When Sen. Cory Booker, ’91, MA ’92 ran for President in 2019, he spoke about the importance of “going to places other people ignore.” A longtime advocate for racial justice and equality, Sen. Booker has backed up his words with action: for starters, by co-sponsoring bills on energy and food assistance for low-income communities, greater mental health resources for underfunded public schools, and making a continued push for bipartisan police reform in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Earlier this month, he introduced a Senate bill as a companion to the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act that would classify lynching as a crime under existing federal hate crime statutes. With lynching used as a means of historical racialized violence to “oppress and subjugate Black communities,” Booker said the Senate-approved bill would “not undo the terror and fear of the past, (but is) a necessary step that our nation must take to move forward.”

The Stanford Center for Racial Justice was honored to host Sen. Booker and fellow esteemed guests Maureen Keffer, JD ’11, Chief of Civil Rights, Accessibility and Racial Equity (CARE) at the California Department of Social Services, and Goodwin Liu, ’91, Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, for our recent discussion on “Rethinking Race, Dismantling Racism, and Furthering Justice.” The event, moderated by Ralph Richard Banks, ’87, MA ’87, SCRJ Faculty Director and Co-Founder, and George Brown, SCRJ Executive Director, was held on campus during Alumni Reunion 2021.

Our panelists challenged audience members and viewers on YouTube to move America toward greater justice for all by expanding our knowledge, humanizing one another, and becoming advocates in the spaces where we each have influence and persuasion.

Below are highlights (click on the hyperlinks for video excerpts) from our conversation.

On maintaining momentum for important racial justice concerns once the headlines fade:

Citing a high-profile incident from 30 years ago, Liu said the Rodney King beating by Los Angeles police officers offers important historical context for a nation still grappling with the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and many more. “Every generation is still experiencing this kind of, frankly, it’s a form of trauma to our values, to all the things we hold dear. How do we elevate and make more prominent this set of concerns so we’re not cycling?” he said. Liu pointed to his high school-aged daughter as a springboard for hope while applauding the younger generation and its higher awareness and compassion for racial justice. He advised us to follow their lead and make today’s social justice issues personal—as in the case of same-sex marriage, which led to sustained change in hearts, minds, and policy.

On the path forward for policing, mass incarceration, and how the federal government can address pathologies of policing:

While talking about the challenges behind his push for bipartisan police reform, Sen. Booker highlighted statistics on incarceration and policing, noting that “we (the United States) are the number one incarceration nation on the planet Earth; one out of every three incarcerated women in the world is here in the United States of America.” He specifically questioned how America employs police and prisons to address mental health concerns and societal problems like poverty and addiction. “The biggest mental illness institutions in the United States of America (are) prison and jails. We are a nation that does not want to deal with addiction … we are a nation that does not want to deal with the violence of poverty.”

On avoiding complicity in societal ills and creating better allyship:

Keffer encouraged white people to speak their conscience, be aware of the diversity of viewpoints in every room they enter, and understand their moral responsibilities to those without a voice. She gave several examples of how white privilege—even if it’s not thought of by white people as a privilege—can be used to empower and assist those who don’t have access or influence, such as, “raising a hand in a meeting when … a Black colleague has been interrupted, and trying to redirect the conversation back to their contribution.” Keffer also encouraged Stanford graduates to remember what they “learned or should have learned in kindergarten about how you treat other people … we have the intellectual capability of taking that to a systems level. We all can do that, and have the obligation to do that.”

On personal and professional experiences that influence thinking and action:

Liu explained how he takes his legal clerks to San Quentin State Prison so that they can engage with inmates about their life stories and learn to appreciate their humanity. “Before we can even talk about policing or institutions or anything, I think really … in our hearts is where we have to make the biggest change,” Liu said. He evoked the words of “Just Mercy” author and attorney Bryan Stevenson by encouraging us to move “in closer proximity” to the challenges we need to confront—the opposite of how prisons are constructed “to distance ourselves” from the reality of incarceration.

In her work, Keffer emphasized the power of listening sessions from community members. They’re the ones, she said, who advocate for improved safety through restorative justice, greater mental health resources, and above all, working together along racial lines. However, she acknowledged that from a social services perspective, the lack of providers to carry out those key services remains a problem. “I see the way that our social safety net is full of holes,” Keffer said. “How are we going to create the conditions for safety … for collaboration … and for communities to really thrive when we are underinvesting in these programs?”

After talking passionately about his time as mayor of Newark, N.J., Sen. Booker traced the path from holistic service to a national transformation based on love. He asserted that data from conservative and liberal think tanks shows that spending money on programs that align with our core values (such as empathy and compassion), look at people holistically, address poverty, and deal with post-traumatic stress disorder saves the public more money in taxes than policing and prison. Instead of fearing and imprisoning one another, he called for “a nation that learns to love each other through our policy”—especially the most vulnerable among us.

—Oluwadamilola Animashaun and Thomas Rozwadowski