people saying many of -- many of the united states military projects were under development in area 51 including the f 170 stealth fighter. the black hawk helicopter used in the osama bin laden raid was developed at area 51? >> i would certainly like to know that but i don't have a need to know about that yet. sounds like it would be a great place to fly those helicopters. >> whether technology developed they're going -- a variation on a previous question about the aircraft. whether the technology the requested about teflon and the space program and all of that has gotten out into the commercial world at all or whether it was developed there is so secret. what has developed at area 51 state area 51. ..

>> doctored up with some paint that was supposed to be camouflage, and instead it made the plane overheat. >> unfortunately, we've reached the point in our program where there's time for only one last question. and somebody kind of open-ended for you, was there one particular story that you found the most shocking or surprising of what you learned about area 51?

>> you know, everything that was told to me was very ornate and very interesting, and i think all circled back to allow me to create the puzzle, so to speak. all these individual pieces that in and of themselves were fascinating, um, to understand the broader, bigger picture of area 51 was what i found the most rewarding, certainly, at the end, to step back and say, this makes sense, and this is why it's secret, and this is what went on there even though i probably only know a small fraction of it. winston churchill once said about, and he was speaking about russia, he said it's an enigma wrapped inside of a puzzle wrapped inside of a riddle. and he could have been speaking about area 51. >> our thanks to andy jacobsen,

author of the new book, "area 51: an uncensored history of america's top secret military base." >> this event was hosted by the commonwealth club in san francisco. to find out more, visit commonwealthclub.org. >> coming up next, author and columnist ellis cose, the contributing editor for "newsweek" magazine, talks about current political issues and the state of racism in america among other topics. his books include "rage of privileged class," and his late itself release, "the end of anger." >> host: ellis cose, in 1993 you wrote the bestseller, "the race of a privileged class." in 2011 you wrote "the end of anger: a new generation's take on race and rage." >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: what happened? how did we get from rage to the end of anger in 18 years?

>> guest: a lot of things happened in between those two books, and even though the end of anger is not exactly a sequel, it certainly is, in some sense, a follow-up book. the central message which was there were many african-americans who were angry and very frustrated at their inability to get beyond a certain point in american life,r to get beyond a certain point in corporate structures. they were frustrated about the glass ceiling. and in a phrase, what happened. is that the glass ceiling shattered. we saw shortly after that book came out we saw the rise ofthe colin powell, he became a possible presidential candidateb we saw a number of corporateaw a titans ascend, at least a few.. we saw richard parsons at time warner, ken at american expressn and a handful of others who suddenly cracked the glass ceiling in corporate america. il. 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 extreme. i don't think that certainly in

terms of the articulated public positions you're going to fight any tea party leadership saying we want second class citizens, or that we want people in sticking. that's jus just a part of the rhetoric. and i think many of them are sincere about that. they recognize that this is a different america, that you can't take america back to the 1940s, to the 1950s. but at the same time i think what they are expressing is they are frustrated. they're not quite sure where they fit in. they are not quite sure where things are going. and they are angry. but now i don't think they'll organize themselves into lynch mobs. >> host: in your book, "man's 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.