but first Henry Louis Gates Jr known to his friends as skip he was born in the village of Piedmont West Virginia after graduating from Yale he taught at Cornell and Duke he became chairman of the department of african-american studies at Harvard where he now teaches he has a new book it is called colored people and it is a memoir and I am pleased to have him here welcome thank you very much why this title colored people well that's the title that we called ourselves in the 1950s and this book is really rather than an autobiography it is a memoir of a lost era in the history of black people in this country I mean there was a time when we were colored and then we became Negroes and then we became Afro Americans and now most of us call ourselves African Americans but you believe that at some point in the near future it might once again become colored because you say you have said you know that in fact among African Americans frequently there is a reference to colored in talk in the privacy of their own quarters oh absolutely I heard Charlene hunter-gault last summer and the vineyards say that the the term that she preferred was colored people and once I saw Reggie Jackson on TV ask someone was he colored that said oh I mean African American yeah many of us use that in the intimacy of our own culture the sort of cultural privacy we use this term because it's a term that we heard the most when we were kids and I think that our children will go from as I say in the book from being African Americans to people of color and once again they'll become color people and what do you think of that oh I don't I'm not invested in any of the terms in the term that I use when I write is African American because I write about Africa as well as Africa America as it were but I don't think that the terms matter I don't invest as much political meaning in these terms as some people do and I think the fact that Jesse Jackson felt that he had to have a press conference and the declare publicly that our name was changed is a sign of the frustration over our socio-economic conditions people think that if we can change our names we'll have a new identity and that's just not the way that it is now I was around as many of us were when we went from being Negroes to black right and we thought that was the ultimate name the name that would unlock all the secrets of our pasts and now we're African Americans now in a sense would have a new definition a new meaning in a sense of and more more of an identity I guess with with people of color around the world you see we were african-americans a hundred years ago and 150 years ago we were Africans many of the earliest cultural institutions in the United States invented by Afro Americans as it were we're called African Methodist Episcopal Church the African Bethel Baptist Church the cetera etc so it's the cycle yeah there's a famous fight for cartoons yeah 1968 that says it yeah I think probably what's important and you certainly know much more about this than I do it is whether you elect to call how you individuals and groups elect to call themselves not some name given to them by some outside group absolutely and obviously the the the negative connotations of colored had to do with the fact that was used by people white people in the south and use it in a certain way just like rocket about you and a Negro was George boy right and God that makes my skin crawl even when I said it just now yeah so yeah the fact that the the act of self naming is crucial I think to be a group's political identity Piedmont West Virginia how large a town in 1950 when I was born it had 2,500 people 386 of whom were black now according to the 1990 census that has 1,100 people it's a mill town West Vaco the famous paper company started in Luke Maryland which is just across the bridge the three towns with equal population connected by bridges to in Maryland one in West Virginia I used to drive home from Yale as an undergraduate with 424 miles from New Haven's Piedmont 400 23.8 in space other than West Virginia one of the great stories you'd well you wanted to go back to find what to uncover what to well my mother looking for my mother died seven years ago this April and my father's 81 I have two daughters once 14 and one's 12 and they don't really know they didn't know my mother and they know nothing about the earrin which I grew up we were my wife and I were driving on Martin Luther King Day about three years ago from Boston to Lexington Massachusetts which is about 10 miles away and we heard for the 10,000 time I have a dream on the public radio and my daughter yelled from the back what's the civil rights movement all about and I said we were passing a motel and I said you see that Motel they said yeah and I said I couldn't have stayed there 20 years ago probably your mother could have stayed there my wife's wait right I said but your mother could have stayed there with me and I looked in the rearview mirror and Maggie my older daughter looked at lives of my younger daughter like Jesus there goes another one of these incredible lies about the past and it hadn't dawned on me they had no more idea despite school despite whatever we might say at home no more idea about the reality of the civil rights movement and I wanted to write a book for them so I wrote the first draft in the form of letters to them right I went to the Rockefeller Foundation Center in northern Italy at Bellagio and every day I wrote them a different letter of about 20 pages describing another facet of our family life or the life of the races that were in between 1950 and 1968 when I went off to you two to college and there was so much sex in the book that my editor suggested to hit the reviewers would not look favorably upon a book written in the form of letters to two little girls so I had to rewrite it so I spent the second year the past year rewriting it and putting it in the first person and all that's left is the preface which is in the form of a letter to Maggie and I as they explained why I wrote there's a wonderful story in a sense because it is so telling and I wonder how many times this story was repeated in different circumstances in which you are being examined by the doctor tell me the story well I had I was an overweight kid and many overweight boys overweight adolescents have something called a slipped epiphysis which your ball and socket joint separates and I happen to be at a Methodist Church camp and I felt this sort of pain and it was referred pain you know when one tooth is really infected but another one hurts what hip pain is often referred to the knee so I was tackled when I got up my knee hurt and eventually I went to three different doctors and it was misdiagnosed they put torn cartilage in my knee they speculated torn ligaments this and that and after about a month progressively whereas I was walking on crutches and I was um having lunch one day at school at a little restaurant near our school and I was walking back to the school and ball-and-socket completely separated it's the most excruciating pain I ever hope to that I'm experienced they rushed me to the hospital and surgeon the local surgeon no Albert Schweitzer was he looked at this my right legs completely rotated to the right I'm screaming hollering and he said that they put a walking cast on so he took me into the operating room and they put a walking cast on this leg now I learned later that the first sign of a broken hip is that your leg is rotated completely I was like your leg was flopping right and while he was wrapping it making the cast wrapping it with these wet bandages he started asking me questions and he said boy I understand you want to be a doctor this is a small County and everybody there weren't that many black people around and I was fairly well known to be a good student I said yes sir I do and he said are you good in Sciences and I said yes sir I believe I am and he said well who discovered sterilization and I said Joseph Lister and who discovered DNA he said and I said Watson and Crick and that my interview went on like this and I thought that the guy would say well you're obviously a bright little kid you're gonna hear to help you make me a doctor exactly right and instead he looked at me long and hard and then he walked out and my mother was waiting outside and he said the boy's problem is not physiological the boy's problem is psychosomatic he's an overachiever and he is driven to heart and he is he is snapped and he's imagining this whole medical condition and shortly after the cast dried they stood me on my feet and demanded that I take steps across the floor and with the ball and socket joint completely separated I mean I just fell flat on my face and and started to cry and I was in agony and my mother who loved doctors if she wanted my older brother and me my older brothers an oral surgeon now she wanted us both to be doctors I had never seen her talk back to a white person before let alone a doctor and she looked at this guy and told him he was crazy she ordered them to get my clothes and to pack our bags and we were going to go to the University Medical Center 60 miles away it was a one of the most dramatic moments in my life and I ain't abided somewhat just watching my mother's courage because even I knew that there was something drastically wrong with my get by this time what is the lasting impact imprint on you of growing up in Piedmont well I think that they were there are two things that come to mind one is a great sense of warmth and nurturing I had a very strong stable family the gates family had lived there for 150 years the Coleman family had lived there maybe a hundred years and I had a very strong mother who was a writer I used to write out all the obituaries for all the colored people in the Potomac Valley and we would get dressed up and go to church and watch my mother stand up and read those obituaries and my mother also became the first colored secretary of the PTA in 1957 and again it was a command performance um I'd go I'd sit in the front row and I'd watch this beautiful women woman read these her minutes from the of the previous PTA meeting and that established for me the model of languages and written languages and my father was a great storyteller and a wonderful provider he worked in the local factory he worked at the paper mill and then was a janitor at night he'd come home at 3:30 he would wash we would the school let out at 3:30 we'd eat dinner at 4 o'clock and then a 4:30 my father would go off to his second job and my parents provided for my brother and me gloriously we always had new books we always had the nicest clothes in the school but most of all did your did you believe that you could be and do whatever you wanted to do notwithstanding what some local doctor says to you how that being an overachiever anything nothing what nothing was impossible no only white racism could stop us only white racism could slow us down it couldn't stop it how is it different today in Piedmont well in Piedmont most of the people my age live in the county seat most of people my age that I graduated with had moved to the county seat five miles away because the school's consolidated and many of my friends don't want their kids to ride buses on these Matt Craig Lee mountain roads so there are 1,100 people there there are a lot of lower-class whites there and that was very different so there's no community center basketball was everything basketball in school they were the things that United the community and that in the colored mill picnic yes and they don't late stop having the picnic because the whites wouldn't attend a picnic no they stopped having the color meal picnic because the mill was afraid that the United States Civil Rights Commission was going all episode on some friends and I in 1968 integrated the local night club for college students which we called the swordfish in the book and they we shut it down we were thrown out we the first blacks to try to go in there other than the entertainment they threw my friend Roland Fisher up against the wall they threw us all out into the parking lot and the following Monday we called the state Human Rights Commission they came and they shut this place down and right after that the mill announced that they were no longer going to have segregated no picnics and I remember my aunt Margarite saying this is not what dr. King died for that we did this voluntarily this was not segregation we all hated segregation but the fact that we could associate willingly but going to our own churches or in this case having our own picnic was not something that anyone dreamed would be shut down and so what I tried to capture in the book was this sense of loss the passing of an era both for my daughter's but also I think for me and the working out of the passing of my parents my mother's death it's a very much a book it's dedicated my parents visit very much your mother seems to be the dominant influence on your life absolutely my mother not were like we're close I remember one day after my mother died my father and I were driving back from the cemetery which is just outside of Kaiser and he looked at a big tree I mean the trees everywhere and where I grew up and he said you see that tree and I said yes sir and he said you know I loved you and your brother but not like your mother if she thought that tree was offensive to you she would have stopped the car and jumped out shaking her fist at that tree but my mother my mother was language for me yeah my mother shaped my sense of language and my sense of self an enormous dignity tremendous dignity and every day virtually in one way or another my mother told my brother and me that we were both smart and beautiful and you know maybe she got one out of two right well my mother used to tell me the same thing and when you're an only child boy you tend to believe that stuff but I realized in the writing of this book that I was also writing it because my mother my mother abandoned us in psychically psychologically when I was 12 my mother went to a severe menopause which led to a huge hormonal imbalance which no doctor could quite ever restore again and so my mother became quite depressive and she a fair way to say it I think is that she abandoned herself this vital dynamic dignified person I known for 12 years left I mean never reminisce and you can see flashes but she never was quite the same and about that time for reasons that I couldn't remember I became a born-again Christian like and it was only last September September 16th of my birthday after the book was in its final form quote-unquote that I realized why I had become a born-again Christian I was sitting on a stool in my kitchen with my two best friends plus my wife and I crossed my legs we're drinking champagne I crossed my legs and I had this flashback it was amazing I remembered that I had I was a obsessive kid I always ate the same breakfast I woke up the same time and I always crossed my legs right over left and one Sunday I crossed my legs defiantly left over right and basically dared the cosmic order to do something about it and three hours later they took my mother to the hospital and I took responsibility for that oh you said you had to get right with God in order to take care of your mother I went upstairs after they took my mother to the hospital and I pray got on my knees and I prayed and I told God that if he just let my mother live and come home from the hospital I would give my life to Christ and a week later I joined the church two days later my mother came back from the hospital it'll make you believer one well I certainly wasn't for two years I didn't um I didn't play cards I didn't go to basketball games I didn't go to dances and I love to dance yeah and I did not quote Jimmy Carter lust in my heart I didn't know what less than my heart was but I wouldn't have done it if I if I know let me fast-forward Cornell then Yale honored right summa laude I remember from Yale and then you went to Duke University where you were teaching there you were always controversial at Duke why did you leave well I felt other than the fact that to come to Harvard is a terrific opportunity and there was a moribund Department of african-american studies and it needed somebody to come in there and shake it up and give it all of its potential that was waiting to be stimulated well I went to Duke as part of the regeneration of the English department led by people like Stanley fish and Barbara Herrnstein Smith and several other major figures in English Duke has one of the two or three best English departments in the world right now and Stanley fish and Fredric Jameson the great Marxist critic had attracted so much flak from the right and I became the junior lightning rod for four Stanley fish I mean the right there identified me as this left-wing multicultural man man and of course anyone who bothered to read me would know that I'm very much I'm left of center but left it just left of center though I'm a proponent of multiculturalism they made me up I mean rather than read me they invented someone that they could hate I had been brought there by the administration to at least think about starting afro-american studies and I decided that I was too controversial presence on campus so Harvard asked me to come and I realized when I talked to the administrators there that they made me a very generous offer in fact I've they offered to stay at Duke was much more generous than offered to leave but what they couldn't offer me was the opportunity to build my own department now and while you're building you've got Cornel West joining you and you I don't know who else you're about to steal I'm trying what other universities you're gonna make unhappy like you did Princeton but well court hiring Cornel West I think was the most satisfying event of my chairmanship Cornel West is a brilliant intellectual for most African American intellectual and a very dear friend and I can't wait to walk past the the nametag on the door every day that says Cornel West just next to Anthony Appiah the most brilliant African philosopher yeah is a I think we'd like to hire you want to build what a Hall of Fame of the great african-american intellectuals writing and thinking today in this country well my metaphor is the dream team and I'm the player coach actually what my motto is is the replication of Howard University in the 20s and 30s when sterling Brown was there and Alain Locke was there and ears were there right Charles Hamilton Houston right it's right well no what happened to Howard did it lose it well what happened to Howard was integration yeah I mean many of us corner Western I went somewhere else we would have met at Howard ten years before instead we we met at Harvard in you let me make one program you know we promised that we would have Spike Lee here on tape what we'll do is we'll give your Spike Lee next week because I want to continue this conversation and we'll get to Ganz babalu a little bit later in this program but Spike is on taping that interview will take place and by that time we'll know what happens between the Knicks and the Pacers so I continue here with a skip case because a whole lot of issues I want to talk about it and you are right there in the forefront of them but you're trying to why do we need a Department of African American Studies because the last vestige of racism white racism in the West will be intellectual racism when most white people look at black people they don't think there's a philosopher they don't think there's a literary critic they don't think there's a brilliant artist they think at best there is an athlete there is a basketball player or no Tiger right an entertainer or a manual laborer right we don't enjoy the respect for our intellectual achievements you know something but why is that skip I mean is it who's to blame for that and why is it well the structures of white racism are too plain I did an essay for Sports Illustrated two years ago for the special twentieth anniversary issue of the from the time they did the special glorious special issue called the black athlete and so I had their research department I had a hunch I had the research department tell me how many black professional athletes people who earn their living from professional sports there are in the United States I'm going to ask you how many black professional athletes do you think know their 30 million black Americans how many black professional athletes earn their living all sports including hockey and golf 500 1200 1200 but I was in the color VFW in Piedmont West Virginia right before I wrote this essay I put $5.00 on the bar this is that people were pretty much in their cups and I said how many black professional athlete one guy said a hundred thousand people said no 10,000 20,000 you know that there are five times more black dentists than professional athletes there are 15 times more black doctors and professors and how many black Colonels and majors and generals in the army but you ask the average person in America black or white and they think that there are a hundred times but not black but still that that's begging the question I mean we need a department of african-american studies in order to show us how many doctors and lawyers and and non-athletes there are who african-americans were making significant contributions our society I mean why can't you do that in terms of part of the department that the Department of History at Harvard University without having your own separate little department well the reason that you can't is this we need a department that is devoted to establishing the facts of the black experience a and then disseminating those facts why it's not being done there because a white racism I mean white racism hadn't stopped you from writing all the books you've written no three of them in fact write four okay it hasn't stopped Cornel West it hasn't stopped Toni Morrison it hasn't stopped a whole lot of other people and we're all a brilliant contribution these go ahead and we're all in afro-american studies well you are but that had nothing to do with the quality of your work the fact that you were in a department somewhere I don't think they know your why I'm wrong no you don't need Harvard to be skip gates no it doesn't have to do you needed your mother to be skip game all right but to be an academic I need institutional support right right now the question is could I do the same thing in the English department that I do in the Department of afro-american studies answer is no right the reason is this if I'm teaching a course in the English department if a my appointments only in the English department I'm probably going to teach two courses on white Western or American literature and two course on afro-american literature and the two courses in white Western literature will be integrated courses and of course on the history of the American Novel I could maybe teach two or three or four black novelists and of course in afro-american studies I teach now 12 to 15 secondly new subject matters birth new methodologies so but you are saying by that in terms of taking note of that that it's important for I what's the makeup of the student composition in a class taught by you in the african-american studies let's say you're teaching African American novelist what's the make up all black well all african-american or 5050 african-american why if I'm teaching a lecture course yeah well I'll give you an example last year I'm getting at the point is that only students that benefit this is that only the students who are being able to absorb this rich cultural experience that therefore gets at the heart of what separates us and and develop self-esteem in a sense of of the long history that that so defines no no no Black Studies is not for black kids any more than white studies as it were is for white kids and not all of the professor's are african-american either that's right that's what distinguishes us from other departments now answer your question most of the people who take afro-american studies courses at historically white schools or white kids right now most of our concentrators that's the Harvard word for majors will be black right maybe two-thirds but more and more white kids see the necessity of knowing about African American culture because that's a fundamental part of their heritage I would say if anything afro-american studies is more needed by white people in America then even black people but black people may need it too I'd like to see all the kids go to college in America take African American history and literature yeah which get me gets me to this question is at heart the problem of racism the absence of an awareness of the contributions of African Americans and B the absence of an appreciation of the culture of African Americans no I the the fundamental cause of American racism is economics the fundamental cause of racism period is economics there's no doubt about that you see what happens is there's an economic relationship that needs to be justified then you say this person whom I need to exploit is innately or biologically or naturally inferior I didn't do it God did it so that these Africans for example let's say it's fifteen hundred and we need to develop the world 1600 or 1700 and we look around all the world's people we see this huge body of human beings on the continent of Africa they have no gunpowder no way to defend themselves they are exploitable there are there are indigenous forms of African slavery that means that I could go in and buy them ship them to the new world you don't buy them from African slaveholders ship them to the new world and exploit them then I'm gonna write philosophical treatises explaining that this is basically I'm doing these people a favor we are sending them to the University of slavery the best thing that can happen to them is to Christianize them enslave them ship them to the new world where they will be better than the heathens they were in Africa and a whole elaborate mechanism was established to justify the slave trade and what we're seeing when I can't get a taxi on 42nd Street going uptown what we're seeing when I can't be buzzed into a jewelry shop on the east side is the leg does that happen to you sure of course it's how you show like people just like you are now I show of looking very much the chairman of the department I can have a go on and and they're not gonna let you in no they look at me like what do you want right of course and but to say that racism impacts upon a black intellectuals such as Cornel West in the same way that it does a person who lives in bedrock right it's dishonest right but to say that we don't suffer racism because we have degrees from Harvard or wherever it's also rubbish Malcolm X used to say what's the white race it's called black man with a PhD the answer is a and that's still the case and we have to fight that by changing the economic relationships between the large segments of the black community and the large segment of the American popular and if you change that economic relationship we will see the erosion and withering away of racism slowly we slowly x' a hundred years all those how long slowly is maybe a hundred years but we can't do that only we also have to teach all Americans about the intellectual and artistic attainments of life has it also been translated to other ethnic groups in America who've come here whether they come as in guns to work well it's if they're right I mean kind of racism against them if they're white immigrants whether one of the way they'd be one of the ways that white immigrants become Americans is to hate black people I mean it's to adopt the heritage of racism that permeates the society for other immigrants of color of course they suffer in that way black immigrants do but they have different Heritage's to draw upon I'll give you an example the Haitians in Boston Boston's full of patient people large Haitian community many of them are taking over the taxing industries now they have intact familial structures intact belief systems intact entrepreneurial structures that they are able to draw upon so they don't come here with this legacy of slavery such as we suffer from they come here believing that they can go into business and pool their resources and that's what we have to do look that's why I voted for Bill Clinton why I voted for Bill Clinton because he promised that he would address the economic differentials that separated black people from white people poor people from wealthier people and the comprehensive jobs program as part of what the National Urban League calls the equivalent of a Marshall Plan for the cities is exactly what we need to begin to address so you're happy with Bill Clinton's presidency so far because he has committed to a jobs program no I'm not happy with Bill Clinton's presidency what why not well that the foreign policy always had Randall Robbins here recently said he was the worst foreign policy president in the last 18 years oh I'm disgusted with with the policy toward Bosnia and try and I just want those things are obvious and Haiti's obvious speak to what else it is because you brought it up you voted for him and here is Bill Clinton who probably is more empathetic no question with african-americans than anybody is it anybody in public life as far as I know in terms of a mainstream politician he's not that's why I said empathetic absent his body language has never been more natural body language around black people in the White House right in the history of this country and so what's the problem well the problem is this the fact that he is not enunciated a comprehensive plan that will address the cause of poverty we have the jobs program which died in in the Congress then now that was a economic stimulus program died in the carnage that's just because he will say that the job program is not dead and in fact what his economic stimulus his economic program is about is a jobs program and then he will say and robert rice from harvard will also say they're creating jobs and they are yeah they are but they're not addressing it systematically we need to have a clearly defined program that addresses this matter systematically that lets everyone know that this is the cause of so much crime in this country this is the cause of so much social misery in this country and this these aren't inherently bad people these are people who are deprived these are people who are warped and have been warped by the system I think he made a noble effort at the beginning but I think that he failed to enunciate it properly to say like the equivalent of the war on poverty remember Lyndon Johnson's Great War our Marshall Plan are going to the moon or whatever you got yeah but you soon as you say that you got people who are saying why isn't it done the same thing with respect to AIDS and why is it done the same thing with 16 other areas of great concern in American public life sure but there's nothing more important than getting our people back to work everything else flows from economic relationships but the health plan for instance I think is very important it remains to be seen whatever variation but I don't think your guess is as good as anybody else's absolutely but I don't think it's more important than jobs I mean even welfare reform welfare reform because jobs also has to do in my judgment jobs has to do with dignity that's right and with an ultimatum with health program and also the cohesiveness of the family and all those values have come out of the family and so many demagogues are able to exploit the situation on the right and on the left you've been in the black community and the white community political correctness you have written that you hope this debate is waning that's right because I don't think it ever was a real problem well you certainly could have fooled a lot of people I mean they thought you were right there but being politically correct yeah right Duke they did no exactly right no but but and the idea is that you tell me how you feel about it well I think that why you think is important that it that it Wayne it was the political correctness scare was created by the right because they were threatened that so many women and people of color we're moving into the Academy that's it they were threatened that Toni Morrison is now required reading in every English Department in the United States as a zora neale hurston they were threatened that more if you're a person of color or a woman there has never been a better time to be in the Academy as a professor the hegemony of white males is over and that's a good thing it's much better the the old boy network has been thrown out now we have a new system the fact that it was conceivable ten years to go to teach a history of American literature and not teach any black writers or writers of color or women it's ridiculous it was embarrassing and the whole country should have been embarrassed about that the school district in Florida I believe that just adopted this policy that all students would have to declare that America is the greatest civilization in the history of the world I mean it's embarrassing it's the last-ditch effort to restore the world to that nostalgic never seemed to me that that at some people in this debate you know and I hope it's waning to some people in this debate went as inevitably they will do went to the extreme of sort of wanting to deny sort of Eurocentrism at all wanting to deny any sense of the history the other side well we said other words why can't you raise raise the contribution of part without denying the contribution of the other well I think that many of us centrist that you might want to think of it that's exactly what we're trying to do but make no mind that way has it no but I've had Cornel West your friend of mine here and with Arthur Schlesinger I met all kinds of debates and people and that intellectual level seem to be speaking past each other well I don't think that that's necessarily it doesn't have to be that way I'm trying to say right we always have to make choices look if you look at the when did you graduate from college 1964 if you looked at the survey course at Duke in 1964 in American literature and the survey course at Duke in 1994 they're very different courses but if you look at in 1974 before multiculturalism they would be different courses to what I'm trying to say is that we've always made choices about the Canon even when white males dominated the only difference now it's people of color and women who are making the choices you said I think I'd like to think of the PC political correctness debate as waning said this in a speech and I for one won't be sorry to see it go to black folks dealing with forty four point eight percent of children in poverty and with young men between 18 and 25 twice as likely to go to jail or be in the prison system as college the PC debate is what interior design is to a homeless person that's right absolutely I suspect that the vast majority of African Americans would say amen to that right look it's some people like Pat Buchanan have used the culture wars as a screen to attempt to create fear about larger social change in this country economic change because they view it as some coming cultural war that's right well they view it as the Vandals and the Visigoths pillaging Washington and New York and in Los Angeles and that's just not the way it is but it's very important on one level that seventeen courses at Yale last year taught zora neale hurston but on the other hand this revolution in the American Academy is occurring precisely when we have more black people and more black children particularly living beneath the poverty level than we ever had before let me talk about African Americans criticizing African American okay well I also want to talk about you and what you say about African Americans and and Jewish Americans as well because you wrote a whole big piece about that correct that's right all right we'll get to that in a minute but there are some people are wondering where you are and others in this debate when people when when some of the people some of the statements are made by people like Khalid Mohammed the former associate of Minister Farrakhan where are you in this debate and what are you saying about some of the things that they are saying well I'm saying are you scared to criticize other African Americans well I don't think that anybody it's accused me being scared to criticize no they haven't you know we're doing this right after colleague Mohammed some the attempted shot a foot shot in the foot right and I assume they've tried to kill him I don't know i don't know but i think that that's terrible i mean i want to say that i would roam i disagree but everybody does don't they I mean well I hope so you know well it's not what he said about furgus the Li no no never Long Island rest else in America that's another manner all right black American intellectuals have always disagreed we have always criticized each other in public going back to the 1840s the 1850s intellectuals intellectuals with Frederick Douglass and other black intellect and Martin Delany over whether we should all go back to Africa Du Bois and Booker T Washington at the turn of the century and the list goes on criticism is good public criticism is necessary to the progress of the people I invite you here to come with Minister Farrakhan to debate the subject I would love to do you would love to do this I would love to do you know and and just really have at some of the things that he is saying because he's clearly whatever you say about him is having an Heath is finding an audience that's listening to him listen I think that Minister Farrakhan is a brilliant and charismatic man I wrote this in the New York Times a few months ago but I think that he and I think that he speaks for and utters for a enormous amount of black people the deep sense of rage that they feel at the socio-economic conditions that plague our community but I think that Minister Farrakhan corrupts that sense of outrage by scapegoating other ethnic groups particularly the Jews and let me just close on that so what's your sense of what's happened to the relationship between African Americans and Jewish Americans well I think that two things have happened one I think that our interests overlap continue to overlap in some areas but they diverge in some areas and I think those areas of divergence have created so much animosity that the Alliance has fallen apart and many of us such as Cornell and and and me are busy trying to with other Jewish intellectuals trying to put that back together secondly I think that people like the Nation of Islam and people organizations such as the nation have been trying to scapegoat the Jews in order to keep those traditional alliances from being put back together colored people Henry Louis Gates Jr from Harvard University the Piedmont West Virginia great to have you thank you we'll be right back stay with us
