that is not a bad thing really. at the same time we're seeing an erosion of racism as well. >> host: in usa today there was a recent column by you comparing gay marriage to the civil-rights movement. >> guest: the gay movement. basically making the point that while i consider both movements legitimate and certainly support the quality fog transgendered and gate, the movements are quite different. one way they are different is we have seen the intergenerational transfer of privilege and a lack of privilege and away you won't see at least in my opinion with a people because just because someone is gay doesn't mean they have a son or daughter that is going to be gay. .. 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. ..

st: >> in a lot of urban school systems in particular, political decisions were made. and part of -- and in a way that schools are organized. decision was made, okay, if you're going to keep white parents interested at all in these schools, it's going to be difficult to do that if they perceive their school is a placf

their kid's not going to get an education.e so one way to make sure their kid's getting an education isac create different tracks. 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 estimatio

>> host: okay, jim, we're going : we from mr. cose. thanks for calling in. >> guest: yes, i am familiar with eugene robinson's book, a lot of racial attitudes in brazil. in fact, i did blurb his book, and i know eugene, he's a frien of mine, and we both have ar strong interest in brazil andine the, um, and how issues of politics and race have been dealt with in brazil. and one thing that you realize if you look at the situation reae if you look at the situation there is that most people there , certainly don't consider themselves black but i guess themselvese the itpulation doesn't consider doesn't mean, probably not the t 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