Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates Jr interview on "The Future of Race" (1996)

Henry Louis Gates is chairman of the department of afro-american studies at Harvard University since arriving at Harvard from Duke he is set about to establish an intellectual dream team and he is well on his way in 1994 he lured philosopher Cornel West from Princeton he lured William Julius Wilson from Chicago gates and West have joined to write the future of the race examining the famous double ueb Du Bois essay the talented tenth each is a best-selling author in their own right and they are two of America's most popular intellectuals and they're friends of this broadcast so I'm very pleased to have them here welcome thank you Charlie before we talk about this book let me just talk about what in the world is going on at Harvard and the department of afro-american studies what are you trying to do what are you doing what's the goal well our goal quite frankly was to put together one of the most sophisticated assemblages of scholars of the African American experience ever to be at one place one time in the American Academy and you are on your way well we're getting there we get any 1l you got William Julius Wilson you've got one Brooklyn Pig about them coming on Higginbotham you know they're there Anthony Appiah came with me from Duke most the thing with African intellectual but it says something you have to go to Duke and rob them of their professors it says something about Duke doesn't it how does it do I know but the goal is to do what to change the face of afro-americans scholarship or to change the face of the debate about Afro Americans in our society african-american scholarship has a long and distinguished history we very much see ourselves as being plugged into that tradition of noble excellent scholarship that's why we took Dubois as si the talented tenth and then rift on it in our two takes at the end of the century what does this mean for us we'll come to that just a moment sure but I'm saying that notion of tradition is fundamental to us it's not that we're new you know black people always reinventing themselves you know you're colored then you become negro and then you become black and then you become an African afro-american then you become an African American and I tell my students powerful people don't change the day every 10 years yeah it's a sign of powerlessness I think if you pretend that everything you're doing is brand new and has no precedent and it's a sign of insecurity now we see ourselves very much as extensions of a great tradition of black intellection epitomize when people like Dubois but we also to answer your question right see ourselves as blessed and privileged at a time when a huge percentage of African American community is suffering and I think our task is to figure out how race and class produce their peculiar compounding effect at this time in America's history at a time when we have the largest black middle class in history fully 1/3 of the black communities in the middle-class black community middle class has quadrupled since today dr. King was killed yet fully one-third of our people are worse off than they were under the ice is growing exponentially worse off than the day King and here is my first question but we move to the book and come back to the University do they know each other the middle class or have they become in your words uncoupled so that there is no real connection between black underclass I'll start with you Cornel I think the black intellectuals the black middle class the people who prospered I mean keep in mind that there's an electorate among the black working class black middle class even black work or poor but we're talking about credential eyes intellect so that's something else but keep in mind we'd only make relative judgments we make relative judgments in regard to what it looked like under American apartheid under Jim Crow Jane crow of course the black middle class was there with the black working class and the black very very poor after 1965 as a result of the blood sweat and tears are those freedom fighter the various colors but disproportionately black were able to push through break through the walls of American apartheid and create new opportunities and hence the class divisions class differentiations as well as black middle class flight to suburbs often black suburbs as opposed to white suburbs but suburbs nevertheless and so we do in fact have increasing tensions and frictions as well as distances and that's also true in terms of generations but I mean we don't want to yes there's no distance that we've ever had more distance than you ever had before because of the end of residential segregation you see we were all together because of segregation you got with integration people can go where that money will take them right if a law says all black shall are all black shan't that means that the law treats all black people as a class and it meant that you could not live in Scarsdale or white plains or wherever it might be you had to live uptown and now you can live if you have sufficient resources pretty much where you want okay Du Bois believed and he gave his famous lecture and then later he here iam façades that or he updated it about the talented tenth but in his judgment he found it in capable of both being an American and being black and so he went away to live a life of an expatriate yes and no indeed indeed Amin but one of the boys is the greatest black scholar produced in this country yet he was still a child of his age deeply shaped by Victorian social criticism very much like Thomas Carlyle strong heroes or Matthew Arnold's disinterested aliens who represent the best and the brightest who would uplift refine and it's in some ways even civilize the uncouth in the unrefined moaning masses and what was great about that was this notion of service what was wrong about that was the elitism and so what we're trying to do is to reshape his understanding of what it is to be one who speaks for and and with other persons such that one does not view oneself as being over and above but rather rendering service to others who are less about two of you go ahead oh I was gonna disagree with tell you one of the times up but also I think that we're concerned with what does it mean to be a member of this crossover generation yeah what does it mean to be a member of this new black middle class we've always had classes in the black community but never a class structure quite like this never as my mama used to put it blacks with as much white money and as in it compared in the old days to having colored money as she put it what does that mean and all sorts of anxiety all sorts of angst ensues from this new class status and and as we right the guilt of the survivor obtains as well yeah but I read you as nots as saying that you you avoid guilt well you avoid guilt I think that the blackest thing that one could do the blackest thing as it were that one could be is a well-educated person I do not feel guilty about my endowments however limited they might be I feel that it is a gift and with that gift comes a certain responsibility so what we try to do with our students we face this all the time what we try to do our students is to transform that guilt that guilts a powerful emotion for it said that it makes a civilization work I'd like to what we try to do is take that guilt and transform it into an idea of ethical commitment and moral service to those less fortunate producers to quote you our goal is to provide solutions to the issues of race and class in America well it's not the court actually I want it but basically what you were saying is that it's important to for the black intellectuals as I without to paraphrase it at the same time as not lose sight of but not feel guilty about the other side those that have failed and at the same time to explore that without and still take pride sure because we have examples and we all know this painfully well let me interrupt and repeat that because here I found it you need a way of speaking about black poverty that doesn't falsify the reality of black advancement and speak about the advancement in a way that doesn't distort the enduring realities of black poverty as we know painfully well we have examples of very intelligent african-american adolescents and college-age people who intentionally fail there are underachieve because they feel it's not black quote-unquote there was a poll that was published in The Washington Post not long ago and it was inner-city black teenagers in DC and it asked them to list things white and among the the items on that list were getting straight A's speaking standard English and visiting the Smithsonian I have had students on this broadcast we explored that idea who said they didn't do well because their colleagues their black colleagues would use it as a note of scorn to say you're trying to be like whitey and so what we do in afro-american studies is to show the basic connection between freedom and literacy that undergoes undergirds I'm sorry the African American literary tradition meaning in the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass equates mastering the ABCs and then the literacy of literature as it were the literacy of Western culture with a freedom larger than physical freedom a freedom of the mind a metaphor that that to me is the key because we have to raise the question why it is that some of the younger brothers and sisters would not equate intellectual work with empowerment mm-hmm we do want to accent intellectual creativity and originality but we've got to connect it to ways in which people feel as if it can enrich and enhance their lives and their condition when when skip and I rather skip and I were growing up reason why we read so voraciously the Ellison's and the Morrisons as well as it.the told stories and the check officers because we were thoroughly convinced that to immerse ourselves into the life of the mind we could contribute to the struggle for freedom the wrestling with the various forms of human suffering once that severed then it becomes a plaything and becomes a life of its own associated with I should become severed will become separate when in fact there's not enough examples of intellectuals who are involved in various efforts to in to to to contribute to involved in various efforts to enhance the lives of persons when they view intellectual achievements solely as a matter of social status solely as a source of condescension and arrogance then in fact it's severed and longer becomes attractive and appealing and it becomes severed when we lack the mentors in our neighborhood in our families in our communities to say this is the most positive contribution that you can make to the civil rights struggle to the race toward the condition of black people which is why we in part read so voraciously and read so voraciously without guilt you know with enormous satisfaction but to grow up to be Thurgood Marshall maybe you couldn't get better than that that's what we were taught get all education can boys have no white man could take it away from him I must have heard that a million times that was what being black was all about that was what being a Negro was all about and now that message is not in communicators speaking of speaking of Thurgood Marshall the late Supreme Court justice he assembled his own dream team when he was going to argue before the Supreme Court I mean he was that part of a model of what you're trying to do Harvard in a sense with that oh absolutely I was thinking of not so much Thurgood Marshall's team but Howard University circa 1940 1950 way was there and so Frazier Abrams Harris Alain Locke the great road scholar and black philosopher Charles Hamilton Houston Thurgood Marshall Lyons there Howard and we came tie their shoes man very much so yeah it was a spectacular place to be and why shouldn't we be part of a team you see the model before was that Cornel West would be at Princeton and Anthony Appiah would be at Yale right and Bill Wilson would be at Chicago it's like Johnny Appleseed you go there and integrate the school John Hope Franklin that's a great example yeah and then he was at the University of Chicago he was in Brooklyn you know chairman of the history department 1957 Brooklyn College headlines in New York Time one only one on the block and our model was different we looked at the 25 previous years in the development of African American Studies and the integration and fairly significant numbers of persons of African descent in historically white institutions and said what's wrong with this model and what's wrong is it being isolated like that makes it more difficult to cross pollinate each other to feed on each other to riff on each other man having every day life I walk past when I go into my office I walk past offices of Anthony Appiah Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Cornel West by the time I get to my house I'm pumped up maybe feeling hopefully in fury the counterintuitive move is that you have to surround yourself people who make you work harder make you run faster and what too many people have done is to surround themselves with dwarfs or no one at all you're also doing I know this from from what you're creating these people like Cornell I assume in the Theological Seminary Department up there whatever the Department of Energy and Higginbottom is going to be what affiliated also with history the history department and you've got candidates go and her husband will be Kennedy Kennedy School in school so they are only not only there at afro-american studies but they also write part of the faculty at the other because part of the goals that you transform the culture of an institution like Harvard and it's easier to do that if you're fighting to in two sites rather than what do you have in common with Louis Farrakhan me or both named Louis yes I think we both share a tremendous love of language yeah I love of ideas and I think we both share a tremendous compassion about the fate of African American people but you didn't attend the Million Man March no but I didn't until I was going to I I was going to cover the Million Man March eating in a way but I was going to write about for The New Yorker yeah so you know Cornell took him understand come on just because why because it took a lot of flack for that was did you did you know you're gonna take flak when you took went down there I figured I'd take some flak in yeah but it wasn't a question of focusing on the flak why did you go well I went mainly because we wanted to send a sign of hope we wanted to try to give convince persons that black suffering along with the suffering of other working people and poor people ought to be much more at the center of the political as well as the national agenda and we know we live in a world in which images actually have waiting gravity and this is a powerful image of black humanity and black decency all those men and their sons and daughters they're absolutely never that place at that time absent saying what saying that we will not allow the present circumstances to dictate our conception of the future and though there may not been that every damn it may not have been enough political criticism at the March we heard it from Jesse Jackson a few others they have an attempt to link the need for black spirituality and my spirituality I mean conceiving of oneself with a subject with a sense of possibility but linking that spirituality to some motion and movement and prints taken primarily the form of activism joining organizations churches mosque and so on you know but back to Dubois the thing that surprised me about what you say is that he put too much faith in education how can you put too much faith in education thinking about the issues that were talked about at the Million Man March well one is because education is not inherently humanizing you don't simply immerse yourself in great text and an image and infer you're gonna be a good person we see Nazis we see white supremacist we see male supremacist we see Houma folks who are highly educated something else must go on some transformation of will some attempt to courageously wrestle with the evil inside other than that coming from character formation that comes from virtue instilling activities and that comes from family and role models and religion was a variety of different social relations family is one at its best church in Moss at its best educational institutions at their best media at its best but none of these institutions have a monopoly on that character formation those besides Du Bois believe that the reason white people were racist was because they were ignorant ignorant lacking knowledge of who the Negro really was and so he set out to educate them basically he said he felt he did he failed to change them therefore education didn't work no he fell did the real causes of racism where economic much deeper than that's right that they had to do with scarcity and the perception of scarcity and that race stands as a mask or metaphor for deeper economic relationship that I oh absolutely I do too absolutely Cornel you I think it's it's it's deeply economic I think it's even deeper than the economic I think it's psycho culture and has to do with the fear of the other and anxiety of those who define that's different but the economic factor is a crucial one the two of you what do you argue what do you differ the most about when you look at your shared place now on this faculty at Harvard and you look at the roots and you write movingly of your experience at Yale and intellectual experience there this is more of a personal essay by you and your own and you personalize your experience and why that was important for that generation at the time but when what are you to disagree about one thing we disagree about is whether or not George Clinton is the superior artist to Donny Hathaway or as much as he is he's almost assumed a mantle of almost God shipped to you you differ on Dubois no I think that were we we differ I'm not going to speak for Cornel okay and he was speaker himself and I believe the capitalism is I started say infinitely expandable infinitely malleable I think that it's not infinitely malleable but I think that it is impressively flexible and I think it will do and this is good mad what I'm about to say it'll do anything to survive I think Oppenheimer and company sat down in South Africa looked at the facts harry Oppenheimer that's right and they said a part dates got to go because we're gonna lose all our money we don't like these people don't like him any better than we did we're gonna let that guy what's his name out of jail and we're gonna change the society because we want our profits yeah now I can work within a system like that to me what we then do is figure out where the pressure points are how to manipulate it how power is distributed capturespace I heard Cornel describe that about my philosophy the other day and it's absolutely right I believe that we have to capture space I'm a centrist I'm in the I jokingly call him play the clear-eyed progressive which he is and I'm the socialist I am them in them he's a socialist I'm the messy I mean my personality is muddled middle I am the 3m guy I see myself as a as a senator senator left any one foot to left one but that's where my personally I've had this conversation this is nothing new that we've talked about social democracies he believes it and going to the world something in Berlin but I believe that we need to have forms of social service that express forms of compassion for our fellow human beings I think it's disgusting that we live in the society where people live in the street but do and you believe in what I mean you see I'm a democratic experience a when you say socialists oftentimes that scares people because they think of the ugly socialist past but the point is that it is impossible to have a system like capitalism that's predicated on profit maximizing that does not end up generating high levels of inequality of wealth without there being democratic countervailing forces now I know we're gonna live in a capitalist world for a long time to come that I'm gonna die in a capitalist world but I'm going to keep track of the suffering in that world no matter what suffering that in part has to do with inequality of wealth and power has something to do with a disproportionate amount of wealth and power of corporate elites in fact it's believed that well okay let me do you believe that other systems of government have and more for the mass of people then capitalism has I believe that act is President momentary an adventure that the virtues of capitalism have been to generate levels of productivity and technological innovation that has facilitated the creation of certain mass middle classes in North Atlantic societies at the same time the only alternative to emerge have been socialist ones which have been repressive and regimented when it comes to rights and liberties but have been better when it comes to health care and education so the question becomes look we've got these two systems both have deep flaws one has completely failed because liberties and rights are precious so that's what that's the reason why the Soviet world had to collapse and rightly so but that doesn't mean that prevailing capitalist global capitalist world doesn't have deep structural flaws and let me say this especially on Good Friday I think one one of the issues where you'd get a difference between brother skip and myself is that I am an unabashed on a shame Christian and by Christian what I hear well he's got deep spirituality I think but he's tend to be much more improvisational I think what a formal Christian do I believe in God yes and my religious person yes I just don't like I wrote this Risa I just don't like to talk about it that much but is it I mean are you Buddhist are you more Confucian are you more or more of a Christian if I'm if I get sick my father my father had was detected prostate cancer was diagnosed my father when he was 62 first thing I did was cry as a matter of fact the second thing I went up to my bedroom got down my knees and I prayed to God and his son was Jesus and he died on Good Friday and was resurrected on on Easter that is the god of my childhood there's a God of my father's and that's the God I pray to in in times of celebration and in times of desperation but to say that one of my three or for principle identities is my religion would not be true to say that about corner what's would be true no its first I'm first and foremost the question but by Christian you see is one who is works through check off through Coltrane through Tony Morrison and says what that the tragic comic character of the world is such that the suffering and the pain and the grief that sit at the center of it serve as the terrain upon which we must struggle but preserve our compassion no matter what I mean I don't have to be a Christian to make those kinds of claims but it's my particular journey that lead me to arrive at those colors when I raised the question of government question of capitalism and and and economic structure I was also leading to a notion of whether you too saw the role of government in questions of race the same or differently whether it isn't go ahead I'm sure that we do I mean to me see if the cast is in a slightly larger frame let's talk about the causes of poverty right or let's talk about the causes of the signs of middle class okay causes of poverty of both structural and behavior and you can only deal with structural problems structurally you need government intervention you need certain entitlement programs you need help you know you need jobs training the problem of poverty's cause this sounds tautological book by the absence of jobs how are we going to educate a workforce to enter a working class and then a middle class in a world economy a highly technological global economy that's the question that confronts us today and the reason that the middle class is so large is because of affirmative action front of action made it possible for Cornell to go to Harvard for me to go to Yale we were qualified to go but we would not have been admitted before because of strict racist quotas at Harvard and Yale and every other elite American institution and so it affirmative action for us is it was a wonderful thing because it lowered a barrier it made it possible for us to to be a player at the table and and so without government intervention we wouldn't we wouldn't be here and what about the behavioral issue we need a moral ethical revolution within the african-american community let's be clear about that no one no white racist makes a black person harm another black person or harm themselves no white racist is responsible for the teenage pregnancy rate the the the drug addiction I mean we can talk about forms of stress but we were taught growing up that if we succumbed to the stress of white racism that we as a people would be dead and what we have to do is insist on these two-tiered approach simultaneously the structural and the behavioral to do one over the other means that no result will ensue for the national community as well that levels of cruelty the levels of isolation and and and loneliness the levels of disloyalty and cold-heartedness and mean-spiritedness shot through the largest society we all understand in need of a fundamental moral awakening around public life will review ourselves as citizens who want to participate in shaping the conditions of our own destiny do you believe that the question of race in America with its class dimension is a question that unless we deal with it it affects our survival that's not about it race is the one issue that will bring down the curtain on American civilization and why because it would generate levels of balkanization and polarization and would make it difficult for us to communicate with one another and generating levels of conflict that result in levels of chaos and disorder that will bring in how close are we to that point in your judgment we do not know skip he's beyond the present course was certainly on the way I heard Hugh price recently say that he had a different league that's right not since the Progressive Era has American capitalism been so close to D civilizing itself to me race is important because it is it allows economic scarcity to manifest itself in a way that is difficult to treat difficult to touch how is American capitalism be civilizing itself what meaning we know yes that that the safety net the social safety net is being ripped apart by this contract for America and the Republican Congress and forty-five percent of African and like you leave me I'm I'm slow so you need to go sort of go carefully with me you know it's one thing to say I mean the American corporation is is D civilizing mmm-hmm our culture mm-hm it's another thing to look to the contract with america and whatever other issue you pointed to and say the problem with them eliminating the safety net that seems to me to be government action on the one hand not corporate action no but they're part and parcel are the same picture why well because the you need government intervention for social security is a government agency not idea that came from the corporate sector we need medicare medicaid headstart and I think affirmative action program science we need a sophisticated healthy welfare system etc etc etc and have you read the contract for America many of these programs are candidates for those Republicans will say we performed we have suggested one welfare reform proposal after the other which had been vetoed by the administration yes being unacceptable you say hooray for the administration they should have vetoed it oh absolutely was unacceptable as a change in the president welfare policy right I don't like the president welfare policy but I'm going to tie the job creation but there's in front of a point I think that both skip was getting at namely that the conservative agenda the Republican Party is a pro corporate agenda to the degree to which it puts the welfare and well-being of corporations especially those at the higher level of that cooperation over the plight and predicament of working people and poor people there's no doubt the moral indifference to poor people in that contract is one that is links to very directly the corporate interest to the Republican Party not all corporate elites many core beliefs are critical so that's very executive comes to you and says essential to the economic survival of Mike my company in a highly competitive global economy is to downsize to reduce my employee count in order to be more competitive you say to him don't do it I'd rather you'd be less competitive or do you say fine go ahead and do what's necessary to be competitive but make sure you show some sensitivity and some humanism about the plight of those people who you no longer going to employ I'd say two things between short-term success and long-term success and there is the issue of fairness in terms of loyalty within your cooperation if you're increasing your salaries of CEOs at the same time you're downsizing then you're violating a principle of fairness if you're going to focus on profits for the next two years and don't invest in these skills of your workers then 15 years you still be out of business the Cornell been studying up on this I'm concerned with what happens to workers after they are fired yeah well after they are you know euphemistically downsized or made redundant or whatever the phrase might be what mechanism what programs that we have for relocating them for giving them mistake once again in the system because let's face it workers are going to continue to be removed because this vision which was the jab more like the Japanese model of corporate capitalism until very very recently what you just described is I don't think not on the horizon of the American economy so what are we going to do with all these people and right now there doesn't seem to me to be very much compassion or sympathy or even reason at work in the treatment of people who are removed from their positions who are fired who are downsized and we need to do that we need to what would you have either as an issue of corporate responsibility or as an issue of government responsibility be done both I think we have to presume that the life of a worker will mean that she or he will probably be in four or five different venues or major segments of their lives how do we how do we anticipate that by allowing them to retool re-educate themselves so that they can be viable parts of the economy training education mobility improvisation we have to have a much more in profit or a model of a workers life that as a worker than we've ever had before the only model we have now is you are hired you're fired you know and that will only be in place when we have a strong enough either trade union movement or institutional leverage on behalf of workers so we have a civic conversation between those workers and management is it fair to say that you won you as the chairman of the department of afro-american studies at Harvard University believe it is incumbent on you in the gathering of these high-powered intellectuals to provide in the public debate solutions to the critical questions of race and class in our country absolutely incumbent upon us as a team I mean they are not playing out anyone's agenda we're trying to produce a common agenda you see one of the reasons that we need groups like this think tanks like this is that no one has solutions to the problems that we've been talking about why is that because no model predicted the the results let's say that we've been describing a lot of smart people in America coming here but we had a model of race-based oppression we may not have smart politics we had a model of race-based depression that was not sensitive enough to the way that race and what economics going to up smart politics yes so we but even in our scholarship and we need now to figure out to do hard-headed studies of where we are as a as an economy as a country as a society as an ethnic group and figure out what we do to produce the world that we want I don't want to live in a society where 45% of all black children live at or beneath the poverty line there's something wrong with that society and I want to be part of a group of people I can't do it by myself but I'm like one of the things that I like to do in my the capturespace metaphor is to build institutions I want to help to build this institution I want to see it in doubt so in Outlands Cornel West and William Julius Wilson and me and so that other people can take up the mantle because it's a long hard struggle in the saltiest grand institution bill there's this particular moment not just in the black academy but in the american academy as a whole and it does Rand what the grant institution bill how long do you have to do this and I mean the urgency of the crisis in America to deal with these kinds of issues it's clear mmm when do we expect action well you can't be the first thing nice hands that can be mobilized you can't we're gonna start right away but you can't rush deliberation one of the problems I think about the relationship between scholarship and public policy is that it's over overnight as we used to call them at Yale overnight is you know what are you doing tonight well I'm write my check all paper homophobia anti-semitism racism classism overnight and you need people who have sufficient leisure and this is crucial sufficient leisure to think leisure is not what you have I'm trying to help create leisure for other people you know I just want to point the way I want to be to create the space be part of the creation of the space so other people can can thrive in this cornellà I've had long conversation on this broadcast about how he sees himself and about the Lord too you know before he left Princeton to come to you into Harvard and all of that we've had these discussions how do you see yourself I mean do you see yourself as an intellectual do you see yourself as a journalist do you see yourself as an institutional builder be used to yourself as all of those things yes all those things I'd like I'd love to think of myself as a writer but I like and I love doing the long pieces for The New Yorker and I like writing for The Times and The New Republic anybody also publish but also you think that it's important to get those yourself and ideas out there in these publications because of the influence it has oh and also on distinguished television programs like this one but I've always I think in a way any intellectual is entrepreneurial if you have an idea and you see that idea through to a material reality to me that's the definition of an entrepreneur and you have an idea and you actualize it as to use a bad word you you make it become material in some way so we all partake of this spirit and in my case I had an idea or I often had ideas and from my analysis of african-american history I've realized that that we have very few endowed institutions we have not captured enough space we run around living hand-to-mouth and what we need is to live off the interest like Harvard University and and Yale University and the and the great elite institutions in this country and that is what I want to be part of a group effort to create and I want to do it in terms of a think-tank do and it's doable in your judgment you know it's a great institution clearly but to achieve the goals of the institution the the collection of people is obviously doable the endowment is doable and his dare Harvard is there it gives you the cover to do it and we can't stress too much how important that is I mean having a president and a Dean like Neal Rubenstein Jeremy Knowles that believe in afro-american studies as being one of the most important enterprises within a university this is not a situation match throughout the American Act you point out that five others failed because they did not have the administration support they usually I have it without a doubt and isn't unique I mean you've raided Princeton and Chicago and places you cited have one sort of outstanding let's go ska go see a lot more I know you know what I mean I know which me yeah yeah I mean is it is the same thing going is it all gonna be a dream team at Harvard and nothing going on no lot of top great scholars Black Studies department you can say no our aim is to create a particular Center mm-hmm that can then radiate both possibilities influence frameworks to be criticized in other centers but when you get one Center that is on the move creating tremendous motion and momentum it cannot but help these other centers and that's part and parcel of above the skip division it's happened already after Harvard amounted their initiative an American says Columbia mounted their initiative University cago is doing work to get more scholars of african-american studies there it's it's crucial that it happened at a lot of places and it is happening in a lot of place let me just speak to this issue too though it is back to what is central it seems to me it is that as you said the black middle class has grown but the underclass has grown as well right issues of poverty issues of that surround the issues of single of children into single-parent family children and children children exactly children have has increased exponentially and some of the prophecy of Daniel Moynihan look sale arming Lee close to reality are the is the black middle class with all of its talent speaking connecting with the underclass in a real way do you know each other do you talk to each other is there dialogue or is it left to those with the oratorical skills of Louis Farrakhan and others like without know without criticizing or sure you know well it's true that we have or to a certain level of what we might call people who understand deeply the language of the street we still share elements of a common culture without the doubt I mean there are things that yes whatever you see the moon recognized you said that's just part of black cultures away whether it's a style of dress or notion of color and a notion of spontaneity improvisation love of music or relationship to certain forms of cuisine might be but to say that racism has an impact upon my life in exactly the same way as it does the life of a black homeless person or a household in which there is two or three generations of welfare recipients or unmarried it's not the same thing of course not and you recognize that clearly you do and you know that I mean that the the bountiful opportunities you have very different and part of the opportunities if the other person doesn't have it has to do with skin color and that kind of thing and yet you have a straight straight ahead path that has to do with talent and a lot of other things Cornell and Luxur and timing and a lot of other things and opportunity was there and you took advantage of and you were able to Maksim that opportunity but I'm still intrigued by the notion of weather where the connect takes place beyond just called Asher which we share I mean how can you not share the genius of Duke Ellington wherever you are you know but do you share I mean you know what I'm trying to ask is where's the connect there between the underclass and the middle class or you know what will and you said it was uncoupled what will couple it back I mean I think that's crucial well it seems to me I mean historically there's been certain institutional sites that brought these various groups together be it in churches viadon lodges been in civic associations and and with the class division we've seen divisions increasing within those internal black institutions right we have to keep in mind that one the black the growth of the black middle class is not to be taken for granted there's declining middle-class prosperity in the country as a whole that we may experience declining black middle-class prosperity as well the vast majority of black people in America are working-class people right they're not in the middle class and they're not indeed so call underclass they're on the edge of poverty and they asked oftentimes we're moving back and forth they get move up to a lower middle class get pushed back again and then you've got the difficulty of any institutional stability among of people who have such scarce resources that you for poor people in general that's true for white poor brothers in Appalachia true from the black poor brothers and sisters here in Harlem but just to answer that just a bit I think that the point that you're suggesting is that one's identification is rapidly becoming as determined or affected by class as it was under segregate under segregation as it was by race and that's true we have different identities multiple identities multiple affiliations and that's the way it always is but I'm also that's true and I'm asking where is the responsibility not the guilt but the response of ability right right but keep in mind though it's got to be a city raise that question right it's got to be a civic and moral responsibility our argument is not the black middle-class ought to help the black poor because of racial identity it's much deeper than that is that we have a moral obligation to those who are less well-off and humanism a lot of ethical ideals are moral principles and precisely because those black persons who suffer tend to be pushed to the margins they ought to be given attention that's right you say this is true for for whites and blacks and browns right across the board this is very much a moral argument suppose is simply a racial one though the bond that we make will manifest itself in oftentimes a racial form because so many black folk disproportionately speaking are suffering does the black church whatever its denomination and America have the influence it used to have is it as powerful as a shaper of ideas and thought and morality I ask no no bias Cornel how I heard church in general is remember wearing them we were talking about the Million Man March a quarter a Sunday night I knew that I couldn't go and I called corners of the hotel and I said gonna speak tomorrow and said yes it would good luck man I mean the whole world is gonna be watching brothers gonna be up this great moment right that's one time I was right there with and I said I just heard the Colton pals are not gonna be there and I talked to money having to call me and so I said so you're not gonna be there he said look this thing is really going to take off he said I've been out there on this book tour and everybody in the black men is talking about to marry Matt March he said tomorrow zillion people are gonna hit DC he said the only thing wrong it's too bad the Farrakhan called it certain the next day of course on CBS Morning News he denounced the the March for that reason and I said the Cornell could anybody else have called for a million men marching got a million men to go and he said sure I said who he said the petra Baptist Church we should keep in mind well I rest my case though is whether people are speaking to each other and whether the institutions are doing what they ought to if in fact the black church could have been the Baptist Church could have done that or or why didn't they do it and Cornell I mean Farrakhan to his credit said that look he said I'm not important myself that method nobody was doing this I stepped forward to do it and this is the result North 61% of the black brothers who did attend the march were Christians so they came from the pew to the march right you see these were men I think you're right there work to get me to lose Farrakhan credit for having the vision to call the March that he his concern for blacks suffering is such that he's going to engage in a variety of different kind of strategies the question becomes what do those of us who are part of the legacy of Martin King and Fannie Lou Hamer have to say in relation to the same set of issues that he's trying to deal with one of the most amazing things that I'm trying to deal with because I'm about to interview Farrakhan is why you would be so successful mmm the greatest moment of this guy's political life was the Million Man March I mean I hated the speech because I thought it should have been 20 minutes long and you don't smoking and he should have offered to atone right he should have said I know that we all need to atone because I'm the greatest sinner of all and I am here to atone in front of the whole world you know i atone for homophobia i atone for misogyny i atone for my anti-semitism that would have been a brilliant move but without that even it still was a brilliant power move pulling off the Million Man March so why then follow it with this trip went which made even people who were sympathetic to Farrakhan in the Afrocentric movement Molefi Asante hockey buy the boots you know take as I understand you told me if I interviewed Molefi Asante myself they said we found this trip deeply problematical and why he would do that I have no idea mm-hmm do you have any idea Cornell yeah I think I have some inkling that is to say that when you look at the history of the the career mr. Lewis Farrakhan that he is a free black man who does what he wants and what he wants to do oftentimes falls far outside of what a variety of other persons who themselves are worthy critics would expect now I like the freedom that he has I criticize oftentimes the content and what he does you see but it means that it makes it very difficult for him to be a leader who has that structure of accountability now I'm a Democrat I believe in structures of accountability and that's reason why I criticize but I think that that he likes to launch out and engage in a variety of different kind of activities without that kind of boy falls oftentimes falls in the middle I can't wait mr. yeah I sure did and I think I think the exercise of independent has some restraint by the implementation of wisdom oh they bailed him on this case it seems to me that is a bad day we also have to keep in mind that that there are certain elements in his ideology that are deeply concerned he believes in him and he speaks on the Islamic unity radical Democrats are going to call into question because it hides and conceals suffering knows here's here's what I want to get out we've almost yes well we're all the time almost it is the notion of as we approach and all of us approach the seriousness of race in America both its class derivation and otherwise as a crucial issue that we have to engage in the debate and hope new ideas will come forward from Harvard University and other universities and other politicians with a newfound will to discuss it within the african-american community can you today have a full discussion of issues with both criticism and awareness of history oh absolutely okay I think that we are I think that we all are where the no one person or no one ideology or no one group of people has a solution to our problems secondly I think we're all united in wanting to solve the problems and I think that we know that now that what we used to call the one syndrome is dead that is there's not one power broker in the United States not in any of the venues of power in America there are lots of people of color who are functioning in lots of arenas and so we don't need to kill each other anymore like in which was required of a racist system in the old days I got to do one last thing here because this week the loss of Ron Brown it's terrible burns and cancer I guess was cancer in Cleveland 68 specifically because yeah yeah flags fly at half-mast no sir good today right look I mean I love only met him one time but I love the idea of rendre I love the idea of someone so come on boy in his culture yeah so deeply rooted in an african-american tradition yet he was comfortable as a citizen of the world Weah where did he died he died in Africa he died he died in Bosnia trying to build bridges in Bosnia that's a beautiful metaphor for me of the relationship between the particular and the universe trying to help American business and help me absolutely mmm that'll make you a capitalist Cornel commitment to public interest in common good however we may interpret it in conflicting ways move me deeply not only that but he was just a decent human being he really tried to keep track of his humanity of other people and I knew him for a number of years when he was chair for a Democratic National Committee and you could revel in his humanity even given our commonality and some of our disagreements and came to love Dubrow Henry Louis Gates Jr Cornel West the future of the race a new book that they have jointly written and they are jointly members of the faculty at Harvard University and has been a pleasure to have them on this broadcast for this discussion of important issues that we all face black and white looking at where we take this country all of us thank you Cornel thank you thank you the book is the future of the race thank you for joining us

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

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Id: Xr5zB_8g5cw

Length: 54min 43sec (3283 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 04 2016