it has implications on was policy levels and a personal level. on the policy level without a renewed sense of idealism, without -- with all of the risk of failure and a disappointment that in tails and a central part of the national character, our can-do spirit will be in jeopardy, and none of the big challenges facing the country will successfully be faced. .. privileged class" and his latest, "the end of anger." ..

and why should america care. in 2011, you wrote the end of anger, a new generation's take on recent rage. what happened? how did we get from rage to the end of anger in 18 years? >> a lot of things. even though the end of anger is not exactly a sequel, it certainly is in some sense a follow up. s, t the central message of which wan the many african-americans who u were angry and very frustrateda at their inability to get beyond a certain point in american life, beyond are structures. they were frustrated about the clasod. point happened was the class shattered. we saw shortly after the book came out, we saw the rise of colin powell, and became a possible presidential candidate. we saw a number of harper titans to send. these are a few. we saw time warner, american

express and a handful of others who suddenly cracked the glass ceiling in corporate america. we saw the rise in the huge sense of opera who has certainly been a factor back and became much more of a factor later. so we basically saw a whole new dynamic capitalist campaign to end in the elections of president obama, which whatever else he said, said clearly to all americans that there is no longer any seat that is reserved solely for whites only in this country when it comes to seats of power and influence. that had a tremendous impact. i think part of the result was that many african-americans perceive that we admit a once in a several generations shift in terms of the opportunity structure in this country. and so i was intrigued when i

began work on this book by a series of polls, by everybody from harris the "washington post" and harvard, and others, which picked up an interesting optimism despite the fact that we are in the midst of this great recession. and interesting strand optimism among african-americans. after and americans measured by these polls were even more optimistic than white americans. and so one of the questions began why is this so? the other question for me became, ever since the publication of the "the rage of a privileged class," i intend to go back to think because it's it's clear to me as things were chained and the question, how people thought about opportunity and whether people still perceive the glass ceiling in the same way was an important issue for me. so for that combination of reasons i came back but in essence what happened, the whole dialogue around the classroom change, at least some people, not all, some people seem to have shattered.

>> host: is it significant that rage was written during and right after the rodney king incident? >> guest: it's significant in the sense that was a lot of research, which is sort of fed into rage. there was one piece of research in particular, the right, that stemmed from the. which show that middle-class african-americans, a study done by ucla, which showed that middle-class african-americans were even angrier than poor african-americans. after the beating death so many people said to themselves, this could've been me, a random guy stops and beaten. because it had little to do with whatever social status was. >> host: in "the end of anger" what were your research survey methods? >> guest: well, i'm a journalist and were multiple. part of the hard are two

surveys. i did a survey, black alumni of harvard business school and i also did a survey of alumni of a program that's been in existence in the mid 1960s that takes people, primarily people of color, from urban areas, largely poor and underprivileged to use the term. and end up going to some program, some of the best prep schools, second or schools and the country. celaya two fairly large surveys. there were 500 people in those surveys. who consented to fill out a very lengthy questionnaire. the question was mostly 100 items. >> host: who came up with questions? >> guest: i came up with the question. i met with a future of the trust and have them redo it with me because i did pick up some questions they asked but i'd designed a questionnaire. the two organizations, abc and alumni association were good enough to distributed and i

analyzed the results. after the surveys came in, some of those things were so intriguing that i decide we need to do a follow-up interview. so we did about 140 follow-up interviews very in depth. we took a section of those who we had surveyed, either on the phone, the phone calls, or via e-mail, ask them whole series of questions which stemmed from the responses they've given to the original questionnaire. in addition we probably about close to 100 other interviews which had nothing to do with the survey purchase people who weree interesting in one way or another and could speak to various aspects of these issues. everybody from experts in sociology and psychology, and various fields, the people who were working in corporate life or in other areas of life. there was a very small survey i did of young people who have been, who would come out of the criminal justice system, which

works with people primarily men, but people who, for one reason or another have come in contact with the criminal justice system. >> host: you found in "the end of anger" overall middle-class african-americans are more optimistic than white americans. is that a fair statement? >> guest: it is a for statement but that was not my funny. that's the finding, that surveys that pew and then other people, harrison and the "washington post" and gallup have found. i mean, i essentially confirmed. i was less interested in establishing that than in trying to figure out what was going on in the minds of, particularly professional class of people who were the same class of people i had surveyed for "the rage of a privileged class." one of the questions was a question of why had a group of people who started out very

passionate and angry become more optimistic and in some sense less angry? and part of the answer to that, i discovered in looking through the surveys was that we're talking a different generations, at least to some measure. so not just that we had a mega- shift in terms of the possibility spectrum, but in addition that we're different generation, board. so what i ended up doing with "the end of anger," i had not intended to do. >> host: now, in a "the rage of a privileged class" you list a dozen teams for black professionals. here they are. number one, inability to fit in.

>> host: do those still exist in some form in your few? >> guest: yes. one of the things people have sort of said to me as well, as the world suddenly changed so much, that the earlier analyses no longer applies. what we are instead dealing with is sort of two different ways of looking at the world in a sense mean, a world, like any in a price in transition including a society, you have a lot of the residue of the old and you also have a lot of the phenomena of the new. and so the inability fit in which was basically which is

never one which is the difficult that many african-americans had in immersing themselves in corporate structures or these large institutions is something that many people still cope with today. coping fatigue which was that whole zapping of energy which a christian trying to please people who are not necessary inclined to be placed by your performance and who don't really see the same way you see yourself. certainly some people, and many people still go through that. that in addition to all the things, you have an array of opportunities that at least some people perceive that they didn't proceed before, and so this whole idea that you can just, whatever you do, and however you network and have you tried to connect with is just never going to us into the position of power. that has dissipated and particularly among what i call

generation three, and we can talk about this later, but i do a whole generational analyses. essentially people under 40 who were not the people who were interviewed for rage of a privileged class because even the oldest group would have been sort of coming out of college and getting into the workplace. >> host: you spent quite a bit of time talking about the tea party movement. like? >> guest: because if you ask who is the angry group now in american society, you're not talking much about african-americans for the most part. you may be talking about tea party types and other types who are very upset that what they perceive as radically changing american landscape, and/or determined interface to take back america. and so i was intrigued by this,

and spent some time imaging tea party people, talking to tea party people, reading some the tea party literature. in order to get my head around what these people were so angry about. >> host: what did you find? >> guest: well, there's one thing they say they're angry about. what they say they're angry about his big government come up with is a very are angry about is the inability of the little guy to get ahead and things like this. that seems to be part of what the anger is about. there's another part, which is directed at people like obama who represents something that d.c. is fundamentally un-american. and so you have this interesting sort of nexus between people who believe very much in what they call tea party something people who don't believe that obama was born in america, people who don't believe that he speaks for american ideas, or speaks for them. who in effect are saying that he

is some kind of a foreign entity or some kind of alien. and i think that intersects as well with this growing discomfort over immigration, particularly immigration for the south. which is immigration of latinas to this country. so you have all these things that come in combination to make people who apparently felt very comfortable with what they thought america was, see something that become interviewed something radically different in some sense horrifying. >> host: and in "the end of anger" you write that the contract will not be drawn up along the lines and most tea partiers want, for the separate of the old america is gone. and for all their anger and noise, the tea party cannot bring it back. no more than it can bring back the unsettled prairie, the kerosene lamp or teenagers blissfully unaware of. at some level all but its most irrational members realize this, which is why the tea party leaders fight against accusations of racism and

struggle to adapt to the new america even as they refuse to let go of the old. now, ellis cose, there's been a couple of examples of members of congress, african-american members of congress talking about the tea party. maxine waters recently made a comment up in detroit, and representative andre carson, democrat of indiana, of indianapolis made this comment recently. i want to get your reaction. >> we have seen change in congress. the tea party itself has changed. this is beyond symbolic change. this is the effort that we are seeing of jim crow.

>> host: ellis cose? traneighty we are looking at political rhetoric here, and political rhetoric seems to be n'treme. political rhetoric tends to be a little extreme.term i don't think that certainly in terms of their articulated what positions come you're going to find any tea party leadership's saying we want people whiche together. it's just not part of their. ar rhetoric.er and i think many of them aree et sincere about that. diff they recognize this is ao te different america that you can't take america back to the 1940s and 1950s.y ar at the same time come with the express as frustrated.it in. they're not quite sure what this thing is going and they are mo angry. host: in your book, "mans world," how high is its price went what did you find that male americans were frustrated by? >> guest: it's interesting.

segue from the tea party. but i think "man's world" came out, sort of in the talent of a lot of feminist literature and a lot of focus on the issues of females and opportunity, and issues of sexual behavior, you know, sexual harassment, dating behavior and how that changed. it was an attempt to map out sort of what this new terrain was, where a woman were entitled, not only entitled to but were demanding parity with men across the board. and part of what men are frustrated with were some of the same -- the same things tea party's innocence, they were first to with change, frustrated with the idm that the comfortable structures that a new are not the structures that exist. but in addition to that many of

them also were frustrated by what they perceived as sort of a double standard. and again as a transitional reality. that women back in the old days at certain privileges. they were not expected to pay when they went on dates. they were not expected to carry the freight of supporting the household. they were expected certain deference in certain respects. they were expected to be protected in certain ways, and so it deals with this new america in which women are on one hand inequality and they're trying to respond to that, and some are also saying we want some of these things when you were and trying to do with that as well. so it deals with everything from workplace behavior to dating behavior, and sort of, and also to look at the emerging so-called men's movement at the time. i mean, this is not too long

after robert bly and others got out there, in his case, they were going into the woods in beating drums. just sort of research a certain type of masculinity. which was actually quite silly but it was again an example of these guys trying to do with that, and there were other sets of guys who again with divorce issues. still despite this sort of rise, women are most more likely to get custody of children. men were more likely to be alienated from their families as a result of divorce. so there were guys trying to work through that set of issues and how do you deal with those issues at a time when america is moving at least towards an articulation of embracing equality. win in some ways things are not really equal. >> host: "man's world" came out in 1995, ellis cose wrote in

the book i've talked to enough aggrieved white men to believe that they are less troubled >> host:troubled. >> guest: i think that in, i think that sort of gets you the whole question of affirmative action and why people were so upset with that. and you had the classic sort of dialogue or debate about that, which is basically people who have a certain amount of privilege set okay, we understand that the rules are going to be equal now, and we understand that everybody, that we are not going to be granted a set of privileges that people don't have, okay. whether we like it or not that's the new world. we can go along with that. but then they say then why if everybody is treated as equal,

are minorities and/or women being given extra set of privileges? and, of course, the answer to that is the answer but i guess lyndon johnson gave him 65 in his speech at howard university when he said, well, you know, once the people start the race at the finish line, the other set of people start the race 10 or 15 feet back and you need to somehow make up that distance in order for things to be equal. that's a big philosophical debate. i'm not sure we will be -- we will ever resolve that in a way that gets us to consensus because you of fundamental different worldview. >> host: in "color-blind," "seeing beyond race in a race-obsessed world," you wrote over the years i have learned that affirmative action is much more than simply opening up an organization to people who traditionally have been excluded.

>> guest: again, the same dilemma. which is how to get institutions -- first of all let me just say, it encompasses so me different things. it's different and corporations than it is in universities and it's different in government contracting than it is neither of those two things. but at its essence it's about trying to get people into the process who have not normally in the process trying to get people to move up in the hierarchy, who are not normally moved up. some reason why they aren't and that reason jenna has more to do than just the simple fact of color. or gender in this case. so the question becomes how do you do that. where you get into difficulty is, however you do that, somebody is going to feel that

they are being disadvantaged by the again. you know, whether it's universities where you say okay, we let some people in, who don't have the same task was as other people, and and folks say why are you letting these people and? and even if you make the argument universities are not just a accepting people with the highest discourse, they are about accepting a class that represents what the university wants, a class that makes sense to the university entrance of all kinds of things from some people are good athletes to people who are good scholars, et cetera. it's still, because there's a number there, because some people are getting in their eyes and princes, there's a sense of issues. in the corporations all that different. eugenic about people moving up and corporations just on the basis of a tennis court or something like that. so then the question becomes a bit more subtle. well, what's this guy have that i didn't have? and this guy or this woman

getting it because this person is a woman or this person is a minority. it becomes rather difficult to untangle, because we have historically i think been so obsessed with issues of race and privilege, whites and blacks, whites and people of color tend to see these issues very differently, and whites disproportionately believe that something wrong is going on here. when this thing works its way through the corporation. and people of color also believe something is wrong, but they believe it is wrong because they do not move ahead fast enough. >> host: good afternoon and welcome to booktv and booktv's "in depth" program. the first sunday of every month at noon we feature one author and his or her body of work. for you to talk with the author. and now it's your turn. if you'd like to dial in and

talk with best selling author, essayist, columnist and long-term news editor ellis cose. (202) 624-1111 if you live in the east or central time zone. (202) 624-1115 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. you can also send a tweet to mr. kos at booktv, twitter.com/booktv ordino, so many ways to contact and we will begin taking those in just a minute. ellis cose is the author of eight books. you they are. beginning in 1989, in 1992 a nation of strangers about immigration came out. 1993 the best selling "the rage of a privileged class." 1995, "man's world." "color-blind" came out in 1997. "the envy of the world" came out

in 2002. "bone to pick" in 2004 and his most recent, "the end of anger," came out in 2011. >> guest: one book you are missing in the list is the best defense which is a novel. >> host: when did that come out of? chances are we skipped out but there was a novel. >> guest: that came out, i want to say in 2000 by bobby off a year or two. >> host: how did you get to a novel? >> guest: also what's missing is the dark to limit which is a collection of essays. the novel was a departure. i decided it was time to do something fun. my wife's a career prosecutor, and so i had some interest for that reason among others in the court system. and so that was a courtroom drama and it centers around a

flamboyant female attorney, and again in her defense of a guy for murder. >> host: what about the garden dilemma? >> guest: the time comes from the name christopher darden, the prosecutor or at least one of the prosecutors in the o.j. simpson case. and partly because i am married to a career prosecutor, partly because i just follow that set of issues. it was clear to me that there were among minority prosecutors in general, there was a lot of ambivalence or at least concerned about what their role was, not just the o.j. simpson case, but in the justice system in general. where we have minority prosecutors who are essentially in the business of putting other people of color in jail. and how they make the are you for what they do. and how they deal with that and to what extent what they do.

>> host: in "the end of anger" you say you didn't set out to write a book about politics but is it a book about generations? >> guest: in large measure it is a book about generations partly because what i discover discovered, in doing the surveys before, it was based on two large surveys your q. no, you discover that people under 40 and people over 40 were responding to at least some questions in very different ways. and essentially that people of color who are under 40 saw the place, workplace where they were less likely to have a glass ceiling. saw a workplace and even if there has information against them, the discrimination did

that to affect their careers, compared to the people over 40, you know, who so workplace with a glass ceiling was still present, where discrimination had a fundamental impact upon their careers. and who in many ways despaired of ever being anything up rocks my inequality in terms of opportunity and organizing corporate world. this is a bit of a surprising finding but on reflection it probably shouldn't have been because we are talking of generations who have fundamentally different sets of experiences, but i was fascinated enough by it that i spent a lot of time probing that with these different generations, how they thought how they got to where they were, and came up with taxonomy, which i called generation one, where people are born before 1945. i call them the fighter

generation if they were african-americans, the generation from which martin luther king and jesse jackson, john lewis and other people came from, who were the frontlines of the the civil rights struggle. the generation to which i call the believers, those are people who were born, i'm sorry, the dreamers, born between 1945-1969, and these were people who were the first in the second wave of people that entered largely all white institutions, whether they were universities or corporations. and marched in sort of filled with the dream began in my martin luther king and large measure was disappointed they would talk about the younger generation which i called generation three, people who were born basically after 1970, 1970-1995 who in many cases, particularly were talking about middle-class people who are raising very integrated settings. who came up with other people,

people of other races as close friends, as close associates eric this experience them in school and in the workplace different than that of the older generation. and i called these people, i call these people the believers because they are people who believe that america means what it says what it basically says it's going to get a fair shake. >> host: in "color-blind" year 12 steps toward a race neutral nation, and number one, we must stop expecting time to solve the problem for us. but hasn't i made a big difference in race relations? >> guest: i got a letter from the birmingham jail was that time is neutral. time in and of itself doesn't solve problems. what solve problems is what people do with that time. and i think no, time doesn't solve much of anything. we went hundreds of years of

slavery in this country. time just ended. there were political decisions that ended it. by the same token, at least we spent decades of jim crow. time didn't end that. that was a big civil rights battle and a series of supreme court decisions that ended that. and i think by the same token it's not just time that is change things, i think it's about we have approach things differently as generations have come on board very different come as ne w generations have come on than we did in the past. >> host: what does the term postracial mean to you? >> guest: i don't think a postracial meets most of anything. means much of anything because it doesn't really exist. i think the term sort of implies reaching an era where race just doesn't matter at all. what if we see race, we don't really respond as an important factor. that's aspirational he is a nice

place to think about getting two. i don't think that we're there yet. i don't think that even for people who are being born, they will see this postracial age. what i've said in times is we may not be postracial but we are post-racist. and the distinction i make is that no longer in civilized society is it okay to be racist. we don't accept in civilized society again blatant racist behavior, places that you blatant racist attitude, blatant racist rhetoric. we reject that uniformly. some idiots don't that uniformly in terms of civilized society we reject that. and that significant but it don't think that equates to postracial, which implies that race has just disappeared as effect of society. clearly it is not.

>> host: this is "in depth." robin from new york, you're the first color. please go ahead with your comment or question. >> caller: thank you. mr. coast, listening to you i was thinking that talking of race and age and whatnot is good for speaking in broad strokes but doesn't ultimately it comes down to changing individuals minds, individual professions and having power over people, that ultimately it's a personal thing that we have to do almost one person at a time? >> guest: sure. the question in essence is your individual psychology more important than your generation. and i agree with it. the book makes the same point. at the same time when you are looking at social dynamics and how society in general moves, you can't do that analysis without in effect loving society together, lumping groups together and saying this is how

one group interacts with another. but you are right. if we are looking at individuals, individuals back in the 17, 1800s, you know prior to the end of slavery in this country, who were very ardently in favor of inequality. that's where the abolitionist movement was all about. there's certainly some young people who are not nearly as enlightened as an older people, so i've never the one to say that you just characterize people by their generations. but at the same time i would say that there are dominant ways that generations tend to see things and there are dominant ways that groups were raised a certain point in society candidate see things. that's why we talk about people who for instance, were raised in the time of the depression have a set of shared traits in some sense because that experience fundamental shape them in some way. i think in the same way people who were shaped in the cauldron

of the civil rights movement have a giveaway of looking at things that people who race at a time long after that. >> host: van from washington, d.c.. good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. mr. cose, i am of a age where i listen to you, using a popular culture they were to segregate and what many of my white chairs were listening to. and now we seem to have no barriers in between, particularly in music, between black culture and white culture. would you comment on how you think that has affected perceptions among people today? >> guest: i think that is part and parcel of a large phenomenon which is we see a breaking down of racial barriers. i don't think we've seen him in the racial barriers if you listen to jazz these days, a lot of jazz musicians our young white guys. probably more in some sense, probably more in some places than blacks who play jazz. the largest consumers of rap

music our young whites, which again is, would have been totally surprised to somebody who came up in the '50s and '60s when this sort of music listening industry for lack of a better phrase was very much segregated. and when whites had to in effect cover black music in order for white listeners to pay attention to them. i think it's a reflection of some of the larger trends i talk about in "the end of anger" where, among the younger generation, particularly what i call generation three, the idea of racial barriers and rigid racial distinctions is seeing more and more unnatural and in many respects just silly. >> host: married in spokane, washington, fewer on with ellis cose. it helps if i push them button.

sorry about that. go ahead. >> caller: i have a couple quick comments. when we talk about racial in our society, i find that redheads, doesn't matter what school, what class people you come from, a redhead walks into kindergarten, they teachers connect a child and think the worst and that shows automatically typecast first time they walk into the classroom. you don't see it happen with any other race. i really feel that number one minority in our world today is a disabled person because they are walked on, push down and stomped everywhere in society. and recalled nothing more than applied on the governments economy. but here's somebody that worked 30 years of their lives in a situation where i was a 19 year of general contracting forum and e-mail, is delivered and i had

to fight to get that position and prove myself. no different than anybody else would, in the situation. i was hired on cruise that didn't hire minorities that they didn't hire any blacks, anyone, female or otherwise. >> guest: i have to confess i'm not summit with research looking at redheads. and to what extent did discriminate against. this is an interesting thought. i will see if i can find any research on that, but certainly again, i think that there's things to be gained by trying to pick up which prove is a proven side that is most discriminate against. clearly people have various handicaps face all kinds of discrimination. clearly there are other groups other than racial minorities, people depend on sexual orientation may also faced various degrees of discrimination. people, because of size may face

discrimination if they are considered to be too short or if they're considered to be too fat. so there are any number of ways that we come up with to try to lock people out and did discriminate against people. and i think that each of those sets of people have their own sets of issues. i just don't, i just don't see the point in trying to make it into a contest. >> host: ellis cose, let's take a point to talk about your second book, a nation of strangers. if you could tie him with what you sing and tell is the thesis. >> that's basically a book about the immigration history of the united states, beginning in the 1700s, 1790s, our first naturalization act, which limited naturalization to those who were free and white.

it's a look at how in some ways we have changed our definitions as we move through the years, of what a minority is and what white is. there was a period during the turn of the last century who are looking at immigration laws where italians and other southern and eastern europeans were by some definition not considered wise and certainly jews were not considered white for many americans, knight-ridder's history of testing of psychometrics which tries to make the case that they were genetic inferiority because they are genetically inferior because they were jews or they came from southern europe as opposed to northern europe year there were exclusions in the 1880s. a lot of u.s. immigration history if you look at it and u.s. immigration policy is an

attempt to try to keep out people who would perceive others as undesirable minority. even when we had the reform in 1965 when we went from all these quotas that were based in basically ethnicity to more of a family reunification approach, which on its face was much less discriminatory, the assumption behind that was that the united states was going to continue to be a vastly predominant in my country because people who are here and it turned out to be a lot more complicated than that. we got refugees from other countries that were not white. we have various immigration reforms that legalized people from latin american countries, and so the expectations were not met with reality as it came out.

but it's in large measure a look at how we have evolved in terms of what we consider, of who we consider eligible for the identity of america and what we consider to be an american, and also what we consider to be white in this country. >> host: why was it 1965 a watershed year and what would the national origins? >> guest: it was a watershed year because when you go back to the prior immigration laws, which were from the 1920s basically, and various amendments which came after that, the whole driving force, at least a large part of the driving force was making sure that we got the disciple immigrants in this country, and desirable was pretty much defined by who was european and basically who was northern and northern european, who was english, who was german. it was an attempt to very much

maximize access for those groups. by the time you get to the 1960s you have of course a worldwide world equality and, of course, a domestic civil rights movement. and you have foreign countries that were saying wait a minute, how could the united states be steady for equality and equal representation and justice when it's clearly discriminating against all kinds of groups in terms of its immigration laws. and so there was a moment to change that, and part of what made it comfortable for certain people who were not sure they wanted to change that were arguments, even when we change this, so we're no longer sing these are rich country, based on the idea of national origins, even once we changed that, allow people in because they are various professional reasons,

and because we united with her family, the composition of our immigrants is not going to change very much. so people said okay, we will go along with this. your other people who thought there were times for things to change. but i think a number of factors came together in the 1960s which basically said the way we've been doing immigration policy for over 200 in this country just doesn't make sense anymore. we have to figure another way to do it post practice of book tv on c-span2. this is our monthly "in depth" program. our guest is ellis cose, and polly of long island, you're on the air traffic a little. how are you this morning? >> guest: very good. good to speak with you. >> caller: my question to you is about the break. the break that women got the vote. when you get the advice, help the most powerful black man, and

this is what i'm looking at happening right now. [inaudible] i think that the republicans and the tea party are following that vice of lineage. take the most powerful black man in the country and break them. and are at the point they are disrespecting the president to the point where they won't even answer the present anymore. i think that the break of women as slave masters take the most powerful black man and break them in front of his people. >> guest: interesting analogy. i'm a little bit hard-pressed to compare the behavior that is used on the plantation to subjugate somebody who's considered property to that that

is being used against the president of the united states, who is serving, not considered property by anyone. but i think, so i certainly wouldn't describe it in those terms, but i think the caller has a point. certainly this president has been exposed to a level of disrespect from opponents from political opponents that seems extreme. he's even given a crazy way to political dialogue goals. and i think it reflects any number of things, clearly we are just politically in terms of democratic and republican extremely polarized. so that's one aspect of what why we are seeing the behavior in some respect. but when you have a national politician called the president a liar, when you have parties who compare him to adolf hitler and things of that nature.

there is a level of disrespect there. as i said, i'm hard-pressed to take take it to slave times in a can parents of what masters did two slaves at the time. i think that analogy takes you to making obama into some kind of slave which doesn't make any sense to me. but i do think there's a level of disrespect that is traveling. >> host: do you think that president obama gets more disrespect then perhaps of george w. bush, who was called names by harry reid and nancy pelosi and quite a slew of people? >> guest: i think probably to some extent in terms of the sort of things that he is being called, yes. and then the way he has been portrayed publicly. yes, and i think he gets people particularly irritated. i mean i think it was a lot of kidding about certainly george bush, about w., a lot of kidding

about his intellect, and think about that nature. but there is at least to my way of thinking, there's a lot less name-calling that is going on now. >> host: next call for ellis cose comes from linda in santa barbara. hi, linda. >> caller: hello. this might be somewhat silly, but he did mention the book about christopher darden which i haven't read or the group of essays, and i would like to read. but i sort of have a comment of my thinking about that long ago? despite the circus atmosphere and the controversial outcome, i thought it was very evident that johnnie cochran was far more effective and he was a great lawyer, as opposed to christopher darden. i mean, the contrast was amazing. and also, afterwards marcia

clark and christopher darden had no embarrassment at all to admit that they've actually had an affair with probably should've been working on their motions in closing arguments. and i would like your guest to comment on someone like johnny cochran who i would imagine is a true hero to the black community. >> guest: well, there's no question that johnnie cochran was a brilliant attorney and also a brilliant showman. and there's no question that he was very good at pulling christopher darden's strings. i mean, he somehow made the o.j. simpson case into a referendum of me think of including a referendum of whether or not christopher darden was black. christopher darden fell into the trap and could not resist it. if you're asking was the most clever, the better attorney, clearly by any indication i can think of, johnny cochran was by

far the better attorney there. and he won the case and christopher darden and marcia clark did not. there's a lot of speculation about that affair. may be no more about it but i'm not sure the average mid-having a affair, they hinted that they possibly did. but anyway, that's not terribly important. >> host: your first two books, "the press" and "a nation of strangers," about the media and immigration. five books, six books on race. why did you pick up the race topic as something to write about? >> guest: in some ways because, in some ways raise it to me i guess is the way to put it. when i wrote rage, which is taking out in 93, actually the hard copy came out in 94, was such a big book in some ways. it got so much attention.

that i found myself suddenly a huge expert on race. and it's funny, i mean, most people, the press which is a book i'm very proud of which looks at the evolution of five major american press institutions, is fundamentally not a book about race, it's a book about these institutions started out as down entities and again multimillion dollar corporations and what that entails, the personalities involved. but most people who are familiar with that work tend to think that rage was my first book. even though it was actually the third book. and because raged it get so much attention and because all of a sudden in some ways i became this acknowledged sort of guru, at least certain of racial matters, i found myself called

upon to comment a lot on race that had been called on before. so innocent that topic sort of picked me. >> host: in raged to the story about tiptoeing around the truth around robert maxa when your editor of the editor page of the "new york daily news." what was that story? >> guest: robert maxa was recently acquired by daily news, they decide they need to change the editorial outlook. so i was invited to be an editorial page editor but before its official offered the job, robert maxwell had to sign off on me. and it was an interesting meeting. meeting. i had not met the gentleman before, and we met because he spent most of his time on a yacht over in europe, some of it in israel. and so he didn't have your residence, permanent residence in new york city so he rented a suite in the waldorf, a huge, a floor in the waldorf when he was

there. and so i was ushered into his makeshift office at the waldorf, and bob maxwell sat in front of me and one of can we had a nice conversation and he asked about my political views and views on israel, things of that nature. and then he finally turned to me and he says, well, ellis, tony, if -- tell me, if i implore you, we be the highest ranking like person in the newspaper business in new york? and the question sort of stock because that's not something i don't hold onto focusing on. and i found myself well, mr. waxman, i guess it depends on how you define highest ranking in which you make of that. but when it became very clear to me that in some way he would take great pride in being able to say yet the highest-ranking black newspaper person in new york on his payroll, then i, you know, didn't give him a satisfactory answer i think the

question but he did offer me the job. so i guess i went through that okay. >> host: in both rage and in "the end of anger" you repeat a story about shopping at marshall fields. >> guest: for me that was a very important moment because as a kid of course i was aware of race. i was aware that my community was overwhelmingly black. i was classified as a black person. of course, i was aware of the. i was aware somewhere in the background of some sort of civil rights movement going on. i was even aware of that. but i don't think that in any direct way i have confronted what i considered blatant racial animals and i walked in the store intending to buy a gift for my mother. and was basically chased out of the store by a detective, you know, instead of allowing me to shop, insisted on shadowing me

very closely, in a very uncomfortable way. and, finally, i just left because i just couldn't deal with it. but it was very clear that this detective presumably just on the basis of my gender and my color, and perhaps my age, you know, had decided that i'd no business being in marshall fields. and that it was his basis to make sure that i left. >> host: elizabeth tweets into you, could you talk about the role of the contemporary black press in a reorganizing media landscape? >> guest: that's an interesting question because certainly historically the black press played a huge role. the chicago defender and other black newspapers, which in those days, those days meaning the '30s and '40s and 50s had huge circulations, over 100,000

readers. were a large part of what originally drew many blacks to the north. they put forth worth it was a land where there were not lynching. there was a land where there was this rigid form of jim crow. there was a land of opportunity, and they also spoke very strongly beyond, on a half of the legal justice. they were full partners in the civil rights movement from the early days, in terms of articulating the vision of equality for this country. they became casualties to some extent of immigration, because the black press was formed at a time when the white press didn't recognize african-americans when it didn't have anything in the black committee, when it didn't really talk about black americans. when black americans were -- when black readers and the black

public of course, and in that vacuum, the black press thrived. more recently the black press has had a hard time. part of it had to do with unintended effects of integration. and part of it having to do with the fact that print media period, whether they're white print media, so-called mainstream print media, or minority print media are having a hard time just because of the change, the changing media landscape which have been difficult one. so the future of the black press i think is really going to be online. and that's evolving. we'll see where it takes us. there are surely some black websites and some black news portals that seem to be doing quite well these days. and what they will ultimately evolve into we're not quite sure. >> host: stan in bloomington north carolina. good afternoon.

you are on with ellis cose. >> caller: thank you c-span and mr. koster mr. kotz, i'm a senior citizen from north carolina. i'm a white man. i have some family who are biracial. and my comment, i mean obama report, former republican, now independent, obama supporter, since he's from a biracial family, and i've read all his books, they're impressed with the main. is probably the most intelligent man in the room pretty much in every session using. he was brought up predominant by his grandparents and his mom was white. do you think that if he was a few shades lighter, as in the case of radically of my grandson who probably when he walks into a room can be either, and they are proud of that, they know they are special, the bottom line is do you think he would

get less grief from the tea party and more cooperation from the right if that were to be the case? it's just a curiosity on my part. >> guest: it's an interesting question, there's no way to know but, i mean, i think that what's more relevant is not whether he was a few shades lighter, because he's not, you know, all that dark. i think it's whether he is cleared identified as an african-american, and i think he is. and so i think to the extent that there is racial animus is going to be directed against them because he clearly identifies himself as an african-american and is cleared identified as an african-american despite the fact that you say he was raised, hearts of my grandparents and by a mother. i think in some ways more interesting question, people i presume, grandsons generation,

but anyway, very young people, at a time when, to some extent i think our rigid racial classifications are breaking down, the whole idea in the united states, again, dating back to the time slavy hs so- ..cp rule, which is that you have one drop of so-called black blood you are considered to be black, some of the leading lights of the civil rights movement and some of the leading black politicians, colin powell for instance, look like a white man to many people. so did walter whitehill is the former head of the naacp. he was so why keep it has to go undercover on missions to the south and report back what was happening in terms of some of these segregationists diehard white groups. so we have experienced in the past having very, very, people are very, very light complected

but who consider themselves black and by their society were considered black, and i think obama is still a part of a generation that, regardless of how light he was, he was still being considered an african-american, unless perhaps he had long hair et cetera, but he was still considered an african-american. i think looking towards the future we'll see a time when we are a bit more like some latin american countries where there are people who are not necessary considered black, not necessary considered white but who are considered some sort in between categories. ..

with me because i am a very light skinned african-americans looking at a set of issues having to do with race and the guy looks at her almost totally baffled and says no i don't think so because here in brazil we understand that in america there are a lot of white people think they are black. c what he was speaking to is a different way of categorizing on people whereas there they categorize people basis of how they look as opposed to dissent where this year we have historically categorized peoplet on the basehe of dissent and asi said with a one drop rule been there will control but that is the process of changing this d week. >> host: colds, you're on with ellis cose. >> caller: thank you for being here today and your knowledge. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: a couple points i want to raise up by your definition considered

generation -- pre, been 39 this years and my point of view being african-american and that aside looking at the first black president, president obama, and his identifications with the black community, and just in general how it should be highlighted of obama the fact that the community as a constituency be it based on the perceptions of race because of hot potato where in the election cycle, he identified this group as a voting constituency that needs to be addressed, but after the election, you know, even more so, there's a tendency to not want to be with black issues and black concerns and even being a quid pro quo president which obama was fighting from. two, you mentioned before, just

america being a nation of individualism; however, still living the legacy and how you create it as being an american from the african side or european side, racism and racist is still infused in our institutions. as we see now with the mortgages and everything else going on with housing and so forth. you know, it's hard to attack an issue that doesn't have a political face behind it and is more insidious than we take on. race has its place, but we can't put a certain face or person on it like we used to in the past. >> guest: yeah. the first question is a very complicated question having to do with how obama manages racial expectations and how within that he manages, you know, his own

racial identification and racial politics. i think the obama campaign from the time it was a campaign, you know, and certainly the obama presidency has been acutely aware of the potential pitfalls, and him being perceived as someone who is catering to minority interests or caters to black interests, and i think they've tried very hard -- perhaps too hard -- to avoid the mere perception of that. you recall when there was the highly publicized incident of professor skip gates from harvard being arrested and when he stepped out of his home in cambridge, and obama decided this was a teachable moment, and when asked a question about the policeman's behavior who arrested skip gates, he said the policeman reacted stupidly. there was a fire storm to that,

and it went down very much along racial lines with whites responding to pollsters disapproving of the president's response. the overwhelming majority aminority approving to the president's response. if obama says something that can be remotely considered to indicate that he was more sympathetic to blacks than he was to whites, it would be used against him, and so i think they have tried very hard to avoid that. i think they certainly tried to avoid that in the campaign. they had to ultimately face the issue of race because the issue of jeffrey right was -- wright was a big issue. as far as the campaign was concerned, the subject was over and dealt with. because obama is the first black

president, i think he has a set of scrutiny around race that perhaps, you know, the second or third person of becomes president won't have. part of the burden of that is that he finds himself basically constrained against speaking out or acting in any way that would put him in danger of being perceived as agenting in solidarity with the blacks. there's even a dust up in the public arena when, i guess, between al sharpton and tabbith smiley, this question of whether obama can have a black agenda, and sharpton objecting he can't, and the other saying he can have a strong black agenda. it's a con numb drum for him, and i don't think he's figured out an easy or delicate way to get around that problem yet, and

the second problem, you have to remind me -- >> >> host: i can be at no help at this point, sorry. i was listening to your answer. it's gone by me. you mentioned the speech in 2008 in philadelphia. here's a portion of this speech. >> this is where we are right now. it's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. contrary to the claims of my critics, black and white, i have never been so naive to believe we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle or with a particular candidate particularly -- [applause] particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own, but i have asserted a firm conviction, a

conviction of my faith and god and faith in the american people that working together we can move beyond our racial wounds, and that, in fact, we have no choice. we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. >> host: ellis cose, that was in march of twaights. recently on booktv, we taped an "after words" program with randall kenedy, whose newest book, persistence of the colored line is out. we had radio network interview him. there was a question asked of randall kenedy, and we'll show you the question and his answer, but i'm more interested in hearing you respond to the question as well. here it is. >> president obama has burdens that no white politicians would have, and you just mentioned one. i mean, he has special burdens,

special racial burdens. white politicians have racial burdens too, and black people and white people, everybody has race, but a black president has a special burden. >> host: sorry, the question was to be included, but randall kenedy saying president obama has burdens no other president has. >> guest: i think because, again, of what we have been in this country and because of the centrality within our race, it would be naive to suspect he would not have a set of racial issues that of least of what a white politician does not have. i was in south carolina for the primary, and i remember going to what was supposed to be a celebration for john edwards, but he didn't do well in that primary, so it was more of a wake, and i turned to one woman, a white woman more or less

around 40-something, identified herself as a professor, and i said, well, your candidate obviously is not going to win, so who are you turning 20 give your support to? she turned to me and said, well, that's the dilemma. i asked why? she said, well, hillary is too hard, and obama is too black. i said that's an interesting way of looking at things. this is certainly, you know, up to that point, a candidate, who made very little issue of his race other than to acknowledge the facts, and the fact of his ancestry, and despite that, there were many voters who perceived him as fundamentally just a black candidate, and so clearly, that is one burden a white candidate would not have, and because of that, i think it sets a set of dynamics for obama

and the white house that makes it just very difficult for them to make any forthright and honest way to address racial issues. >> host: next call for ellis cose from roan. >> caller: hi, i just want to thank booktv and c-span for interviewing ellis cose who i read extensively. i want to thank mr. ellis cose himself for allowing me an interview in 2005 when i was a host on the wbia arts magazine, and i taked about the book "bone to pick," and i appreciated your graciousness. i'll never forget that. it validated my existence on this planet as a journalist. you made my opinions count, so thank you so much for that. that was very important to me to encourage me to continue my work. >> guest: well, thank you. >> caller: two brief questions. the first is i read last year

"newsweek" editorial, and i wonder why you left, and the second is how do you channel race -- you talked about the weight of the privilege class, and reading this book in graduate school, and also the rage of young people. how do you channel that rage towards working outside the two party mainstream because in reference much what you just -- of what you just put out as obama, as a black man, i feel he uses the excuse of race to allow people to say, oh, you can't do that because he's block, and so the way i'm seeing obama, i don't see him as using his racial in an inspiring way, but as as excuse that i can't do much because of my being black. >> guest: yeah. in terms of why -- i mean, the magazine --

>> the magazine which was taken over by a different set of people with a different editorial yition, not one of which i bought into when i joined the publication. in terms of -- well, there's several questions there. one about how to channel rage and there's the other commentary about president obama and how he uses race. let me sort of take both of those. going back to what really upset me --

>> some political affiliation that articulates vision that is close to what you want to accomplish, so, again, to my keeping, that's not a teshbly complicated set of issues. i think the larger question is how effective you can be odds the two party network in this country, and the answer recently historically seems to be not, you know, not very. obama and race and to what extent he uses that, but it's clear is that obama's presidency and his campaign, you know, had -- you know, had, and has a huge symbolic significance. you know, i was in washington for the inauguration night, and covered parts of the campaign and traveled with him to africa before he was a candidate and

saw kenyans by the tens of thousands in viewing his presence there are huge importance, i mean, before he was head of state, he was treated as a head of state at least in kenya, so i will make this first observation which is that simply by becoming president, obama changed the conversation in many ways, and he changed the idea that many african-americans have of what was possible to be in this country and what it was possible to achieve in this country being a person of color, and he's also fundment tally reshaping attitudes again just by being there. the only president my daughter who is 8 that she's known is president obama. that's true of a whole generation of young people for who what it's worth will consider it completely normal for an african-american to be

president. certainly when i grew up, it would have been considered bizarre and impossible for an african-american to be president, so just by being there, whatever he does, i think he changes the potential aspirations of lots and lots of people. now, as to whether he's done as much as he could -- i would say the more legitimate critique is not whether he spoke out on black issues, but whether he's done as much as he can for people who are poor, people who are not privileged, and people who don't have access to the political system routinely, and it's a fair respect. >> e-mailing into you, i read the book envoy of the world. it was a book i thought every

thought examines the same type of behavior that we see in every black communities. >> guest: the enemy of the world was a book that spoke very much to young people, and particularly black men. the origin of the book was interesting. it was a book that my then publisher and my then -- we decided to do and the fire next time, james baldwin kicks it off with a letter to his nephew, and that letter to his nephew that was written in 1963 is a look at what it meant in 1963 to be a young black man coming up in america, what the challenges were that he could expect to

face, and what the road was to success of redemption in a sense, and so the question became, you know, if you were to take on that subject today, i think that book was published in what -- 2003 -- >> host: 2002. >> guest: 2002, yeah. the question became if you took on that subject today, what could you contribute to it, and the question came about at an interesting time in terms of the research and what was happening in terms of particularly black men when we were discovery that young black boys, black men were much less likely to complete their education than young black women. we're looking at just hugely frightening statistics in terms of what it -- you know, the numbers of young black men being up --

incarcerated. numbers were one in three or four of young black men coming in contact with the criminal justice system if current trends continued, and so the enemy of the world was an attempt to both look inward and outward, an attempt to say what are the things that are happening in society that are driving many and definitely not all, but many young black men to do things that are so destructive and self-druttive, and what's happening internally to young black men leading them to do things that are very distractive? the book did quite well actually. i think it was a number one best seller for "essence" magazine, and it became a very pom pew lar -- popular book among audience, the audience of young african-americans, and what i found is a lot of black parents bought the book.

a lot of black mothers bought the book for their sons or for young men that they knew. >> host: where did the title come from? >> guest: it comes from sula, a book by tony morrison, and there's a quote in the beginning of the book i'll repeat from memory where she talks about how black men are perceived by the world and how they are both admired and at the same time reviled by the society. the quote comes from that. >> host: here's the quote, "i mean, i don't know what the fuss is about. white men love you. they spend so much time worrying about your penis they forget their own, and white women chase you all to corners of the earth, feel for you under every bed, colored women worry themselves into bad health just trying to hang on to your cuffs.

even little children, black, white boys and girls eat their hearts out because they they you don't love them, and if that ain't enough, you love yourself. nothing in the world loves a black man more than another black man. it likes -- it looks like you, the envy of the world." next call from washington. >> caller: i'm -- [inaudible] i want to know your views on how our president unfortunately has unwillingly started reverting to what i can tell from my friends who are black around the united states, around illinois and other places that are complaining that they find more racism is coming forward now due

to the fact we have a black president because at one time in our country, politics and racism can go hand-in-hand. one time we had a black culture that was demanding to be heard from a white, basically a white government, and never seen it, and therefore, that also put a wedge between racism because of those issues. now, we have the opposite going on where we have white people blaming a black man or a black controlled government, and because of that, they are taking it out on their fellow workers. i know people that are not getting jobs because they are black because the white owner is mad at the black president. >> guest: yeah, i mean, that's what used to be called backlash. i would probably disagree with

the characterization of a black-controlled government. obama is african-american, but i don't think the united states government is controlled by blacks at this point. i think the reality is, again, much more complicated than that. this gets to some of the things we were talking about previously. you know, clearly, obama has huge symbolic significance, not just for african-americans who overwhelmingly support him even though his support declined, but he has significance for other groups including for racist groups, you know, who suddenly see this guy who, as i said and was clear, identifies as an african-american who is black, who is sitting on the top of the political pyramid, and so he becomes and irresistible target and the criticism is racialized so there's racials coupled with

the president's name. a survey i did for the latest book was whether obama's presidency was improving race relations or made race legal conclusions worse, -- race relations worse, and my responses were divided, almost split down the middle, and they were also overwhelmingly thought that these are people of color, you know, people responding this way. they thought obama's presidency had made it easier for whites to have more racial progress. you have this set of dynamics where the very fact that he's president says at least to some people that race is no longer an issue, racism is not a problem, and that you can achieve everything, and then amongst extremist groups and groups that are racially paranoid anyway, you have this targeting of obama

because he is african-american, and then this sort of idea that blacks are somehow taking over the government and that america's somehow becoming something other than it once was. none of this is very healthy, but i think it's also inevitable. it's called black lash with you have some sort of progress in the civil rights movement, people get successful and others get angry, and we have this phenomena, this first, and even though the president and his people have bent over backwards to show they are not showing favoritism, the fact that he's black shows suspicion that he is. >> host: would you have wrote

this book had president obama not won in 2008? >> guest: probably because some of these things were in evidence before his win and certainly some the polls were beginning to move in a certain direction before obama won, and in a sense i think what is almost as important as the obama winning the presidency, almost as important, is his running for the presidency and being and running as a serious candidate who intended to win, and his getting the democratic nomination. i mean, certainly there are african-americans including jesse jackson, including al sharpton, and, you know, others who have, you know, who ran for president before, but none of these people who ran before including a carolyn brawn, a former senator from illinois, none of these people who ran

before actually ran to win. they ran for other reasons. shirley chissam ran to make the point a black woman could run for president. again, they ran for various reasons, but nun of them had the remotist notion they could actually win the presidency. after iowa and after new hampshire, it became very clear that the he had a chance of winning, and that is sort of where the wheels began to turn for a lot of people where they set themselves, people who in america would never, never seriously look at a black guy as president find themselves suddenly saying, my, god, what's happening here? john louis, the congressman from georgia who had been a hillary

clinton supporter, very publicly changed his support, and he basically acknowledged what was happening. you know, he just hadn't been part of that group that just didn't think this guy could ever win, and all the sudden when it was clear he had had a shot at that, he didn't want to be on the other side of this historic candidacy, so i think the answer is, yeah, i still probably would have written the book. obviously, it would have been different in some respects. >> host: ellis cose is the guest on this month's " in-depth" program on booktv on c-span2. here's eight of the books beginning in 1989, the book the press. 1992 saw a nation of strangers. best selling, rage of the privileged class came out in 1993 and 1994. man's world, 1995. color blind in 1997. the envy of the world, 2002. bone to pick came out in 2004, and his most recent, the end of

anger, a new generation's take on race and rage came out in 2011. recently, we visited mr. cose up in new york city to see where he wrote. >> hello, i'm ellis cose, and welcome to my writing studio in new york on the upper west side. it makes sense to me several years ago to make a separation in my work and home environment, so particularly now that i have a daughter who is 8 at this point, and i come here to work and i go home to be home. this is where i actually do most of my writing. i spend probably at least four or five hours a day, if not more, you know, sitting in this spot, more or less in this position, and depending on what

project i'm working on, this whole place is actually devoted to various kinds of work projects, and there's various work product sort of scattered around the place. this is from my latest book, and we actually did hundreds of interviews and surveys, so here we have everyone from, you know, corey booker, the mayor of newark. we have eddie blotty, a professor at princeton, we have jesse jackson, the former -- well, not the former, but head of push, ben jealous, head of the naacp. this was one of many books compiled in putting together the end of anger because i thought it was important to transcribe these things to have something to look through as i was sort of

sorting through ideas of the book. >> how much of a difference is there in the writing process between working on a book versus an article for a magazine? >> magazine or newspaper? >> yeah, uh-huh. >> the process is sort of the same, but it's fundamentally different in terms of scope. with an article, it's a deadline, a matter of days. at best, a matter of weeks, and you don't have the time to let it marinade, over a period of months to look on it, reflect on it, think about the ideas and play with the ideas, play with different constructions. the other thing is that a book we're talking about 60,000 or 70,000 to 100,000 words. with an article, it's 1,000-3,000 so it's a different thing to ask a reader to stay with you for a thousand words versus 100,000 words.

you need to have something at the very least that's several days and at the very least several hours of readingment you need a bigger idea is one way to put it. so my process and certainly for this book, but i guess in many books 1 to gather as much information as i can, and to have certainly some guidance sense point going in where i want to end up and what questions i want to answer, but once i get all the information to sit back and they where i originally want to go make sense in light of what i now have? in a book like this where we literally did end up compiling hundreds of interviews, there are things that all of this happened that surprise you a little bit and a book cannot

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>> host: ellis cose, who is hellen clinger? >> guest: she was my english teacher while i was a senior at lane technical institute in chicago, and she's the one who tushed me into -- turned me into a writer. i had originally thought i was going to be something in the sciences. my favorite subject was math. i was always a math guy. i had a teacher, an autrian woman, giving me special math assignments. i had no idea what mathematicians did, so i agree i'd be a physicist, and then at the same time, i was always having battles with my english teachers because i went to a school that was considered a good school, i tested into it, i considered english unchallenging

and uninteresting in how it was taught, and it seemed to consist of asking questions that i already knew the answers to, and trying to prove that i read stuff i knew i had read, so i would refuse to do english assignments, and my last year in high school, my teacher said to me, ellis, you have talent, you're a bright kid, but you're not doing your work. why not? i said because it's boring, not challenging, not interesting, it's an insult to my intelligence this work. she said something to me no other teacher said before. she said, well, okay. what should we do instead? i said, well, it seems to me that the purpose of this course is to evaluate how well i can research, how well i can read and write and use the language. give me something to actually test that, and she said, okay,

well, what do you suggest? have me write something, and she said, okay, well what are you going to write? well, i lived in a neighborhood in the west side of chicago torn up by the riots, and so i said to myself, well, what i should do is write a history of riots and why they come about, what causes people to do it, and the american history of that, and so i'm this, i think i was what, 16 at the time, i believe, i said, okay, i'm going to do this, and so i took off and for the first time in my life was exciting about the writing assignment, and i ended up producing to her surprise, i'm sure, a script that ran to 150 pages, and turns it in to mrs. clinger, and she looked at it and said, okay, i'm going to read this. she took it home, read it over the weekend, came back, caught me up after class that monday, and she said to me, ellis, i'm

going to give you an a234 this course, but i'm not capable of judging this material. send it to a professional. i'm going a professional what? i'm a kid from chicago. i didn't know professional writers. she said send it to this writer gwyn blacks. -- brooks? do you know know her? i said yes. i sent it to her, i'm this kid, bundling up any script, and i send it in to this brooks person who all i knew about she had won a pulitzer prize and was somebody important, and several weeks later, i get a call. i'm, of course, living with my parents. i got a call at home, and it's brooks on the other end of the phone saying, ellis, you have to come talk to me, and i did. she was teaching at a college

called northeastern university, north shore of the chicagoment i took three busses to meet her. she was the most gracious individual you can imagine. she sat me down in front of the big desk and had scrawled across any script and said you'll be a great writer. she said i don't know what you intend to do with your life, but you have a gift for writing, and that's what you should do. well, that was the first time i had an inkling, number one, there's a career possible for me in writing, and number two something i should seriously consider doing. i found the idea very appealing and she invited me to join her writer's group, and she was my first real mentor. >> host: we have an hour and 15 minutes left with our

in-depth guest this month, ellis cose, author of about ten books, essayist, columnist, former editorial page for the new york daily news. 6241111 the eastern and central time done and 1115 for pacific and mountain time zones. twitter.com/booktv to send a tweet to mr. cose or send us an e-mail. who are jenna and rainy cose? >> guest: my parents. they met in chicago and raised five kids, of which i was one, of course. >> host: what did they do in chicago? >> guest: my mother was a stay at home mom. before that she was working in people's homes apparently.

my father was a working man. he worked in the laundry, commercial laundry in chicago which he did for the -- not his entire life, but certainly for all the time that i knew him. >> host: where did you go to college? >> guest: undergraduate university of illinois in chicago, went for my master's at george washington university in washington, d.c. and studied science and technology policy. >> host: next call for ellis cose coming from chicago. mark, hi. mark, you with us? >> caller: yes. >> host: please go ahead with your comment. >> caller: okay. i want to respond to this idea that obama is uniquely singled out because of race. i'm a black man. i'm a tea party supporter in large part, and by that i mean, the original tea party which was ron paul supporters in 2008. that's where the idea came from, but i have lots of progressive friends because i'm

antiimperialist, and i've been to antiwar rallies and progressive sites, and i've seen profanities about bush, the only bush i trust is my own, all depictions as bush as a monkey, calls to him as a war criminal and hitler. by the way, i happen to agree he was a war criminal. i think they did lie to us and they did infringe on our institutional rights, but that underscores the point that obama is continuing the same policy and intensifying those policies, so i think all of this stuff about left, right, democratic, republican, black, white, i see it all as a smoke screen for the fact that we have bush two, bush with a hand, and there's an excellent film called "the obama

deception" making the same point. the rapper is the first person in the film saying obama is like the manager of a burger king and change the manager in eight years, but the owners are the same. >> guest: well, i think it's certainly interesting if you are bush two, i think he'd have an easier time getting along with republicans than he does. despite the fact that obama ran on a campaign pledge of getting beyond partisan politics, this is certainly the most partisan atmosphere i've seen in awhile, so however you want to characterize obama, at least domestically, internationally he continued many of the things that bush did, but characterize him domestically, it's hard to characterize him as bush two, but i certainly take the point that, you know, as you noted earlier, peter, that there's been serious criticisms of bush

as well, and that many numbers of people had made very derogatory comments about bush. it has risen to a new level under obama, and i think he has been subjected to a level of disrespect that is new, but, again, i think we are also seeing a political process that has di sended to the depths in the last few years, and maybe that's not surprising, and i think some of it probably has something to do with grace and a lot of it has to do with the sinking of politics to a new level in our era. >> mr. cose, good afternoon, the gypsy writes, have you ever been confronted with what you consider to be the glass ceiling. >> guest: have i ever been confronted what i consider to be the glass ceiling? not directly, but it's an interesting question because i think often when we talk about

glass ceiling issues, we talk about perception as much as what can be reality, and certainly going back to the days when i was -- i've had a fairly long newspaper career before i took off and became a magazine journalist and then obviously a book author as well, and certainly i have a sense when i was a young reporter with the chicago sun times and a columnist with the chicago sun times that it was unlikely i would be made editor of the newspaper. i never had the sense that was a path that was planned for me. i think i managed my career in a way that i have not had to deal much with glass ceiling issues. you know, i've been largely a

columnist, author, and when i was running the editorial page operation of the new york daily news, i basically parachuted into there with a management position and was offered at one time the editorship of the sunday paper when they were -- when the owner was considering to be changing the management arrangement, so it was very clear to me at that point that i could easily have gone on and had that management career if i had decided to do that, so i think in terms of my own career, certainly early on, i had some sense of things that i just probably couldn't do. i mean, if you ask about coming up as a kid, i remember quite vividly thinking i could never be president of the united states. i never ran for president of the united states obviously, but i never had the sense that i could. that's an interesting point actually which is when we talk about the glass ceiling and how people respond to it, i think one of the beauties of it, if

you will, about the fact of the black president is that you have a lot of kids who are just not going to think these days, well, i can't be president because i'm black or because i'm latino or not white. i think that way of thinking is going to change. >> host: tara from tallahassee e-mails, please comment on the extent which of any class is replacing race as the ingredient in the glass ceiling. >> guest: i think class has always been there. i think that class very much determines what school we should go to, what opportunities are coming up, what level of education you get, what influences you have as a young person, that your class very much influences whether you believe you will be part of the professional class or not, and i think that that's still the case. i think that in the past, race has been such a huge component

for at least for african-americans what you could and could not do that race pretty much trumpedded everything. i think now that race is moving to the side a bit, we are seeing how important class really is. we've had this notion that the united states was a classless society. it's always been a fiction, and it's becoming clear that these days it's less of afiction because there's a phenomena of increased stratification where every census we find that those who are in the highest fifth per sen teenage -- perpercentile, and every census it's more extreme, and so i think we are getting to a place in this country where we have a huge issue about class inequality that coexists alongside all these issues of gender and ethnicity and race,

but that is rising in a very big way. >> host: this tweet from judy lubin. do you think high unemployment rate among african-americans in the current economy will lead to a new rage or anger? >> guest: i think it's certainly leading and already has to a huge sense of frustration and a huge sense of reduced options and opportunities. i mean, we historically have had a black unemployment rate which is twice that of whites, and it continues to be twice more than that now actually, and anger is usually -- the kind of anger that erupted in the salem riots in the 1960s and even the rodney king riot later in the 1990s, tended to be sparked by particular incidence on particular things, and so -- i mean, taking a combination of a

particular incidence to frame that anger to the floor, and, of course, in the 1960s, it was a backdrop of a very big movement that tapped into a lot of aspirations, and i don't see that same dynamic now, but there's lots of frustration among lots of people in america and it's particularly involving young african-american males who tend to have the highest unemployment rate. >> host: next call for author ellis cose comes from florida, james, you're on the line. >> caller: yes, thank you, mr. cose for your candor and insight. i feel both refreshed and encouraged. the framing of my question is the racism in america is underground and it's become more since the election of the first black president. you mentioned the three groups, generations, fighters,

extremists, and believers. what role or detriplet or benefit has religion played with the black racial dilemma in america? >> guest: that's an another interesting question. my book doesn't take it on, but the black tradition is important. if you look at the leadership institutions that came from the civil rights movement, many of them, and certainly dr. king's southern christian leadership conference were rooted in the church, were rooted in religious organizing or at least for organizing by the ministers. the future, i think, that that seems to be shaping up to be less of a factor and that we seem to be being moved from a more just straight political organizing opposed to movement organizing around the themes of christianity, but the caller made an interesting observation

about racism being more underground now than it was in the past. i think we're seeing several things happening. i think that the very fact that we are again what i call post racist that nobody can say an openly racist thing and expect to receive societies sanctioned meaning people who have those feelings certainly feel they have to be underground in some way or at least they want to be part of polite and civil society. they have to demonstrate the feelings in another way, but at the same time, we are seeing that, a real erosion of racism, and i think you see that particularly among younger groups and all groups, particularly among younger groups and younger whites, whatever criteria you measure them, whether they are open to interracial marriages, relationships, whether they see blacks as in some way equal to whites, whatever series you want to ask them, you see an erosion

of racism as well. yeah, i agree that racism is driven underground, and i don't think that's a bad thing really, and at the same time, i think we're seeing an erosion of racism as well. >> host: in usa today, a recent column of you comparing gay rights compared to the civil rights movement? >> guest: making the point while i consider both movements legitimate, and i certainly support the objective of equality, you know, for transgender and gay people and in this nation, i think the movements a different, and one way in which they were different is that we've seen the intergenerational transfer of both privilege, and also lack of privilege in a way that you won't see at least in my opinion with gay people because just because someone is gay doesn't mean that they are one and two,

it doesn't mean they are going to receive a privilege or underprivileged legacy for that reason, so i think that's the way that that has been -- that privilege and the lack of privilege have been transmitted through generations plays out very differently with gays and acknowledging that some gays are blacks and as well, but playeded out differently with the so-called gay movement and the so-called rights movement. there's some purpose to be served with acknowledging the differences and what the movements actually are. >> host: next call for ellis cose from california, angela, you're on the air. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. c-span, splendid service. my question is education. please share your whole, your dreams, aspirations, no child

left behind, the public schools, the charter schools. we are looking into the future and it seems disstressing. what is to become of us? what are we to do? it's very, very frightening what the tomorrows are going to bring to us. please share with us what you think, what you hope, dreams and aspirations are. >> guest: well, that is easy. i hope we get to the point where we can actually allow all people to be educated in a way that is efficacious and in a way that develops their full potentialment i think in this country we unfortunately made some decisions that mitigate against that. we decided a long time ago instead of being a national

right of education, it was a local right, and depending on the local tax base building all kinds of inequalities in terms of education, and we also have been tied way, way too long to an educational calendar and a schedule based on a rural economy when kids needed to have the summer off to work on the farm or what have you. i think that's -- and we vice president -- haven't been -- one, not investing enough in education, but more profoundly, we've tried to do education by shortcuts. i think the aspiration of no child left behind is certainly a notable aspiration. the way that it tries to achieve that i think is a little bit ludicris and tests that with testing and with an ever rising

bar and an ever rising number of failing schools. it's a game that is rigged to fail, and i think we need to be mature enough to recognize that and say this is just not working. you asked about charter schools. i talked about some charter schools in my new book, the end of anger. one just run by any sister-in-law. they are doing good things, but at the end of the day, most kids without means in the country are not going to be educated in charter schooled or raised in fancy private schools, but educated in the public schools, and i think we have not seriously grappled with the issue of how do we make public schools good for everybody, not just people in communities with affluent parents and nice taxes and the areas to make schools what they should be. ..

>> guest: right. i mean it's clear that in a lot of arab and school systems, political decisions were made. part of it, in a way that was

organized. decision was made okay, if you're going to keep white parents interest at all in these schools, it's going to be difficult to do that. they perceive their school as a place cassette going to get an education. one way is to great different tracks. they all call them tracks, they have gifts and talents programs. several years ago before a.c.o.r.n. had this unfortunate sort of public row, a corn in new york did an undercover sort of look of schools and decent black parent and white parents to schools. the long and short of it was the white parents were automatically shown the gifted and talented track their kids, they were shown the classwork touted and gifted people, and the minority kids were not. now they're testing. but even testing, i have a daughter in the bug school system, in new york. she's in the gifted and founded program.

what became very clear to us early on as parents, trying to maneuver that system, was that if she hadn't gone to a nice preschool, if she didn't have parents and teachers who knew how to maneuver the system, it was very unlikely she was going to end up getting into the gifted and how to program like this school. so it becomes a way to replicate the class structure in essence. and, of course, what you find indicated and held programs and the schools in new york as you to other places around the country is that they don't discriminate. they don't say if you're black you cannot introduce rogue ramps. it's just the opposite. but for a service of reasons a lot of having to do with class wrestling with the question that people who are well-educated, who have fairies connections, and resources. they also have a whole system of schools that you have to basically pay a tester to test

your kid. a psychologist to tester to to get into. again, public schools. most poor people don't have money to be sending their kid to be tested by private psychologist. and if they did, i don't know that system is in place. so again there are these ways that even in a supposedly integrated system, create a class structure that is treating once said that equal, one way or another. there's been research that shows because of this, and many so-called integrated school systems, what you find is these tracks were most of the blacks are on one track, most of the people of the black and brown kids are on another track, and even the students themselves often start assuming, well, the blacks are not as good students as the whites are in the white starters and their better students than the blacks. again, this is happening in so-called integrated schools.

these are the perceptions that they get, not because their school is segregated and since the old south used to be segregated, but because they are stratified anyway that northern schools these days can be stratified and even southern schools to some extent. so the basic issue here is that we've found that despite the naïve hopes in the wake of brown v. board in the 1950s, just all of a sudden eliminating that structural barrier to black and white kids coming to the same classes does not eliminate the real barriers. >> host: this is booktv on c-span2 and you're watching and listening to our "in depth" program with author ellis cose. by the way, if you're not, or if you have toledo tv you can always watch booktv every weekend online at booktv.org. nicole in champaign illinois thanks for holding. you were on with ellis cose. >> caller: you know the rules,

turn down the volume. listen to your telephone. go ahead. >> caller: hello. how are you. appreciate you work so much. we have a lot in common. i grew up in chicago south shore and i am a three-time olympic university of illinois. i just want to greet you as a fellow alum. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: i'm a professor, a historian by training but also teach courses in race in the. i wanted to get your take on the phenomenon of the film the help. particularly in the post, these post you played that before us. i found a fascinating way to help has triggered so many fascinating and scholarly firestorm entrance of either people love and the film tremendously are responding to a violently, particularly among black women academics. so i'm just curious about your impressions of what you make of this film, "the help," or the book to help in regard to what

it captured the imagination of the nation, particularly in an assignment where we have had men and had him at all these kind of regular 1960s kind of programs. and also how do you make sense of "the help," the popular to of "the help" given the decline in african-american media options where we clearly, oprah left the stage, there are the black talk show hosts whose shows are not in hiatus or who have been canceled. and so i'm curious what you think about the windowing of black public venue. i appreciate these events tremendously but i'm curious to know what you make of -- and what can we get your opinion before we get an answer? what was your opinion of the movie "the help" and why? >> caller: was my opinion of "the help"? i'm still 43. just had a baby recently, so that's been taking up a little bit of my time. i think "the help" of such, i think "the help" is a very

complicated film. my mothers from mississippi. who then became teachers and educators. so i have both sides of the store in terms of being raised by someone who was a made in mississippi. i think that was complicated because we seem to be in this moment where americans seem to be focused on meeting, meeting black women to love why women but ignoring the social economic and racial hierarchy that creates the relationship in the first place. so they want to this love affair with relationships between black and white women but not deal with the racial structure that put them in these relationships in the first place. >> guest: i have to confess i haven't seen the movie but i'm certainly aware of the controversies around it, and the book as well. first of all, there's a reference to black literature but the author is white of "the

help." and heroin of "the help" is obviously white. this young woman who decides to tell the story of black domestic workers, and criticism has come through several quarters. criticism want about the centrality of the white characters, criticism about certainly in the book about the dialect, and with some of the dialogue. which strikes some people as stereotypical. there's been criticism as nicole mention of the fact that you have a number of black domestic workers who apparently are selfless in their love for the whites there taking care of. there's some question about the portrayal of a black man. but as i said i haven't seen the movie. so i can't authoritatively comment on how well i think it does, what it does.

but it certainly speaks i think to the hunger of at least a particular audience for a racial story that has, that is not just paint whites as villains. that's much more complicated than that, and that does the white house but it also has a white heroin in the center of it, and that has a set of black characters were very palatable, but i'm reluctant to say more about the movie i haven't seen. >> host: next call for ellis cose, ruth, santa monica. good afternoon to you. >> caller: hi. thanks for taking my call. i'd like to thank mr. cho's for his insight and everything but what is going to talk about was mr. obama's administration, being that he is present i think that he has opened up a dialogue of racism and its in the open

where people can discuss, and yes, it's pretty nasty and very ugly at times, but at least it's in the open and people are able to think about maybe, you know, how their ideas are about racism and people of color in this day and age. obama was elected president for the whole country, and i know because he's black people say well, he needs to have special preference for black people, but if he is helping the whole country is helping black people at the same time. unfortunately, i think a lot of black, some of black colleagues don't look at it that way, but that's the case. he is president of the hold united states. >> guest: as i mentioned before, some ways having and a impact of obama, not necessarily of policies because i think this

symbolic value of him as a person identifies as an african-american holding an office in london for the office changes all kinds of conversations. with that being said, i think that most people who are really sophisticated and/or disenchanted with obama hand who are black never expected him to be a vociferous proponent of some sort of black agenda of one sort or another. i think the people who are dissatisfied with him, cornell west is one of them clearly, criticize him because they don't think that the set of policies that he has put forth go far enough in terms of alleviating the misery of poor people, many of them obviously are black and brown, but who are other colors as well. so to the extent they have some critique which is gaining currency i think it's an

aggregate and not the critique that he has not been president who is in someway black enough, to use the phrase. >> host: john keane e-mails into you. i grew up in the segregated south of the 1950s. don't you believe that i as a middle-class college educated white man, and you as a middle-class, college-educated black band have more in common with each other than either one of us does with a 20 year old black man who lives in the projects? >> guest: i will answer that question in the second, but the interesting thing is in my own surveys i ask basically that question, whether you think that middle-class blacks have more in common with middle-class whites than with poor blacks. and a majority of my respondents said yes, they agree with the writer, that they think that's true. i think in many ways i would

agree as well. in many respects. clearly in terms of just basic education, income wealth and things of that nature. august have more in common with a little white class person than a poor black person in the project or i grew up in housing projects on the west side of chicago. so my own history is that, so i can't say i have nothing in common with that part of my history as well. type a lot in common. like many people who made the leap from one class to another, i have existed in affecting different worlds, and both of those worlds are a part. there are people in both those worlds so i can relate to very strongly. >> host: any reaction to the fact that that writer chose a 20 year of black been in the projects rather than a poor 20

year old white men from appalachia? >> guest: i can't see what's going on in the writer's mind, but i think the point is trying to make, you know, is that the our economic and social ties that are more meaningful in this society, and it's time for me people and racial identity. and i think we're seeing evidence of that so i wouldn't strongly disagree with that, but i would say that what we know from the economic research, you know, is that a black middle-class is not the same as the white middle class partly because it is in terms of its size, a newer middle-class. it's a class that is enjoyed much less of the passage of the passing on of intergenerational wealth. so even if you look at blacks and white families in the aggregate with couple incomes you don't have comparable wealth. and that's because blacks are much less likely to be in a

position to inherit wealth from parents or others, then whites have been. so you still have differences which are result of the racial legacy in this country. >> host: jim, ohio, you're on with ellis cose. >> caller: thank you, and thank you, peter, for yet another exceptional "in depth" conversation. you are the man with this format. i cannot hear him on this connection right now so i'll take my answer off the air when i'm finished, if that's okay. i'm a teacher, taught from fourth grade to college. i appreciate your wonderfully reasoned and nuanced response to all the questions today that have to do with the issue of two words that i don't exactly use in this context, which are black and white. i can't see tv this i'm not sure if you have read eugene robinson's book from coulter

creamed. he had experts also in brazil and came up with i guess we might describe as a melanin spectrum including coffee and call and bronze and butternut and care at all kinds of wonderful terms for people's skin tones. a few years ago i wrote a piece, and the babies for our local paper where my thesis was we really can't get very far beyond our dichotomous thought about race, as long as we continue to use the very words black and white which are polarizing and from my point of view, an actor, my mother was in the population known as milan jehan, in southwestern virginia. which is a blend of scottish irish, native american or she always had dark skin. people thought of her as italian for that regard. that my piece as i said went on to say, i think we are locked

into this dichotomous thought by virtue of the two words that we use, wrongly in my estimation, black and white. >> guest: we'll leave it there and get a response. thanks for calling and. >> guest: yes, i am fully with mr. robinson's book. a lot of racial attitudes in brazil. in fact, i did blurt his book and eugene is a friend of mine and we both have a strong interest in brazil and how issues of politics and race have been dealt with. and one thing that you realize if you look at the situation there is that most people in brazil consider themselves, certainly don't consider themselves black but i guess definitions, a huge percentage of the country is black. and a huge portion of the population doesn't consider itself white. i mean, probably not the most

recent one but some figures a few years back, they consider themselves the word in portuguese, consider themselves black, something like two or 3%. the% who consider themselves brown was over 40%. you had a large number of people who consider themselves white, and they smaller percentage again which is basically yellow. but you have this huge group, close to 50% who said they were brown. and that's just by census breakdowns. if you probe deeply into brazilian culture and society, what you find is a whole range of terms to describe a whole range of skin tones and hair textures, et cetera, et cetera. and you find the same thing in many latin american countries. there's a category.

so you certainly have a much more fluid way of looking at race in many cultures across the world. than you do in the united states. and i think that for better or for worse we are seeing more and more evidence of that here. that you've seen the rise of a set of people who want to be classified as multiracial as opposed to blacks and whites. you have, a huge increase in the latino population. you have a number of people who consider themselves neither black nor white in this country, but something else, perhaps in between. perhaps somewhat just different. so i don't think this one drop will survive very long in terms of general usage, even in the u.s. context, because they will change. to what extent that will make this a more harmonious country i'm not equipped to tell.

i think what is clear is that even in these countries where you do have all of these different ways of looking at race, they haven't gotten rid of stigma attached to cover. it's still the fact that in most of these latin american country, not all of them, that there's a certain amount of prestige in being a liar as opposed to being darker. what ever it is they decide to call it. there's even a phrase, which has to do with having your children of a lighter complexion than you are. so it would be nice to believe that it would just be called things black and white, and we'd get of racism. i don't think that it's quite that simple but i think what is true, i think they call the term polarization, is that it certainly reduces the amount of strictly racial polarization because it's just too complicated. >> host: ellis cose in

"color-blind," you have 12 steps toward a race neutral nation. we must, you by, stop expecting time to solve the problem for us, recognize that indicate is the beginning, not the end of our mission. except the fact that equality is not a halfway proposition. we must end american apartheid, recognize that race relations is not a zero-sum game. replace the presumption that minority's will fail with an expectoration of the success. stop playing the blame game. do a better job at leveling the playing field. become serious about fighting discrimination. keep the conversation going. sees opportunities for interracial collaboration. and finally, stop looking for one solution to all our racial problems. anything to you would like to comment on? >> guest: sure. that was an attempt back then to get at this whole concept of

trying to get beyond race. i just as i said for reasons having to do with how we perceive things in this country, i don't think we're going to be postracial in my lifetime or even my daughters lifetime. i think in one way or another will always perceive race. but i think we can certainly get to a point where race is not nearly as important as the factor as it has been. and so a large part of color was this examination of how do you get to the point. you know, how do you remove the barriers? how do we move to equality? how to remove the barriers to people treating and as opposed to representatives of color. >> host: bill in pennsylvania. you are on with ellis cose on "in depth." >> caller: hello. thank you for taking my call. i'm going to -- i'm the poor white boy from north appellations. >> guest: okay. >> caller: but any case i'm an

old man now. i've worked my way down to the lower class educated class with a masters degree from a 10 -- anyhow, you are fastening. i never saw you before i'm sorry to say, and i'm just stunned. i guess a little bit, two comments. i feel like i'm the 40% white male that supports all the progressive coalition, you know, that we are seen to be left out of the discussions. and yet i think an integral part of the success of the movement for more equitable and fair society, number one, if you might comment on that. and the other one is, i see our coalition as one of, maybe i'm wrong, i'd like to your opinion, it's coalition of minorities including the white males who are forward thinking. that we are urban centered and it seems to be a structural

problem wind power distribution in the country toward rural areas or can get our power base is really urban. i mean, do you see a any way of overcoming that and is that a proper analysis of one of our problems for achieving stronger political? and thank you, bill. >> guest: certainly going back to the historic civil rights movement, it was never just a black movement. i mean, the kids who were killed in the mississippi freedom summer, two of them are white. so it was never just an issue of being a curly black movement. there were always virtually every level i was in, there was a movement of people who just thought there was something outlandish, crazy, horrible about trying to build a society of racial discrimination and

racial isolationism. so i totally am graceful, there was no just blacks fighting for racial justice in this country. the future in terms of civil rights i think is increasingly going to be one of coalition. it's going to be one of an expanded definition, or at least a different definition of what it is weaning myself rights, whose rights we are fighting to protect. some of the language of civil rights leaders of the day have been much more embracing of the phrase human rights as opposed to civil rights. because they see human rights as a broader phrase which encompasses things that civil rights is simply doesn't. kludges within the demographics of looking at the reality of where we are, the future is

going to be one, if there is one, for the movement for equality, it's going to be a movement that links many different groups together. we are becoming a less solidified country. but were not necessary to come and let's metropolitan country so i'm not quite sure what the caller is making about in terms of an urban base. but we're going to continue to see a huge share of the population in urban areas, even in cities themselves losing some population. >> host: michael from oakland, you're on with ellis cose on booktv. >> caller: the 2010 census had a choice, you could be african-american, black, negro or colored. this administration to be was in charge of the senses, and how could they have the sensitivity towards people by including that in there? i don't know what percentage answered negro. >> guest: yeah, i'm not an expert on the senses. i haven't looked at it in the

current form. my supposition and my guess is that they were offering alternative terms to describe the same category. so i can service a category that is listed as african-american/black/negro, which does not break out one category of negroes or blacks. that's only logical response i can see to that. but i'm not an expert on the census forms. >> host: who is benjamin jealous and why do you write about him? pretty extensively. >> guest: he is the current president of the naacp. and he is in some sense this new form of african-american leadership. for one thing he's biracial until. he's young, he's in his 30s. he's a rhodes scholar, ivy school educated, and and he had every opportunity to go into another field of work if he had wanted to. but decided that he wanted to devote his career and his life

to reinvigorating the civil rights movement in america. it also because, even if he hasn't quite figure out where he's going yet in terms of what he wants to do, he recognizes that whatever movement he ends up being part leadership of will be in many ways a different movement that of walter white, who of course preceded him by several generations. but he's a young guy who's trying to figure out where the new civil rights movement is, and for that reason alone. >> host: your last chapter in "the end of anger" you go on essentially and tell me if i'm paraphrasing incorrectly, to ask whether not that naacp is still relevant. >> guest: that's a fair question. they came out of a movement that was concerned about formal

segregation, concerned about lynching, concerned about getting a basket of protections and rights for african-americans that we now have. and so the real question becomes, if there is a rule for organizations like the naacp, like the urban league, and others that have been at the forefront of the civil rights movement, what is that will, what should they be doing today, and clearly a lot of it has to do with less stuff that is considered blatantly racial, and stuff that is considered economic and educational and other issues that are related to raise but are not strictly racial issues in more. >> host: does naacp still have a 64 member board? >> guest: they still have a huge board. they have that structure and what they're going to do that

i'm not sure. they definitely have that structure, that's a legacy from a different on. >> host: philadelphia, thanks for holding. you are on with author and editorial writer and essayist ellis cose. >> caller: good afternoon to you both. you had two previous calls that touch on a couple things i want to speak on, but we both realize that racism -- i'm sure you're familiar with the work of two doctors. if you could define group of descendents of slave people from africa outside of being african, what might you call them? >> guest: i don't really think it matters all lot what you call them. so i guess i'm a little bit perplexed by exactly what the questioner is getting at, but certainly in this country we're looking at that the sentence of people who were enslaved.

the overwhelming majority of them are people of at least some nature of african descent. in many cases otherwise. so what we want to call of people african-americans or whether we'll call them something else is might we think not terribly important. >> host: an e-mail. what you think about the current debate regarding religion, specifically as it pertains to muslim citizens. why is it considered okay to publicly state that a muslim citizen will not be acceptable for higher office? >> guest: i'm not sure that passionate welcome muslim citizen. i'm not quite sure what that means. but certainly a citizen who is a muslim. as far as i know nobody i respect is making that statement. because that seems on its face

to be a bigoted statement. so again i'm a little perplexed as to what the set of assumptions are here, but if the question is, other people who have prejudice against muslims, the answer is yes, there are. if the question is are the people who be uncomfortable with a religious muslim been elected to office, clearly the we people who are uncomfortable with that. but i don't think anybody who is intelligent would say that muslims should be barred from office in america. >> host: hello. you touched on this a little early but do you think many companies in america are not hiring blacks because they do not support barack obama or his policies? >> guest: i don't think any large companies are not hiring blacks because of their political leanings. i think you talk about small entrepreneurs and what they do and don't do, i'm sure they run

the gamut. and some may very well be having some sort of obama test in reality, if not being done above board. but i don't think that's a serious problem as far as i can see. in terms of who's getting hired in america. >> host: about 25 minutes left with this month's "in depth" just, ellis cose. next month michael moore will be our guest on "in depth." jackson michigan, good afternoon. >> caller: jackson, mississippi,. >> host: sorry about that. >> caller: wanted to know, his roots in the deep south and his response to the movement as being led by doctor cornell. >> guest: i'm not sure i would call anything a movement, but i think that cornell and, we surfaced on this in passing

before, i both cornell and others have become sharp critics of the obama administration. and in effect they don't think that obama is doing enough for people who do not have privilege in this country. they think that the obama policies have been tilted too far towards, towards the corporate elite and towards the moneyed elite. and as i said before i think that's fair criticisms. i don't believe, i don't know how they are characterized beyond that but i don't believe that either one of those would say they are leading a movement. i think what they're doing is they are trying to mobilize people who aren't particularly in a point of view and the press the president to embrace a more and encompassing set of policies. >> host: diane williams e-mails in from tampa. thank you for this opportunity to learn from ellis cose. i've seen a lot in the labor tea

party mirrors are chuckling about being seen as racist when they say that is not their intention at all. is it fair to say to them, good intentions are not enough. for example, we have a new book by michelle alexander, the new jim crow, which makes a good case for all of us to work for social justice. >> guest: i'm familiar with michelle's book and i think it's a vital contribution, and i think, but it's not an examination of the tea party. it's a look at what is happening in our society that has caused us to start incarcerating and keep incarcerating so many african-american males. and i think that is a serious problem. i think a very strict problem that we need to be focused on as a society. the problem with categorizing the tea party is you cannot categorize them simply because it's just too white of an umbrella. there's lots of people who are drawn by various parts of tea

party rhetoric who decide that they're sympathetic to the tea party, or even declare themselves the tea party members. clearly some of these people are not at all racist. i would suspect that many of them are, in many of them have issues that have little to do with race. they have also come together under the rubric of the tea party which was considered a grassroots movement. that is pretty much open to anybody. so yes, i mean a lot of the tea party leadership has made it a point about, of having black speakers at some of the rallies and trying very souci to combat this notion that they are racist. but at the same time if you look at some of the polling that's been done and people say they're tea party sympathizers, they are people again, in the aggregate who are not recent pathetic to issues having to do with racial equality and who are rather hostile to this president and

think this president is favoring african-americans. >> host: jean johnson junior tweets into you, who are some black writers that you believe are on the rise and with the influential in due time? >> guest: there's a young fighter whose name is heidi miller. and i think she's going to be somebody who is interesting to watch. there was nancy, i think has an interest in my. but i think, you know, the problem with off the top of your head beginning to many people, you aren't ever going to not name somebody that you should name, but i think there are any number of people. >> host: we will allow you to come back if that comes to mind in the remaining 20 minutes. judith, thanks for holding. you were on the air.

>> caller: hello. >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: yes. as i was listening to you i was really impressed with your analyst nation of racial relations, but i really like to ask for your honest opinion. i know in simple as mr. obama became president, such an outstanding to happen in america, a black man becomes president, and that kind assist anybody can become president, you know? so what i would like to know in your honest opinion, in simple it's really a great thing. but you really see the substance there? is it really any different than anybody else being president in substance? and i'm just going to hang up and listen to your response now. >> guest: if the question is because obama is black, are his policy fundamentally different

than a moderate to progressive white president would have had, i think that was the essence of the question, no, i don't think so. i think is following the policies that a white politician of his political stripe would have followed. and even in terms of this team is, i don't think that obama's president signifies that anybody can become president. maybe it's signifies that anybody who's been president of harvard law review has a shot at souci being considered for president. but what made obama's presidency is a combination of things, which would've been very unlikely in the past generation, and one of those things was that he was an ivy league graduate who happened to have been president of the harvard law review. and again if we look at the present of this country, they have overwhelmingly in recent

years come from ivy league institutions. >> host: (202) 624-1111 and (202) 624-1115. this tweet us come in from mike. do you think james baldwin's take this hammer are issues we continue to confront today? >> guest: i'm blocking and sake what take this hammer is. so i'm not going to respond to that directly. but i certainly think that, i mean, baldwin is a hero coming up, and he's the one, you know, who sort of, his fire next time as a young kid who was growing up on the west side of chicago, trying to understand what had

happened to the committee that i lived in that it caused there to be writes there. and with the dynamics were between white americans and black americans that put so much at stake. he was one of the people who first made a lot of that make sense to me. so i have to track down a specific reference to figure out what the caller is calling about. >> host: park forest illinois go ahead. >> caller: good afternoon. i'd like to share with you, 2009 we took my father-in-law, who is about an american descent, and my father, he was northern european descent, to the world war ii memorial in washington, d.c., to honor them for their service. it ended up we made a documentary out of it, a family documentary, and it came out such and such the people that we should put that in a film festival. this year we've been winning in a number of best documentary

award. the title is our world war ii fathers. we took a little bit different slant on telling the story, about world war ii veterans, covered both sides of that. and one of the comment you said on your book, "color-blind" kind of answered my question, but i feel like that a lot of what was going on then back in my father-in-law's side that my dad had never experienced was the jim crow days, the fact that the u.s. military basically ran on jim crow law in the south which is why father-in-law was most of the time. they both served in the pacific by the way, and i was just wanting your comment on that, about the importance of sharing that. because i found so many young people have watched this documentary, had no idea about a lot of the stuff going on back then at that time. >> guest: yeah, i mean prior to desegregation, blacks and

whites in effect served in two different militaries. and blacks for the most part were committed by whites but they were in segregated units. some of the entries people coming out of world war ii were african-americans who had fought for freedom for other peoples, but was still forced to be second class citizens in the military. and often when they came home, some of the racial incidents that occurred, occurred around ex-military men, african-americans who went home and expected at home to be treated with respect and dignity that a person who answered the country ought to be entitled to. and instead, particularly in the south, submit to being treated as less than human beings. so yet several in the wake of or go to a black servicemen, and the intent of white southerners to come as they saw, put them in a place. you also had some instance of

black soldiers who were transporting whites through the south, white bridges in the south and themselves had to be subjected to move into second class department and whatnot even though they were military men. so we have a very long and ignoble history of unequal treatment. that certain extent in the military. i must say that this little post-vietnam military decide to really get its act together, and became of the institutions that american society that really were serious about promoting equal opportunity. one of the foremost institutions during the drama in your book, "the envy of the world," came out in 2002, another 12 step list. what is it about 1212 step this? transit people, in my expand comply to the things some top. and so what i decide to do in many of my books, not all of

them, but in many of my books was to try to sum up a large part of this antenna 12 steps, that get to the essence of what the book is trying to do medicaid. >> host: and this 12 step list is hard truths of this new age. number one, play the race card carefully and at your own peril.

>> guest: in some sense i guess part in the list the windows most personal was number four. and that was the junction to don't expect if you have a compass much of anything to support you. and it was personal in the sense because as a young kid growing up in an area where not many people were expected to much of anything with their lives, and were a lot of kids got this message very early.

i have a lot of people telling me you're not going be able to do this, not be able to do that. people from your just don't do those things. and i remember as a kid, i was what they called a junior leader of the boys club, and i remember going to some seminar. and there's a guy who was a big insurance titan at least as we proceeded at that time. and he gave his speech, and one of the points he made had to do with how when he had come up as a poor white kid, there were a lot of people around him telling him he could not accomplish anything. and i sort of realized that there was something that was almost universal in this experience, people who come from so-called underprivileged backgrounds. you know, i've received this message that you're just not going to do anything. you're not going to be anything. that's because when people around them hadn't done anything with their own lives and kind of

couldn't imagine he doing something with george. >> host: did your parents encourage your writing, you're reading, college, et cetera? >> guest: they encourage the whole idea of reading. we were poor. we didn't have, we really didn't have books at home but they did encourage us to go to library and got us library card. they were not many readers themselves. they were not highly educated but they did encourage us to go to the library. and they certainly, even though again, just typical of poor people, they did not have sophisticated understanding of the educational system and how one set of college is different from another, et cetera, et cetera. it was always in the head that we should go to college somehow. so they certainly encouraged that. i think that they were bewildered when out of the blue i decided i was a writer. and i was, as you can imagine, a fairly intense kid. and once i sort of got to put on

fire by these other people who told me i should be a writer, i would sit around the kitchen table, we didn't have private space rights i said when the kitchen table writing longhand, these long manuscripts, and i think my mother probably was initially a little bit concerned and couldn't quite figure out what i was doing and what was going on. but interestingly enough, i became successful as writer for young. i became a columnist for the "chicago sun-times" when i was 19 years old. and my mother at that point, my pictures in the newspaper, i'm getting some attention, her friends are calling her up and saying your son is doing this and that, she certainly realize that this is something serious and this is something worth supporting. i think bigger concern before that was that we didn't come from an environment where we new professional writers.

and she didn't i think see this as a standard sort of job that you make a living with. maybe some concerns in that direction. >> host: about five minutes left. walter in portland. hi. >> caller: how are you doing? >> guest: great. how are you? >> caller: okay. one comment you made, and that was on your commandments was leveling the playing field. yeah, that really hit home to me because i noticed as an american citizen we do have constitutional rights, and because we don't have access to legal access to get lawyers, some our civil rights, you know, being ignored, and i grieve with

you. if the playing field was leveled and you had, and then if we have access to lawyers, and that would eliminate some of the races and because a lot of it is being ignored by state and stuff like that. >> guest: i think it's not just access to lawyers. i think it's access to the full spectrum of the american dream. lawyers are just a small part of the, and even they have access to lawyers it still doesn't mean with access to the same kinds of lawyers that people of means have access to. but i think that's a continuing struggle and to continue probably in the country particular is the philosophy of a quality cannot be able to deliver on that because we have people starting off with very different places with very different sets of resources, and we have no real commitment to close that gap. >> host: nancy, virginia. please go ahead with your question for ellis cose. >> caller: good afternoon.

>> guest: good afternoon treachery thank you. thoroughly enjoyed this afternoon. i noticed that president obama is in new jersey because of the hurricane and he had a speech next week but i've been reading a book i howard university professor leslie alexander lacey about the civilian conservation corps entitled the sort of the soldiers. and there's a congressman in this book, congressman oscar dupree from illinois. recognize or not, a history. but i wonder if you're familiar with congressman dupree because he was a republican, and he got an amendment to legislation for the civilian conservation corps, which barred discrimination based on race or religion. and i just found is so amazing, and i wondered if you had seen this before. thank you. >> guest: i'm serving not an expert on the congressman but i'm certainly aware of his existence. he was a republican in areas

where it was possible to be a moderate republican. i think we're in a different era now in terms of what republicans represent. >> host: ellis cose, alexander of university place washington e-mails into you, and this is his third point that he wants to make. in your opinion have the hbcus fulfilled their role as a social and social mission, or add new areas of research, or what role do you think they should play come if any, in the 21st century? >> guest: again i will say up front i'm not an expert in historical black colleges and universities. it's clear that the role they historically played is not the role they're going to put in the future. but the role the historical but it was the role of initiating black elite. this was a time when virtually anyone, any person with black you could speak of was a member of the elite came to one of the great black universities whether

it was more house or spellman, whether it was howard university, et cetera. large parts of the elite have the option of going wherever they want to, and it seems clear to me that part of what the historically black institutions are going to have to do is be very competitive with these white institutions. and what's also very clear to me is they are going to compete in different ways. summer going to specialize and do various things well, whether it's medicine or sciences. summer going to try to be, except the fact it can't be elitist institutions and they will be competing with midrange universities as opposed to the harvard and the yells and some of these others. but clearly they are evolving and clearly an increasing part of the population i suspect it's also going to be non-us black people who would be uneducated

and some will survive and someone not. >> host: atascosa.com is our guest website. >> caller: this is my first meeting with you today. this is a great sunday for me. i tell you, your words, your poise, your clarity and description offers such great hope, calm, balanced for me on today, especially in this life and time. we are in a really, really interesting period in this world today. i mean, you just really, really hit home and make sense for things. if i had to ask you one question i would ask you, what one piece of advice would you give to your daughter's generation, and be able to successfully navigate this world of ours? >> guest: she's eight.

to be night in october. fi to give just one piece of advice, i will say don't pay attention to people who impose limits on what you can do. needless to say i have all kinds of advice but if i would limited to one thing that would be at. >> host: and there's a picture. >> guest: and that's my wife also and supreme court justice sonia sotomayor. >> host: and finally, this is from kevin, when is your next book, and what with the subject matter be about? >> guest: my agent and i are in the process of its discussing that at this point. when i do, and i'm not committed to this because i haven't decided yet, would be a book that would be an essence sort of be aimed at people like my daughter, or at least young women, and sort of what they can expect and what this new world will bring. but i'm not committing to that

but that's what i do at least. but i haven't decided yet. >> host: ellis cose has been our guest for the last three hours, author, essayist, columnist, longtime "newsweek" editor. here's a quick look at eight of his nonfiction books are "the press" was his first one. that came out in 1989. nation of strangers came out in 1992 the best selling "the rage of a privileged class." "man's world," 1995. "color-blind" in 1997. "the envy of the world" 2002. "bone to pick" in 2000 for which we didn't get a chance to talk much about. and "the end of anger" is his most recent book. they came out in 2011. ellis cose, thank you for being on both tvs "in depth" try to migrate pushpit ilogistics with a in some ways it's my favorite book. if