Eddie Glaude, Jr. - Racism and the Soul of America

[Music] welcome to the Westminster Town Hall Forum where for 36 years we have engaged the public in reflection and Dialogue on the key issues of our day from an ethical perspective all forums are free and open to the public information on upcoming events can be found online at Westminster forum.org you can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter as well my name is Tim Hart Anderson I'm the senior minister at Westminster Presbyterian church located on Nicolet Mall in beautiful downtown Minneapolis and I'm the moderator of the Forum it's my pleasure to introduce today's guest speaker Dr Eddie Cloud Jr is the William S Todd professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton University and chair of its Department Of africanamerican Studies born and raised in the coastal town of Moss Point Mississippi and he told me just before we came out that there are seven people who were who are from Moss Point who are in Minneapolis who are here today so thank you Moss Point for being here from from Moss Point Mississippi he went to Morehouse College at the age of 16 he graduated with a degree in political science then earned a master's degree in African-American studies from Temple University and a PhD in religion from Princeton University he's the author of The award-winning book in a shade of blue pragmatism and the politics of Black America and Co coeditor with Cornell West a previous Forum speaker some years ago of African-American religious thought and Anthology his latest book is democracy in Black how race still enslaves the soul of America he has described his vision of what it means to be a public intellectual to be in love with ideas with the aim of making the world better today he will speak about the Deep Impact of race on the soul of America ladies and Gentlemen please join me in welcoming to the Westminster Town Hall Forum Dr Eddie gloud Jr how y'all doing uh I'm a I'm a Country Boy from from Mississippi and uh I can't begin to tell you how honored I am to have some of my home peoples here could y'all stand up if you're here from these are folks from M uh sometimes folks want to know your journey how did you come from this small town and end up at Princeton will has something to do with the powerful people in that small town uh some of whom have landed in this beautiful city so I want to thank y'all for coming out to support me Reverend Hart Anderson thank you for your prophetic witness for this amazing congregation for this extraordinary institution I want to thank Shelly and Lindy Linda for for for being so wonderful and getting me from the high at Regency we took that walk through all that construction to get here thank you for the lovely music to kind of bless this space as we begin to make this hard journey together I I want to thank all the staff all the folks behind the scenes that have made this possible it's been a complicated couple of hours from me I started this journey yesterday at 4:00 in the morning on my way to Morning Joe to talk about Hillary Clinton's pneumonia and the buck and the basket of deplorables then I found myself on Al jazer talking about again Hillary Clinton's pneumonia and the basket of deplorables then I gave a major lecture with all of the high futin people in the humanities at Princeton and then I found myself in a car flying to uh flying to the airport to get here and now I'm with you it's a blessing and I hope that what I I have to say uh will uh prick your imaginations will provoke you because these are dark times yes Ralph Waldo Emerson tells us that God speaks through our imaginations I love telling my students that I often ask them though if this is true then what is the devil doing in so many ways at least this is what I try to suggest in my work and in my witness that we are experiencing in this country in this moment a crisis of imagination and I mean by this something more than a failure to be creative but something much more about who we take ourselves to be that something about who we are as Americans has gone out of focus there's some sort of major moral failing defines our way way of being in the world now to my mind imagination registers much more than creativity and the ability to trade in that which isn't real the Fantastical right imagination is something more than that and here I'm thinking about that moment I'm going to be a professor now in Shell's a great defense is in Shell's defense of poetry he writes quote a man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively he must put himself in the place of another and of many others the great instrument of moral good pastor the great instrument of moral good is the imagination here imagination involves an ability to see the a yet a willingness to look beyond the opacity of now to see what's possible imagination involves a kind of empathetic projection what my favorite philosopher John Dy describes as that animating moral judgment that is feeling our way beyond the narrow consideration of ours alone to take up the concerns and aspirations of others Shell's point the great instrument of moral good is the imagination that claim understood in the context of this claim we are experiencing a crisis of imagination we find ourselves in these dark times un able to imagine the world otherwise the world as it is seems to be our permanent docking station not only blocks our ability to see what's possible it impairs our ability to empathize with those who are not us inverted commas y'all all right I'm just checking on you I went to morehous so there's some Baptist Waters in me you know this crisis of imagination says something about our characters who we take ourselves to be remember imagination is bound up with that ability to empathize sympathize with others to see yourself right in someone who's not you right putting oneself in the place of another and of many others right but we live in a time where the superordinate value seems to be putting oneself over and against another so all we need to think about is our presidential election we saw what happened in Asheville North Carolina last night yes folks throwing punches at each other claiming that folks are bigots folks are ugly at the core that they're going to take America back make America great again and doing so in the name of a kind of ugliness that I find deplorable oh there's that word but I want to take this back I want to take it out of the easy target at least for someone like myself of Donald Trump I want to think about this in the broader context of you of the United States we live in a society where we can tell ourselves that we've turned an economic Corner that we have come out of the Great Recession and when you look at black and brown communities in this country when you turn your attention to those who are not quote unquote one of you what do we see H we don't see a community that's come out of right depression or come out of economic recession we see a community struggling to make ends meet right I interviewed a young woman by the name of Christine Frasier uh I write about this in the book and Christine uh did every played every played by the rules did everything right right her husband died she lost lost her job and she couldn't make ends meet she couldn't pay her house note and and the Sheriff's Office came in the middle of the night 3:00 in the morning and they unlocked the door and they told her and her grandm her mother and her daughter and her grandson to get out and they proceeded to empty the house of a lifetime worth of memories to put all of it in the yard she said they came into my home like I was a drug dealer but they knew that dogs were there and she said they told her they she they didn't have anything any place for her to go and they said to her you have to figure out what you're going to do but they knew dogs were there so they called animal shelter and she said the pain of losing the house was one thing but they came with the place for my dog we live in a country right where we can talk about turning a corner but there are people right in our midst right who are struggling to make ends meat people who are working hard who are honest who are trying to make ends meat but we disremember we think it's their fault right so in the book I talk about the great black depression I talk about the fact that black folk lost their homes over 240,000 homes lost as a result of the collapse of the housing market I talk about right the fact that over 38% 40% of black children are growing up in poverty I talk about the downward Mobility as African-Americans experience the loss of incomes the inability to Dream Big Dreams for their children because they can't make ends meat and we live in a country right that says we've turned the corner right but let me say this really quickly y'all all right I don't know why you invited me here I'm going to tell the truth I'm going to tell the truth in my mind democracies require particular kinds of dispositions to work but something has distorted and disfigured our national and individual character remember I said there's a crisis of imagination imagination involves what not only just simply the Fantastical and the creative the imagination involves what this ability right to see oneself put oneself in the position of another that has something to do with our characters I want to say that something has distorted and disfigured who we take ourselves to be and I call it the value Gap now I'm about to get into the substance of it taking my watch off right what is the value Gap the value Gap is the belief that white people are valued more than others oh I'm going to say it again the value Gap is the belief that white people are valued more than others and this belief isn't the possession of loud races people running around with white sheets over their heads or swastic is tattooed on parts of their body rather this belief animates our social practices our political arrangements and our economic realities this belief that white people matter more than others distorts our characters and dis deform our democracy I like to tell the story of of of my father who was the second African-American hired at the post office in Pascagoula Mississippi the place where uh William fauler honeymooned and back then getting hired at the post office was high cotton right and so he knew he had precocious kids so he decided to move us from the east side of Moss Point to the West Side on a hill briwood circle and as we were moving into that house I'm playing with my Tonka truck you remember those old Tonka trucks I'm playing with my Tonka dump dump truck and and I'm making my dumb truck noises and all of a sudden I hear an adult say stop playing with that and it's the first time I had been called that word in that context so I grabbed my truck and I took it inside and I took it to my father my father who doesn't suffer white people easily right ran outside and he did whatever he did but that's how we typically tell the story of American racism right some black family achieves the American dream they move to a big house on a hill and then some child is wounded by some mean-spirited adult who calls them the nword and then that child has to work all of her life to prove that she's not that but that's too easy it's too melodramatic it's too all my children like my mother's favorite soap opera because I already knew at the age of eight and N years old that we were moving from the black side of town to the white side of town I already knew because Rose Drive where we used to live because the pipes are bad every every time it rained it flooded I already knew because the sidewalks weren't as as sidewalks weren't paved like they were on the West Side the baseball diamond wasn't cut as regularly as it was on the other side the houses were smaller the schools weren't as financed the town that side of town was subject to layoffs by Engles the shipyard paper mill I already knew in the very built environment that something said that those folk over there were less value than those folk over here we want to look for the bad racist right the obvious racist but we are making choices day in and day out right that sustain racial inequality in this country my colleague ammani Perry calls it a cultural practice of inequality let me give you an example of what I mean I believe the planet is actually getting warmer all right you feel me it's hottest summer on record hottest year on record but if you look at my house and you look at my car and you look at my light bulbs you look at the way I live my life the daily choices I make you would think I believe the planet was all right my day-to-day Behavior suggests that I am a climate change denier so there are folks running around here who are saying that they are committed to racial inequality a racial equality but their choices I just want my kids to go to the best schools social sciences have already the social sciences already said that whenever you hear that phrase it's usually a proxy for how many black and brown kids attend my school I want my neighborhood to be safe we know what that means I want my property values to stay we know what that means right so it's in the kind of water the cultural practice the value Gap is is is evidenced let me give you a quote from James Baldwin in the uses of the Blues y'all all right Baldwin clearly states what he takes to be the Negro problem I'm talking about what happens to you if you've barely Escape suicide or death or Madness or yourself you watch your children growing up and no matter what you do no matter what you do you are powerless you are really powerless against the force of the world that is to tell your child that he has no right to be alive and no amount of liberal jargon no amount of talking about how well and how far we have progressed does anything to soften or to point out any solution to this dilemma in every generation ever since Negroes have been here Baldwin writes every negro mother and father has had to face that child and tried to create in that child some way of surviving this particular World some way to make the child who will be despised not despise himself I don't know what the Negro problem means to white people Baldwin writes but this is what it means to the Negro what does it mean to try to construct an idea of the self in a country that is organized in every single way on the basis on the grounds of the value Gap not because people are mean-spirited but it's because it's in the very DNA of the country and this is what makes addressing the problem I'm leaving my notes now this is what makes addressing the problem of white supremacy of racial inequality in this country so difficult because we refuse to look the ugliness of who we are squarely in the face and dare to imagine ourselves differently this is hard work this is hard the value Gap isn't sustained by loud races the value Gap is sustained by all of us all of us you you don't need white people for white supremacy to work when I'm in New Jersey and I'm driving down ston Avenue in Trenton I hold a set of generalizations about the people who occupy that particular neighborhood it's known as little Iraq I keep my head on a swivel right there's a kind of particular fear that gets generalized that gen is generalized to an entire population that informs a set of assumptions about how I interact with them and those generalizations have policy implications we are socialized and habituated into believing right certain things about certain folks right I write about this in the text there uh Nancy damaso at at ruer is a social scientist she did a series of interviews of white workingclass folk in clle in Ohio Ohio and in Tennessee and New Jersey I believe and she said she was interviewing these workers and and one worker said I just I'm sorry I'm black people are just lazy they just want a handout you've heard this before it's been informing public discourse since I can remember remembering and they don't want to work hard for anything and it turned out that his father was close friends with the Union boss who hooked him up with a job another interviewer right I'm sorry to say they just lazy they don't want to work it turns out that not only his friend gave him the gave him the test that he needed to take for his job gave him the answers to the test and what Nancy is trying to suggest In This Moment is right not that there is some right overt racism that's happening people are just hooking up their F friends and families right that it's what she calls opportunity hoarding that racial inequality actually is is uh perpetuated through social networks right and because we're so deeply a segregated Society social net our social networks are typically 75% of our social networks are 100% homogeneous so opportunities pass through certain networks that do not pass through others right I'm just helping out my child I'm not being racist right I'm just helping out my neighbor I'm not being racist I said something jokingly to to a friend the other night I said if we want to solve black-on-black crime in the United States we just need to integrate neighborhoods and they didn't quite get it I said some of you didn't get it either right most crime takes place right because of proximity white on white crime 83% of crime that happens in white communities happens between white and onwhite people 91% happens between because our neighborhoods are segregated if we all move together then we'll just be criminal with each other I don't know racial habits the value Gap distorts who we take ourselves to be it blocks the way to the formation of the kinds of people democracies require I was just talking about uh with with Reverend har Anderson about Abraham Lincoln's rejection of the Monstrous Injustice of slavery but his commitment to the belief that white people were Superior than black people and how those commitments blocked the way from him becoming the kind of human being his idea of democracy required what does it mean in in our country that we can hold the ideals of democracy and when those ideals are extended to black and brown people we are willing to erode the social safety net right welfare for much of the new deal right was in fact a project of Southern Dix crats aimed at addressing poor white Southerners but the moment the face of the welfare state became black as my colleague Martin Gillan writes it became right an emblem of the problem with big government what happens when we're willing to turn our backs on an idea a robust idea of the public good because it involves people who are not like us it means that we're willing to throw democracy into the trash bin over over the idea over our commitment to the idea that some people because of the color their skin are valued more than others the value Gap is at the heart of our problem the value Gap is evidenced in our habits habits of living habits that Define where we live where we work I can't begin to tell you how often I'm having to I have to leave the particularity of my experience at the door in order to make white people comfortable it's almost as if as James Baldwin writes in notes of a native son we have to make ourselves blank in order to wash away your guilt and so we dance this dance America's racial theater it's this dance so that you can't be called a racist and I can't trigger your fears huh the worst thing that you can be called is a racist even though everything that's coming out of your mouth Donald Trump suggest otherwise right we find ourselves in this dance unwilling to confront the ugliness of who we are just think about this the last piece of great legislation p uh passed in the Great Society was the 1968 Fair Housing Act I'm watching my time time 12 years later Ronald Ragan is elected 12 years later there is the Triumph of a political ideology designed to undo the Great Society and the New Deal did we fix the country in 12 years 1965 the Voting Rights Act Right by 1980 wholesale attack we don't need to protect him anymore right Shelby we don't need to do it and what happens after the Shelby decision recently right we get a proliferation of attack on voter registration voter IDs right think about it at every turn at every moment of progress in this country we have seen a reassertion of the value Gap at the moment in which we give voice to the principles of Liberty and and equality right in the context of the American Revolution what do we get in response we reconcile those principles with racial slavery John Adams it is said said to King George we will not be your Negroes at the very moment in which he's giving voice to an idea of freedom is predicated upon an intimate understanding of unfreedom a reassertion of the value Gap in the moment of radical reconstruction we offer right a vision of multiracial democracy what do we get in response to radical reconstruction we get convict leasing right convict leasing you wouldn't have the city of Birmingham without the labor the forced labor of convicts quote unquote people arrested for what reason right slavery by another name as brother Blackman talk hey you get Jim Crow at a reassertion of the value Gap in the context right of the black Freedom struggle of the mid 20th century everyday Ordinary People demanding dignity and standing what do we get in response we get the tax revolt in Northern California and we get calls for Law and Order value Gap what do we get when we elect our first black president and we think we turn to Corner we get the victory all of the tea party and we get a wholesale attack right on the Voting Rights of black and brown peoples at every turn at every moment of progress we that progress is arrested by a reassertion of the value Gap we have to do the work but we're afraid we are afraid white fear has driven this country since its founding think about Thomas Jefferson's notes of the state of Virginia I'm going to come home I'm trying to get there here right think about he said I tremble for this country because of the sin of slavery right he was afraid of what that meant the Divine punishment that would come for holding another human being in slavery and he writes that particular formulation in the section on habit formation because he said what happens to a child who witnesses the violence of slavery something is broken on the inside of such a child who who experiences that something happens to their character Jefferson suggests but in that moment of fear right it drives policy think about right the fear of Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural supposedly the second founding think about the fear surrounding black Rage with the Black Panther Party you know that cover of the New Yorker where they had Obama dressed as a Muslim and Michelle Obama as Angela Davis and they were bumping Fist and people were like what does that mean did they just they bumped fists did the black people just begin Revolution fear fear drives policy the moral Panic surround the so-called super Predators where the the data suggested was not true what did the moral panics do it drove mass incarceration think about what happened with the Central Park 5 those babies were innocent their lives stolen think about all the millions of folk who are locked up because of fear fear driving policy we can no longer be afraid and that fear actually drives our political Behavior black political Behavior as I said earlier we're afraid to trigger your fears so we will grit our teeth in the moment would you say something a little off color our fear of triggering white fear affects our Behavior so we're masking day in and day out walking past each other not really seeing the humanity of our of the person right in front of us no wonder we're stuck but Malcolm X said this and I'm going to say this in front of you guys and make you mad I don't care we have to stop sweet talking tell you how we really feel tell you what kind of Hell we've been catching and let you know if you shouldn't have a if you don't clean up your house if you're not ready to clean up your house you shouldn't have a house it should catch you on fire and burn down now I'm not trying to burn down anybody's house but what Malcolm is talking about is Frank speech that we have to confront each other honestly one of the most exhausting things I have to do is to convince my fellow white citizens of what is happening every time we have to engage in this haunting public ritual of grieving in public we got to convince you that it happened what does it mean that diamond Reynold's four-year-old baby had to muster the resources to comfort her mother in that moment I'm here mama I'm here with you what does it mean that Alton Sterling's 15-year-old baby crying weeping because he lost his father wouldn't see him again what doesn't mean that if it wasn't for the footage around Walter Scott that police officer would still be walking the street what does it mean that I have to tell my child right the story of how to interact with police because I want him to come home what does it mean that here I am I've done everything right I'm at the height of my profession I'm the president of the American Academy of religion the day I got to call for that that I won my baby calls me from brown to tell me that he's sitting on a bench doing an assignment and a police officer drives up blocks his way his way out comes out say who are you and why are you here he says I'm a brown student just doing an assignment the police officer hits him in the face with this with the flashlight looks at his feet looks at the bushes and tells him the park closes at 9:30 and my son says yes sir but it's only 6:30 and then the partner his partner walks around the police cruiser and says to him and both of them lean in with their hands on their weapon and say to him the part closes at 9:30 and my son puts up his hand and says we don't want any trouble I could have lost my only child that day and I got to convince you of what that means we're not going to fundamentally change unless we look ourselves squarely in the face you learn race in Minneapolis apis by just simply driving around this community it's in the very built environment you don't have to be a bad person that's right it's how we are habituated as citizens of this country a country that has been drenched right in the reality of white supremacy we have to address it we have to address it if we're going to get Beyond it so what I call for is a revolution of value we need to change our view of government by changing our demand of government we need to change our view of black people by changing our view of white people and only white people can do that and we need to change what ultimately matters to us if we have a society predicated upon greed and narcissism and selfishness we will continue to produce the likes of Donald Trump but it's in our hands I refuse to dance the dance any longer for my grandchildren who are not here I refuse to try to make you feel comfortable because I know of a man who was crucified on Cal who refused to become adjusted to Injustice what does it mean to Bear witness to the virtues of generosity and humility and Justice in this moment it will require something Monumental of us something profound value Gap racial habits fear requires of us a commitment to democracy in this sense we have to become the people that democracy requires of us that means we have to reject the idea that this is God's gift to the world that is America is The Shining City on the hill that rigs the argument no we need to look ourselves squarely in the face in great pain and Terror and do the work of actually achieving our country I pray that we do so because if we don't we will certainly see the fire next time thank you wow thank you Professor Cloud you're listening to the Westminster Town Hall Forum broadcast from Westminster Presbyterian Church on Nicolet Mall in Downtown Minneapolis my name is Tim Hart Anderson I'm the senior Minister here at Westminster church and moderator of the Forum our speaker today is Dr Eddie gloud Jr while the authors collect questions from the in-house audience I'd like to thank our broadcast partner the Statewide network of Minnesota Public Radio news heard in the Twin Cities on 91.1 FM and the co-sponsors of today's Forum henpen County Library with funding from the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund and the online news source mpost we invite you to join us for our next forum on Tuesday October 18th at 7 pm when Glennon Doyle Melton will be our speaker further information is available on our website Westminster forum.org and now Professor glow if you would return to the pulpit I will present the questions from our audience your most recent book is entitled democracy in Black right what does democracy in Black look like well it's this it's the effort on the part of of everyday ordinary Black Folk along with their allies to expand the notion that this is a country of the people for the people and by the People by expanding who we take those people to be right so Lincoln gives us a definition of what democracy is in that moment but you know it's in that attempt to expand who we take the deos to be that is democracy in black and in some ways it's an echo of Howard Thurman's wonderful the great Theologian Howard Thurman uh who said that the slave dared to redeem the religion profaned in its midst and I want to suggest that African-Americans have dared to redeem the the political ideology of democracy often profaned in their midst that's democracy in Black Martin Luther King was most frustrated with those who praised his goals but caution patience and moderation the letter from Birmingham Jail yeah what specific advice would you offer white people who are inclined toward moderation and watching events from the [Music] sidelines thank you very much [Applause] one of the beautiful things about black lives matter no matter what you think about their their tactics what do you think about their ideology is that they're engaged in a politics of disruption they're engaged in a politics of disruption and so no one can sit on the sidelines the top on tenth of a percent can't have their brunch on Sunday in Manhattan without them showing up you can't drive to work or drive home without them suddenly break shutting down a highway you can't even walk into the union building at your local police station at at at uh in New York without them locking arms and and blocking the entryway it's a politics of disruption designed to make us all uncomfortable but let me just say this if you're concerned about Justice you know if you're committed to this Justice work right there's no way you can sit on the sidelines and if you do um then you are complicit in evil that's as strong as I could put it you speak a lot about fear fear of one another and the habit of fear into which we have fallen over these Generations how do we black folks and white folks how do we set aside fear how do we deal with that we got a lot of lot of questions about that yeah you know I mean we have to understand our power every election cycle they want us to all of us to vote from a place of fear as opposed to a position of power they want us to believe that democracy is really about the Beltway and not about us right they want us to believe that democracy is about the Beltway and not about us the beauty of the Bernie Sanders campaign didn't Minnesota go for Bernie Sanders the beauty of the Bernie Sanders campaign is that it revealed that if we're organized we can produce better choices people get it twisted they think Bernie caused the the energy in fact the energy caused Bernie right when we understand our power we don't have to occupy zucati Park but we can understand the power of everyday ordinary folks standing in standing in solidarity with each other white workers black workers all of our wages have been stagnated white workers Brown workers workers black workers all of our homes aren't worth a damn all of us can't afford to send our kids to college all of us would love to have a living wage all of us would love not to have crooked politicians robbing the public coffers in the name of Their Own Private greed right what we are facing and I'm going to be really quick here no I'm not what we're facing here is is is seriously what the new economy represents the new economy doesn't care right that you're committed to the value Gap the new economy right has produced all of these white folks who are increasing Su suicidality strung out on opioids right trying to figure out their future and then they've migrated a discourse you've read that book on white trash they've migrated a discourse of of personal responsibility and dysfunctionality to White poor workers white po poor people see they don't they're not responsible they just want a handout they're strung out on drugs they're lazy right there is a sense in which we can stand in solidarity together if and David Brooks just talked about this in his column just the other day if we can give up the racial wedge issues if we can give up the value Gap we got to vote from a position of power we got to act from a position of power not from a place of fear question from a student apologizing that she she or he has written this in Orange but I think I can read it I'm white as is my family they feel deeply that they have experienced racism toward themselves how do I speak to them about telling them this is wrong you know Donald Trump just used this formulation in response to Hillary Clinton's Claim about the basket of deplorables that there's she he said in response that she expressed bigotry right and Prejudice toward a large number of Americans right and this has been one of the interesting rhetorical shifts since the 1960s of uh of describing white people as the victims of racial discrimination and it's really a critical critical feature of the alt-right which is just the latest branding of white nationalist right that is to say that wherever you see anti-racist or anti-racist policy and organizing they believe anti-racism is anti-white right and we want to what we have to do is historicize that that formulation to show what it's really trying to do is to get people to invest in the value Gap right to get people to invest in the idea that whiteness Accords you a special set of benefits and let me say this as long as we believe that Racial equality is a zero sum game we will continuously find ourselves in this moment if Racial equality means simply taking stuff from white people and giving it to undeserving black people or brown people then we will continuously res produce this kind of resentment so we have to tell the truth it's not about taking stuff from deserving people and giving it to undeserving people it's about Justice it's about a society predicated upon just Arrangements if you think historic double digit unemployment in Black communities is the result of black people being lazy then you're actively disremembering the fact that we were locked out of labor unions the fact that we were locked out of specific sectors of the economy right the fact that my daddy couldn't go to Princeton it couldn't be there if you think a dual housing market the fact that the wealth Gap is 13 time white wealth is 13 times that of black wealth if you think that's because black people are lazy then you don't understand the history of residential segregation in this country how we couldn't gain access even if we fought for the nation of overseas in World War II we couldn't gain access to mortgages there is a history right of discrimination that defines inequality in this country so we have to not disremember we have to tell the truth that's a long winded answer but you got it I hope who's the successor to Martin Luther King Jr and when is he or she going to take up that mantle or is there a successor and your book you talk about Jesse Jackson Al Sharpton Reverend Barber yeah hn I oh H and I see look at reev you hear you see re I read the book get some mile uh yeah I we don't need another Martin King hold on listen to what I mean we are the leaders we've been looking for you see and and and and rev I'm going to put it in in Christian language just for a moment right we want to we want to you know we it's inscribed on the soul it's inscribed on the heart we don't want Priestly models all of you got it you see and this comes from my the the the the inspiration to the for the entire book is Miss Ella Baker the great organizer who who who gave room for the formation of Snick right the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee she had a fundamental faith in the capacities of everyday Ordinary People right that if we give them the space quick story quick story they're going to register to vote in rouville Mississippi and folk are scared out of their way Bob the great Bob Moses told me this story folks are scared cuz they knew what they were driving into and this person in the back of the bus was singing singing sang every spiritual she knew and then they realized what she was doing she was trying to make she was fortifying their Spirits trying to give them courage and this was a share CER it turned out to be Miss Fanny ler everyday ordinary folks we are the Giants we don't need anyone to lead us we can lead ourselves come on come on to have a spoke recently here at the Town Hall Forum he reported that the position of African-Americans has actually declined economically and other ways during the 8-year tenure of our first African-American president why is that somebody trying to get me in trouble in the book I'm hard on President Obama I'm hard on him I call him a melvan confidence man selling the snake oil of hope and change the last eight years have been rough you know I'm from the south um and you know as we as as we were prone to say when we look at the back of his head we're going to face and confront the ruins of our communities um Julian Malvo has written an extraordinary text entitle are we better off and she says in effect uh uh uh no right I mean he's stem the tide of of the loss of jobs but when we look at the very when we look at the quality of life data right Black Folk aren't doing better right and and what I what I'm what I want to suggest is is that he he was constrained by not only the forces in the Beltway but he was also constrained by his own choices I think think after the Republicans took hold of the Congress there's no reason to try to be post-partisan go big go bold change the frame there's a reason why Wall Street has been making historic profits over the last eight years and Main Street still Finds Its wages Flatline there's a reason why Barack Obama in his last state of the union was talking about the implication of inequality for the new economy he understands what it means for everyday ordinary workers but he hasn't changed the frame he hasn't changed the frame to my mind Barack Obama is just simply a Centrist Democratic let me say it different he's a Centrist version of the DLC the Democratic Leadership Council he's just the latest extension of clintonism now I know we can fight over that and that's what I want us to do because this is what happened we talked about this prior to 2008 there's a lot of Grassroots energy out there with regards to the war remember this massive demonstrations in the streets and organizing in the streets and before the anti- Iraq war protest we had the WTO protest in Seattle folk were organizing across the country trying to challenge the strangle hole of a certain neoliberal Economic Policy right on the country Barack Obama jumped in front of it and he we green screened him you know this tv green screen we made him everything we wanted him to be we wanted him to be right the anti-war president we wanted him to be right a populist in terms of his economic policies and when but when you read The Audacity Of op he is who he is who he said he was and what happened when he got elected in 2008 we demobilized we had to figure out what we were going to do and it wasn't until zucati Park and occupi that we got that energy back and then black lives matter again so part of it's a long-winded answer I think we can we look at the data uh we can answer the question that we have not improved and much of it has to do with the fact that Barack Obama could not be seen as the black president and two because he is who he is he's a Centrist Democrat invested in the frame as it is and I'm not a Centrist Democrat and that's not to take away from the fact that he's the first black president in the history of the country my baby grew up looking at him but symbol is not substance we have time for one more question with a short-winded answer how can we get two more you've got a lot of energy for change yes sir and I hear in that energy hopefulness for America in spite of all of this where do you find hope in us there's a wonderful line in wbb De boy's uh Souls of Black Folk if you haven't read it go read it um he calls it a hope not hope a hope UNH hopeful but but not hopeless a hope UNH hopeful but not hopeless that's a Blu soaked hope that's a hope that comes out of the tradition I come out of that's a Bobby Blue Bland kind of hope that's that's that's BB King saying nobody loves me but my mother and she can be jiving too it's a blue soaked hope right and that's how you can see beyond the opacity of n that's my faith my faith is in us because at the end of the day it's in our hands together you and me together it's in our hands thank you Eddie glow [Applause] [Music] Jr [Music]

Channel: MySPNN

Views: 65,152

Keywords: spnn, Westminster town hall, glaude, racism in america

Id: calHS1gkDjc

Length: 53min 5sec (3185 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2016