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 ..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 since he is from biracial family, i have read all his books and very impressed with the man. the most important man in the room in just about every session he is in, he was brought up predominantly by his grandparents and his mom was white. you think that if he was a few shade lighter as in the case ironically of my grandson who probably when he walks into a room can be either, and proud of that. he knows he is special. 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? just curiosity on my part.

>> guest: there is no way to know. what is more relevant is not whether he is a few shades later. because he is not all that dark. i think it is whether he is really identified as an african-american. and i think he is. so i think to the extent that there is racial analysis will be directed against him because he is clearly identified as an african-american and is clearly identified as an african-american despite the fact as you say he was raised largely by his grandparents and white mother who were not african-americans but who were white. in some ways the more interesting question has to do with people i presume of your grandson's generation but at any point of very young people coming up at a time when to some extent i think our rigid racial classifications are breaking

down. the whole idea of the united states dating back from the time of slavery has been a one drop rule which is if you have one drop of so-called black blood you are considered to be black. some of the leading black politicians look like a white man to many people. walter white who was so light that he could actually go undercover on missions to the south and report back what was happening in terms of some of these segregationist die hard white groups. we have experienced in the past having people with very light complexion who considered themselves black and in society were considered black and i think obama is still part of a

generation that regardless of how light he was, he was considered african-american or less--unless he had brown hair etc. but still considered african-american. looking towards the future we will see a time when we are a bit of an african-american and country where people not necessarily considered black or white but who are considered some sort of in between categories. i had a sort of funny experience several years back with a group that was looking at a set of issues in brazil that included members of that group, a foundation official, very light complexion. she turned to a brazilian guy and said do you think black brazilians will have a problem 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 totally baffled

and says i don't think so because here in brazil we understand that in america there are a lot of white people who think they are black. what he was speaking to was a different way of categorizing people. they categorize people and how they look as opposed to peace and. here we categorize people very much on the basis of peace and, the one drop rule. that is the process of change. >> host: from denver, colorado, you are on with ellis cose. >> caller: hello. thank you for your -- [inaudible] -- a couple points i want to raise up. just by your destination. i will be considered a generation of iii. i will be 39 this year. from my point of view being the first freeborn african-american

in my family, looking at the first black president, president obama and his identification with the black community and in general, in the fact that as a constituency, being based on race becomes a hot potato where in the election cycle each one identified this group as a voting constituency that needs to be addressed but has to be elections even more so there's a tendency to want -- [inaudible] -- black issues were being looked at from a black president. which obama was fighting to -- you mentioned before america being a nation of individuals

living the legacy as being an american on the africans are or european side. racism although not handled as racist as you say, these institutions as we see now with the mortgages and everything else going on. it is hard to attack an issue that doesn't have something behind it that is more in serious than we make on. so it has its place but we can't put a certain face to a person like we used to in the past. >> the first question is a very complicated question having to do with -- let me rephrase it. which is how obama manageds racial expectations and how within that he manages is the racial identification and racial politics. i think the obama campaign from the time it was the campaign,

certainly the obama presidency has been aware of the potential pitfalls and him being perceived as someone who was catering to minority interests or black interests and i think they have tried very hard, perhaps too hard to avoid the mere perception of that. you recall the highly publicized professor case from harvard being arrested and stepped out of his own home in cambridge. and obama apparently decided this was a teachable moment and when asked the question about the behavior of the police who arrested him, the policeman acted stupidly. there was a firestorm reaction to that. it went down along racial lines with overwhelming majority of whites who responded to bolster his disapproving of the

president's responds. the overwhelming majority of african-americans approving of his response. the white house learned a lesson from that. they learned that if in any way obama was remotely considered to indicate that he was more sympathetic to blacks than whites it would be used against him. so they have tried very hard to avoid that. they tried in the campaign to avoid that and ultimately had to face the issue of race because the issue became such a big issue. the big racial speech in philadelphia. that was the one racial speech he gave so far as the campaign was considered. it was over and dealt with. because obama is the first black president, i think he has scrutiny around race that perhaps second or third person

of color won't have a. part of the burden of that is he finds himself basically constrained against speaking out or acting in any way that would put him in danger of being perceived as acting in solidarity with blacks. there's even a gust up in the public arena when between al sharpton around this question of whether obama could have a black agenda and al sharpton arguing sharply that he couldn't have a black agenda and have a smiling arguments equally strong that he should have a black agenda. that is a conundrum for him and it is not to be figured out an easy or delicate way to get around that conundrum yet.

the second question -- >> host: i can be of no help. i will is listening to your answer. you did mention the speech in philadelphia in march of 2008. here's a portion of that speech. >> this is where we are right now. it is a racial stalemate we have been stuck in for years. contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, i have never been so naive as to believe we can get beyond racial division in a single election cycle. or with a single candidate, particularly -- [applause] -- particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own. but i have asserted a firm conviction, a conviction rooted in my faith in god and my faith in the american people that working together, we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds and in fact we have no

choice. we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. >> host: that was in march of 2008. recently on booktv, we take and afterwards program with harvard professor and author randall kennedy 11 whose new book the persistence of the color line is out. we had a pro ryan of urban radio network interviewed. ms. ryan asks a question of randall kennedy 11. we will show you that question and a little of his answer but i am more interested in hearing you respond to the question as well. here it is. >> barack obama has burdens that no politician would have. he had special burdens. special racial burdens. white politicians have racial burdens too.

everybody has a race. but a black president has a special burden. >> host: the question was supposed to be included but randall kennedy says barack obama has burdens no other president has. >> guest: because of where we have been as a country and the centrality of our race it would be naive to expect that he would not have a set of racial issues that a white politician does not have. i was in south carolina for the primary. i remember going to what was supposed to have been a celebration for john edwards but john edwards didn't do very well in that primary so it became more of a wake. i turned to a white woman more or less around 40-something identified as -- and i said your candidate obviously is not going to win so who are you going to

support? and she turned to me and she said that is a dilemma. i said why is it a dilemma? she says because hillary is too hard and obama is too black. and said that is an interesting way of looking at things. certainly up to that point a candidate who was made very loyal issue of his race other than to acknowledge the fact and the fact of his ancestry and despite that, there were many voters who perceive him as a black candidate. so clearly that is one bearden a white candidate would not have. because of that, i think it sets up a set of dynamics for obama and white house that makes it very difficult for them to address racial issues. >> host: next call for ellis

cose is from philadelphia. >> caller: i just want to thank booktv and c-span for choosing to interview ellis cose who i have read extensively. i would like to also thank mr. ellis cose himself for allowing the interview in 2005 when i was a host on the arts magazine and talk about your book called "bone to pick". i appreciated your graciousness. i will never forget that. my distance on this planet on this world as a journalist and you made me feel like my opinions count. i just wanted to say thank you so much for that. that was very important to me to encourage me to continue my work. two brief questions. the first is i read last year newsweek editor's editorial and i am wondering why last year you

left. the second is how do you channel the raid you talk about to the privileged class -- "the rage of a privileged class" which i read in school and the rage of young people, how the chapel that outside the mainstream? in reference to what you put out by obama, he uses race to do that. he uses the excuse of race to allow people to say you can't do that because he is black. the way i am seeing obama is he is not using his racial activities as uplifting or inspiring but uses it as an excuse to say i can't do much because of my being black. >> guest: in terms of why i left i have a straightforward answer. the magazine as i am sure you are aware changed hands. there was a decision by the washington post co. to sell the magazine. it was acquired and subsequently taken over by new leadership and

a new direction. i simply decided it made more sense for me to focus on my book writing at this point and to continue with the magazine which was taken over by a different set of people and different editorial division than the one i had bought into when i joined the publication. in terms of -- several questions. there was one about how do you channel rage and the other commentary about barack obama and how he uses race. let me first take both of those. going back to what one of the earlier callers said, we have our own sets of concerns, our own agendas, our own sets of experiences. and i think if you are a healthy person trying to lead a productive life you don't want to direct rage inward but you try to find some political affiliation or social

affiliation that articulate vision that focuses on what you want to accomplish and you go for that. in my thinking that is not a terribly complicated set of issues. larger question is how effective can you be outside the two party network in this country and the answer recently and historically seems to be not very. obama and raise and to what extent he uses that. it is clear that obama's presidency in his campaign, you had and have a huge symbolic significance. i was in washington for the operation, i uncover parts of the campaign and travel with him to africa before he was a candidate and canyons by the tens of thousands in viewing his president with huge importance before he was head of state he

was treated as head of state at least in kenya. i will make this first observation which is by becoming president, obama changed the conversation in many ways. and he changed the idea that many african-americans had that was possible to be in this country or to achieve in this country as a person of color and also reshaping the attitudes just by being there. the only president and my daughter who's a has known is barack obama. that is true of a whole generation of young people. who for what it is worth -- normal for an african-american to be president. surly when i grew up, it was considered bizarre and impossible for an african-american to be

president. just by being there, whatever he does, he changes potential aspirations of people. as to whether he has done as much as he could, i would say the more legitimate critique seems to me not whether he is sort of spoken out as a black person on black issues as whether he has done as much as he can for people who are for, people who are not privileged and people who don't have access to the political system routinely. it is a fair criticism to find him lacking in that respect. >> host: james watson e-mail to you i read your book, "the envy of the world" and every black person should read. how did it so? will you write another book that examines the same behavior we see in many black communities?

>> guest: "the envy of the world" was a book that spoke very much to the young people of color particularly young black men. the origin of that book was interesting. it was a book might then publisher and i decided to do because we were both admirers of james baldwin. in the fire next time james baldwin kicks it off with a letter to his nephew and that letter to his nephew, which is now in the 1963, is a look at what it meant in 1963 to be a young black man coming the pitt america. what the challenges were that he could expect to face and what the road was to success and redemption. so the question became if you were to take on that subject

today, and i think that book was published in 2003. >> host: 2002. >> guest: if you were to take 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 discovering that young black boys, black men were much less likely to complete their education that young black women. who were looking at just huge frightening statistics in terms of the numbers of young black men being incarcerated. some projections had one in four and perhaps one in three of young black men. at some point in their life having contact with the criminal

justice system. so "the envy of the world" was an attempt to look inward and outward. it was an attempt to say what are the things that are happening in society that are driving many, definitely not all, but many young black men to be so self-destructive and what are the things that are happening internally to many young black men that are leading them to do things that are very destructive? and the book did quite well. it was the number-1 bestseller for essence magazine and it was -- it became a very popular book among its target audience which was the audience of young african-americans and what i found is a lot of black parents -- a lot of black mothers bought the book for their sons or for young men. >> host: where did the title

come from? >> guest: it is from a book by toni morrison. there's a quote in the beginning of the book which i won't repeat from memory where she talks about how black black men are perceived and reviled by much of society. >> host: here's the quote. i don't know what the fuss is about. everything in the world loves you. white men love you. they spend so much time worrying about your penis they forget their own. white women chase you all to every corner of the earth, feel for you under every bed. colored women worry themselves into bad health trying to hang on to your cuffs. even little children, white and black boys and girls spend all their childhood eating their hearts out because they think you don't love them. if that ain't enough, you love

yourself. nothing in the world loves a black man more than another black man and looks to me like you are the envy of the world. next call for ellis cose from catherine in washington. >> caller: i am a teacher of polka dots. i don't believe in race. earthly this at work. i want to know your views on how our president unfortunately has unwittingly started reverting from what i can tell from my friends who live around united states and other places that are complaining that they find more reason is coming forward now to the fact that we have a black president because at one time in

our country, politics and racism go hand in hand. at one time we have a black culture that was constantly demanding to be heard from basically a white government. and never seen it. and therefore, that also put a wedge between race because those issues. now we have the opposite going on where we have white people claiming a black man or a black controlled government. and because of that they are taking it out on their fellow workers. i know people who are not getting jobs because they're black because the white owner is mad at the black president. >> guest: that used to be called back lashed. i would disagree with the characterization of a black controlled government. obama happens to be african-american but the government is not controlled by blacks at this point. the reality in the get much more

complicated than that. this gets into some of the things we were talking about previously. clearly obama has huge symbolic significance not just for african-americans who overwhelmingly supported although support has declined a lot of significance for other groups including racist groups. to suddenly see this guy who has i said it is clear identifies as african-american. he is sitting on the top of the pyramid. the top of the political. . so he becomes a target and some of the criticism is racial. so you do have racial epithets that are being coupled with the president's name. one question i asked in surveys that i did in my latest book was whether obama's presidency was

improving relations or made race relations worse. my response was divided on that. they were almost split down the middle. they also overwhelmingly thought that they were responding this way. they thought that obama's presidency had made it easier for whites to believe they have more racial progress than they had. so you have this set of dynamics for the very fact that he is president, at least to some people that race is no longer the issue, racism is no longer problem and you can achieve everything and assuming these extremist groups and these groups who are racially paranoid anyway, you have this targeting of obama because he is african-american and this sort of idea that blacks are somehow taking over the government and

america has somehow become something other than what it once was. none of this is very healthy but it is inevitable. we used to call this backlash where you had some sort of progress in the civil rights movement and people who got very upset about that and angry and exercise of it and ultimately that dissipated and the same is going to happen here. we do have this phenomenon first and even though the president and his people bend over backwards to show they are not in and showing favoritism to african-american the very fact that he is black will cause some people to be suspicious that he is. >> host: do you think you would have written "the end of anger" had barack obama not won in 2008? >> probably. some of these things were in evidence before his win.

we were moving in a certain direction before obama won. innocence it is almost as important as obama -- almost as important to running for the presidency. and running as a serious candidate who intended to win. and his getting the democratic nomination. certainly there have been african-americans' including jesse jackson and al sharpton and shirley chisholm and others. who ran for president before. but none of these people ran before including carolyn braun, former senator from illinois. none of these people ran before. actually ran to win. they ran for other reasons. shirley chisholm ran to make the point that a black woman could

run for president. jesse jackson ran to collect delegates and become a power broker. they ran for various reasons but none of them had the remotest notion that they could actually win the presidency. after iowa and new hampshire it became very clear that the obama candidacy was different. that this was actually a candidate who had a chance of winning. and i think that is where the wheels began to turn for a lot of people. where they said to themselves, people who said america would never, never seriously look at a black guy as president found themselves suddenly saying my god, what is happening here? john lewis, the congressman from georgia who had been a hillary clinton supporter, very publicly changed his support. he basically acknowledged what was happening. he had been part of the group

that just didn't think this guy could ever win. all of a sudden when it became clear he at least half a shot at that he didn't want to be on the other side of this historic candidacy. so the answers i would still have written the book. it would be different in some respects. >> host: ellis cose is our guest on this month's index program on booktv on c-span2. here are eight of his nonfiction books. in 1989 he wrote "the press". 1992 stock "a nation of strangers". his best selling "the rage of a privileged class" came out in 1993/94. man's world in 95. "color-blind" in 1997. "the envy of the world" in 2002. "bone to pick" came out in 2004. his most recent "the end of anger," a new generation's take on race and rage came out in 2011. recently we visited ellis cose in new york city to see where he

wrote. >> guest: i am ellis cose and welcome to my writing studio on the upper west side. it made sense to me several years ago to make a separation in my work environment and my home environment particularly now that i have a daughter who is age at this point. i come here to work and go home to be at home. this is where i actually do most of my writing. i spend probably at least four or five hours a day, not more, more or less in this position. depending on what projects i am working on this whole place is actually devoted to various kinds of work projects and various work products scattered

around the place. this is from my latest book. we did hundreds of interviews and surveys. here we have everyone from corey booker, the mayor of newark, and a professor at princeton and some ordinary people. john lewis, congressman. jesse jackson, former -- the head of push. the head of the naacp. this is one of many books that were compiled in putting together "the end of anger". because i thought it was important to transcribe most of these things so that i could have something to look through as i was sorting through the idea of the book. >> how much of the difference is there in the writing process between when you are working on a book versus an article?

>> guest: the process is sort of the same but fundamentally different. with an article your typically on a deadline. you are riding in a matter of days or a matter of weeks. you don't have the time to marinade. you don't have the time to over a period of month to look at it and reflect on it and think about the ideas or play with the ideas or play with different instructions. the other thing is a book, we are talking about 70,000 or 100,000 words. an article we are usually talking about 1,000 or 3,000. it is a fundamentally different thing to ask the readers to stay with you for 1,000 words that it is to stay with you for 100,000 words. you need to have something at the very least to take them through several days and at the

very least several hours of reading. reading the bigger idea is one way to do it. so my process certainly for this book, but i guess for many books, is to gather as much information as i can. and to have sternly some guidance for guiding sense going in where i want to end up and what questions i want to answer but once i get all this information to sit back and say where i thought i wanted to go originally makes sense in light of what i now have ended a book like this, where we literally did end up compiling hundreds of interviews there are things that always happen that surprise you a little bit. and a book can not exactly take on a life of its own but taking a different direction.

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hellen ha >> host: who was held and clinger? >> guest: she was my english teacher when a high was a senior at lane technical high school in chicago. she is the one who turned me into a writer. i had originally thought i was going to be something in the sciences. my favorite subject was math. i had a teacher, an austrian woman giving me all kinds of special math assignments to convince me to be a mathematician. i have no idea what mathematicians did so we agreed i would be in business. at the same time i was always having battles with my english teachers because even though i went to school, a very good school i was one of these kids who tested into a. and considered in. not english and not challenge or interesting. a lot of answering questions i knew the answers to and trying

to prove i had read stuff i knew i had read. so i routinely refused to do my english assignment. my last year in high school misses clinger pull me over and said you obviously have talent, obviously our bright kid but are not doing your work. why not? i said it is not challenging in. is boring and insult my intelligence. she said something no other teachers said before. she said okay, what should we do instead? i said it seems to me is the purpose of this course is to evaluate how well i can research and write. why don't you give me something that actually tests that? and she said okay. what are you suggesting? i said why not have the right something? and she said okay. what are you going to right? i live in a neighborhood in the

west side of chicago that was torn up by riots. so i said to myself what i should do is write a history of riots and why they come about and what causes people to do it and the american history of that. i was 16 at the time. i said okay. i am going to do this. so i took off and for the first time in my life people became excited about writing assignment. i ended up producing to her surprise i am sure a manuscript that ran 150 pages. and turned it into mrs. clinger and she looked at it and said okay, i am going to read this. she took it home and read it over the weekend. she came back, called me up after class and said to me i am going to give you an a for this course but i am really not capable of judging this material. you need to send it to a

professional. and i'm going a professional what? i am a kid from a house in chicago. i didn't know any professional writers. she said send it to this woman called gwendolyn brooks. do you know who she is? i said yes. she was a poet laureate in illinois. she teaches at this college. send it to her and see what she says about it. here i am, this kid. i bundle up my manuscript and send it into gwendolyn brooks. all i knew this she won a pulitzer prize and was a poet laureate and was someone important. several weeks later i get a call. i am living with my parents and i get a call at home and does gwendolyn brooks called and she said you have to come and talk to me and i did. she was teaching at a college called northeastern university on the north shore of chicago. three buses to meet her and she

was the most gracious individual you can imagine. she sat me in front of the big desk and scrawled across my manuscript in blue and red ink one day you will be a great writer. and she basically said look, i don't know what you intend to do with your life and don't know what you are interested in but you have a gift for writing and that is what you should develop. you should become a writer. that was the first time i had any inkling that there was a career that was possible for me in writing and that i could seriously think about doing but suddenly found the idea very compelling. that is where it started. she invited me to join a ryder's group and she became probably my first real bad for. >> host: we have an hour and 15 minutes left with our in-depth guest, ellis cose. longtime newsweek editor, author of ten books, sas as a --essa s

--essayi --essayist. for those of you in the east and central time zone 624-1115 in mountain and pacific time zone. twitter booktv@booktv, twitter/booktv or send an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. who are jenna and rainy cose? >> product of my mother of mississippi and they met in chicago and raised five kids of which i was one. >> host: what did they do in chicago? >> guest: my mother was a stay at home mom before i was born. my father was a working man. he worked in the laundry in a commercial laundry in chicago which he did not for his entire

life but certainly for all the time i knew him. >> host: where did you go to college? >> guest: a undergraduate university of illinois. i went for my masters at george washington university in washington d.c. and studied science and technology. >> host: next call from chicago. mark, hi. are you with us? please go ahead. >> caller: i want to respond to the idea that obama is being singled out because of his race. i am a black man and a tea party supporter in large part and by that i mean the 0 original tea party which ron paul supported in 2008. that is where the idea came from. i also have a lot of progress of friends because i am anti intervention and anti imperialists i've been to anti-war rallies and all kinds of progressive sites and seen all kinds of profanity about

george bush, the only. i trust is my own, all kinds of depictions of bush as a chimpanzee, comparing him to hitler, calls for him to be tried as a war criminal. by the way i happen to agree that he and work -- dick cheney were war criminals. they did lie to us and infringe on our constitutional rights but that only goes to underscore the point that obama is continuing the same policy. and intensifying those policies. so i think all this stuff about left/right, democrat/republican, black/right is a smokescreen for the fact the we have george bush with a tan. there is an excellent film called the obama they section that makes the same point. the rapper, the first person in the films as obama is like a manager of a burger king. they change the manager every

four or eight years but the owners are the same. >> guest: it is sternly interesting. if he were george bush ii he would have an easier time getting the republicans than he does. despite the fact that obama ran on a campaign pledge of getting beyond partisan politics, this is the most partisan atmosphere i have seen in a while. however you want to characterize obama at least domestically, internationally he did continue many things george bush did but characterized -- very hard to characterize as. ii. i take the point that as you noted earlier that there have been serious criticisms of george bush as well and any number of people had made a very derogatory comments about him.

it does seem to have risen to a level under obama and he has been subjected to a level of disrespect that is new. but again we are also seeing the political process that has descended to the depth in the last few years and maybe that is not surprising and some of it probably has to do with race and a lot has to do with politics sinking to a new low in our era. >> host: good afternoon digit the rights. have you ever been confronted with what you consider the glass ceiling? >> guest: never confronted with a glass ceiling. not directly. an interesting question because i think often when we talk about glass ceiling issues we're talking perception as much as what can be reality.

and certainly going back to the days -- fairly long newspaper career before i took office and became a magazine journalist and book author as well. sternly i have the sense when i was a young reporter with the chicago sun times and the young the columnist for the sun times that it was not very likely i would end a being editor of that newspaper. what i would have been made editor had i stayed? who knows? i never had the sense that was a path that was planned for me. i think i managed by courier in a way that happens to deal with glass ceiling issues. i spent my career largely as a columnist and commentator. when i was running the editorial page operations at the new york daily news i parachuted in to this position.

was actually offered at one point the editorship of the sunday paper when they were -- the than the odor was considering changing the management arrangement. it was clear to me at that point that i could easily have held on to that management career had i decided to do that. so i think in my own career certainly early on i had a sense of things i couldn't do. if you asked about becoming 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 never had a sense that i could which is an interesting point which is when we talk about the glass ceiling and how people respond to it, one of the beauties of the fact that obama has become president is you have a lot of kids who are not even going to think these days i

can't be president because i am black or latino or i am not white. that way of thinking is going to change. >> guest: >> host: terror from tallahassee says can you comment on the extent to which if any class is replacing race as the ingredient in the glass ceiling? >> guest: class has always been there. i think class very much determines what school you should go to war opportunities coming up or the level of education you get, what opportunities you have as a young person. class influences whether you believe you will be part of the professional class or not. and i think that is still the case. i think in the past race has been such a huge components for african-americans, what you could and could not do that race trumped everything. now fat raise is moving to the

side of it, we are seeing how important class really is. we have this notion that the united states was a classless society. that has always been a fiction that it is becoming clear that it is even less of a fiction these days because you have this increased stratification where every census we find that those in the highest fifth percentile of income are making more money relative to those in the last fiscal -- if you look at the last few censuses it becomes more extreme. so we're 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 big way. >> host: this week from judy. do you think high unemployment

rate among african-americans is the current economy will lead to a new rage or anger especially among youth? >> guest: it is leading to a huge sense of frustration and a huge sense of reduced options and opportunities. we historically have had a black unemployment rate which is twice whites and continues to be a little more than twice that now are actually. anger--the kind of acres that erupted in the riots of the 60s and the rodney king riots later in the 90s 10 to be sparked by particular incidents. it will take a combination of particular instance to ring that anger to the 4. and of course in the 60s it with a backdrop of a very big

movement that tapped into a lot of frustrations and aspirations. i don't see that same dynamic developing now but clearly there's a lot of frustration among lots of people in america and particularly among younger african-americans who tend to have the highest unemployment rate. >> host: next call for ellis cose comes from britain and, florida. >> caller: thanks for your kantor and in sight. i am refreshed and encourage. my question, my belief that racism in america is underground racism and is being revived or becoming more overt since our nation elected its first black president. my question is you mentioned the three groups for generations and believers. what role to its detriment or benefit and benefit has religion played with the black racial

dilemma in america? >> interesting question. it is not one that my book picks on in depth. clearly to some extent the black church has been tremendously important. if you look at the leadership institution that came out of the civil rights institutions like dr. king and southern christian leadership conference rooted in the church or the religious organizing or organizing by ministers. the future seems to be shaded of to be less of a factor and being moved by more straight political organizing as opposed to movement organizing around the themes of christianity. the caller made an interesting observation about racism being more underground now than it was in the past. i think we are seeing several

things happen. the very fact the we are opposed racist, no one can openly say racist thing and expect to receive society's sanction means people who have those feelings feel they have to be underground in some way or at least once to be part of delight and civilized society they have to demonstrate those beliefs another way. at the same time we're seeing that, we're seeing a real hero and of racism and you see that particularly among younger groups. particularly among young groups. whether it is inverse relationship to whether it is blacks equal to whites and questions you want to ask that you certainly see an erosion of racism as well so i would agree racism has been driven undergroun