentality around those investments and we’ve placed them elsewhere.
So now, we’re in a moment where people recognize? Across the board? That mass incarceration has gotten completely out of whack. And so this is a moment of reinvestment. And the question is: Where are we going to reinvest? And it’s not just about dollars. But we have a mo— W-we’re gonna do something with it. It’s not gonna just go into the ether. It’s gotta get invested somewhere.
And so while, yes, we want body-worn cameras, and we want things around policing, we also want a massive kind of investment of the kind that was the interstate highway system, you know? To focus on…how do we give people the opportunity to be people with a future. And education is a central piece of that. And so getting this understanding, what this moment means.
(Pause.)
There’s a lot of heaviness and a lot of pain in—even in places that haven’t had, you know, these incidents happen or had unrest happen in a very public way…There’s a lot of heaviness. In this country, in this moment. There’s a lot of pain.
We are—when I was a kid, I used to—my father was a—was a huge history buff and he was a race man, and so we watched, you know, every documentary that was on about the civil rights movement, and I remember feeling like I had missed it. “Darn it! It looked great, it looked fantastic, and I missed it!”
And so what I’d say to young people now is like: “So this is it!” You know, like, twenty years from now somebody will be saying, “I missed it!” Y’know?
And it’s not just one, it’s many. And this is the one. And as difficult as it is, and as heavy as it feels, there is a privilege in it. Because in this moment, this is the space where change can happen. It only can happen in a country as entrenched, particularly around issues of race, the moments when we move are the moments when we have to confront ourselves.