descendants and those are the ones we still find out about. someone calls up -- someone called up today before yesterday and said i have a letter from andrew jackson. would you like to see it? of course we would. there are going to be 17 volumes altogether. the first six of them lead up to the presidency and then the next week of the presidency. one volume.. we have done the first presidential volume which covers the year 1829 and the second one covering 1830. we are now on the third one which will be volume 9 of the whole series covering 1831. this is really the heart of jackson's historical importance, his eight years as president. we are devoting more to the presidency than jackson's free presidential career or his retirement years. ..

>> it's from his 2000 stand-up routine, kill the messenger, and it's about alpine, new jersey, the posh town where he lives in a multimillion dollar home. his neighbors include mary j. blige and eddie murphy. rock says he and murphy are or were among the best in the world in their to possession. they're also the only four black homeowners in town. then he says his next door neighbor is a white dentist. he ain't the best in the world, rock says.

he ain't going to the dental hall of fame. rock spells out the point with a devastating punchline. the black man gotta fly to get something the white man can walk to. he's saying that in modern america blacks can ascend to the upper class, it's possible, but they have to fight so much more to get there because white supremacy remains a tall barrier to entry. the fact that a few slip the cracks is an attempt to mask its awesome power. how can someone argue that alpine, new jersey, is racist when four black families live there welcomed by the community and unharassed by police? of course, this is a fake argument. these extraordinary blacks would be welcome anywhere, and alpine itself is not racist because it doesn't need to be. there are institutional systems in place that keep the number of blacks in alpine and beverly hills and other exclusive communities very low, but not so

low that jesse jackson can come and raise a ruckus. it's like releasing a tiny bit of air so the bottle doesn't explode. modern racism is a much more subtle knew wanted, slippery beast than its father or grandfather were. it's powerful force shaping the post-black experience because it combines a sense of you don't belong, you're a second-class citizen, with the subterfuge of a spy and creates for some a devil's bargain. you may ascend higher on the ladders of power than previous generations of blacks could have imagined, but when you smack into that glass ceiling and don't get as high as you feel you should go, it'll still drive you crazy and show you your ability is not fully respected. blackness and expanding, but we all still must deal with the crucible called racism, and it has a pernicious impact on the

modern black persona. modern racism is, as a great indian writing posits in the most mind-blowing analogies i've encounters like the president pardoning one turkey each year before thanksgiving. at a speech in mumbai, roy broke it down. every year in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the president spares one particular bird and amendments another one. of after receiving the presidential pardon, the chosen one is sent in frying pan park, virginia. the rs of the 50 million turkeys raided for thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten. conagra foods, the president who has won the presidential turkey contract, says it trains the lucky bird to be social bl to interact with school children and the press. [laughter] that's how new racism in the corporate era works. a few carefully-bred turkeys, the local elites of various

countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, the occasional colin powell or condoleezza rice, some writers are given absolution. the remaining millions are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity cut and die of aids. basically, they're for the pot. but the fortunate fowls in frying pan park are doing just fine. who can accuse those organizations of being anti-turkey? some serve as board members on the turkey-choosing committee, so who can say that turkeys are against thanks giving? they participant in it. -- participant in it. there's a stampede to get into frying pan park. so what if most perish on the way? the post-black era is the response in the rise to the number of blacks who live in or are fighting to get into frying pan park or alpine, new jersey.

the post-black era suggests to me that what it means to be black is broadening to infinity, but it does not mean that racism is over, that white supremacy is laying down its almost impenetrable shield. racism remains a daily fact of life for blacks and a key component in shaping who we become as people even in the post-black era. indeed, in racism this our parents and grand parents' generation was visible, modern ages it's plainly visible but impossible to grab on to. it as the empirical data that attempts to argue that racism no longer exists even though you know it does. the cognitive dissans after that double -- you're in target. is the security guard following you? you're not sure. you think he is, but you can't be certain. maybe he's actually following another black person you can't

see. but he's probably following you. [laughter] or is he? they were following you in the last store, and you couldn't see it, but you could feel it. maybe the guard is black, so if you tried to explain it to a white friend, they might not understand it as racist. maybe they're watching all the blacks in the store more closely. maybe the guard himself feels badly about that directive but has to follow it because they're watching him too. maybe what you're feeling are his ashamed vibes as if he's sending you a silent signal of apology for following you. and now you're just looking for tylenol for migraines when all you needed was taos faith. [laughter] and -- toothpaste. and that says nothing of the constellation of anxieties that can flash through you when the stakes are high, when you're applying for a job or competing for a promotion or applying to a school, buying a house or asking for a loan. when you're wondering if the white person who appears less qualified got the promotion because theyere actually

better than you, or because they were better at networking upper management, or someone assumed you're not as good because you're black. there's a sort of existential angst black people feel every day. you just want some socks in the store, but you're worried about the security guard and whether he's following you, and you either get angry or make sense of it somehow, but you have had to undergo so many psychological processes just between you and them socks that it's taxing on the spirit and on the intellect. [laughter] we squander so much time dealing with those issues that we sort of miss out on opportunities to do other good stuff like expanding, growing, developing and so forth. columbia professor patricia williams told me there's nothing black people would like more than to have the freedom to go through the world without being constantly self-conscious. that's nearly impossible. maybe the storekeeper's scowling at you because he's tired and has a bad day. or maybe he doesn't want his

clothes to be seen outside the world on your black body. you just can't know. professor williams said that's the necessary nuttiness of racism, and a kind of defensiveness is just a consequence of what we have to negotiate. and i don't think that that's victimhood. she compared the necessary nuttiness of racism, the maddening funhouse mirror, untouchability of modern racism to one day in law school when someone sent her a bouquet of flowers on valentine's day and department sign it. i went through the entire rest of the day smiling at people because it could have been this person, it could have been that person. [laughter] i loved everybody. well, prejudice is the same thing in a negative degree. when a moment of racism occurs, especially a subtle one, you can find yourself walking around distrustful of everyone white wondering who else feels this way. this is off what the face of modern racism is, lurking in the shadows or hidden. institutional inequities and glass ceilings and even racial

profiling can be hard to see at times and can be easily dismissed by dissenters. modern racism is often an amorphous beast. dr. john jackson of the university of pennsylvania said this idea there's this sort of clicheed vision of someone who's racist from the time they brush their teeth in the morning and only thinks about ending the life of every black person isn't the only way to talk about what racism looks like. it isn't useful. i think what's more useful is to get people to think about the ways in which we perpetuate the racial differentiations and inequalities on purpose or inadvertently that produce differences that we see every day. unless you're going to tell me there's some hard-wired reason why people of color and academic institutions are always the people serving you food or cleaning the bathroom or not necessarily in the classroom teaching classes, then i think you're going to have to be honest with yourself about all the ways there's a privilege that accrues to people.

we need to recognize that race is more subliminal, more subjective and more subtle in the contemporary moment. and i think we need to find a way to really articulate that subtlety because there are or very few smoking guns, thank god, anymore. i asked my 105 interview wees what is the most racist thing that ever happened to you. the response i received most often was indicate i have of modern racism. the answer is unknowable. aaron mcgruder said, i'd imagine it'd be a thing i don't know ever happened. that opportunity that never manifested, and i'll never know that it was even possible. so a decision is made in a back room or a high of level office perhaps by someone you'll never see about whether or not you get a home loan or a job or admission to a school, or perhaps you'll never be allowed to know that a home in a certain area or a job is available. this is how modern institutional racism functions, and it can weigh on and shape a black person differently than the more overt, simplistic racism of the

past. people who told me the most racist thing ever happened to them is unknowable gave me that answer quickly. it's in the front of their minds that secret incidences of racism are happening behind their back. they're walking around congress consciously aware of racism as a ghost in the machine following them, impacting them even though they can't see it or know what's taken away. there's a sense of ghosts screwing with you, often out of face, never out of mind. dr. elizabeth alexander who read an original poem at obama's inauguration said the most racist thing that ever happened to me would be the continual underestimation of my intellectual capacity ask the real insidious aspect of that kind of racism is we don't know half the time when we're being cut out of something because someone is unable to see us at full capacity. so i presume that has happened a lot. she presumes this racist miscalculation of her brilliance happens quite often, even though

it never makes its plain. how tragic. i can see alexander walking down the street, the inverse of patricia williams the day she got nonnow flowers -- anonymous flowers. alexander says she fights it by evaluating herself outside the judgment of others. but how can this daily, even hourly battle to constantly reconvince yourself of your ability not become an exhausting mental drain? so that's just a little of what i'm trying to deal with, and elizabeth -- [applause] elizabeth alexander provides a really interesting and powerful tool to try to deal with racism, and we cannot solve it simply. um, but she talks about having a private view of yourself. so knowing i am brilliant, i am capable, i am excellent, i'm

extraordinary, i'm beautiful and not letting the outside world tell you that you're not. and this is very hard because we shape how we see ourselves based on how the world sees us. that's part of it. but we have to work to get to that place. and part of the book is about my journey to get to that place to build a sort of test lawn self-esteem shield to where somebody comes up and says something, it bounces off. i'm like, okay, i know that you are racist, but i'm not. and i think of o i'm not what you think i am. and i think of a moment when i was first at a magazine, and i was trying to get a. >> there. the guy says to me, well, we know you can write about run dmc, but could you write about eric clapton? and he's dismissing my ability.

you're good in this hip-hop thing, but when we get to the big dogs of music, you are not wanted or valuable or capable of doing it. a horrendous example because i'm a journalist. i could study and interview anybody, and eric clapton in particular comes from black music, he comes from the blews. he -- blues. it would be very valuable to have a black writer who cares about the blues and jimmy hendrix to interview him. but i think some people maybe might have taken that moment and gone, wow, here's where i am. and that did not happen to me. i heard his insult, and i said, how am i going to counter this? because i can't turn you in this room. you're not even asking me a question. you're just making an assertion. but i know you're wrong, so how can i change this argument and change this game later on? and years later i did end up changing the game. never got to talk to eric clapton, but i did interview

other white musicians, so proved him wrong. >> well, good. laugh after -- [laughter] all right, so i think we've got to dial it back because i think folks here in this room completely get what you're talking about, and many, many times in the reading you just did which goes, which is deep into the book you mention the phrase "post-blackness." and i think for the c-span audience, you need to just give a brief definition of what is post-blackness, and where does this term come from? >> post-black comes from the art world. thelma golden and glenn -- [inaudible] the great visual artist coined together to talk about a group of artests they saw who wanted to be rooted in but not constrained by blackness. they wanted to deal with black art tradition, deal with black people, black summit matter, but also have the freedom to take influence from other things and perhaps not deal with black subjects and black traditions

and black story for some time. and they wanted to get away from being defined solely by identity for being a black artist is confining. being an artist who happens to be black is liberating, and that's what they wanted. so i started to see that in the real world. do what we want to do and not be constrained by those old ideas of -- and wanted to explore that more fully. >> and i want to get to that in one second. but now define the difference between post-blackness and that sort of ephemeral, ethereal notion of being post-racial. >> post-racial. um, post-racial does not exist. [laughter] post-racial suggests -- [applause] post-racial suggests race does not matter or maybe it suggests that racism is behind us, that sort of thing.

it's nonexistent. it's a word for something that is not real, that does not exist. post-blackness is dealing with the complexity of what it means to be black. i think occasionally you see post-racial in art. it does not exist in the real world, but in art. so you see an example of it in grey's anatomy. but you could switch any of those characters' races and the storylines would be the same. it doesn't matter that -- >> race doesn't matter. >> race doesn't matter in that little world. but in a world like chapelle's show which is dealing much more with what the real world is all about, race matters deeply, and you see the complexity of modern race at play. >> and you say in the book, you devote -- for those of you who vice president read it -- haven't read it, you devote an entire chapter to dave chapelle, and you say it is the clearest example of post-blackness -- >> on television. >> on television.

>> yeah, yeah. it's an incredibly complex show. we see multiple ways of performing blackness within one person. because a lot of times in television they'll present a hoodie black person and a preppy black person, and they present the two modes of being black as if we never vas vacillate, you know, or move around. and chapelle's show specifically in the wayne brady episode, but in other episodes we see one person giving us multiple modes of blackness because all of us have multiple ways of performing or embodying blackness within us. you think about other aspects of your personality. when you go with your grandmother, you're kind of embodying one part of you. when you go with your friends, you're doing another part. if your friends saw you with your grandmother, they'd recognize you're being a little different. you're not selling out, you're not being untrue to yourself, you're just recognizing your audience. we do that with gender, race,

every part of our persona. >> i mean, the wayne brady episode of the chapelle show is one of the most brilliant. as you spell out, all we knew about wayne brady up until that skit was that he was, you know, the happy-go-lucky cheerful black guy who had a television show for a little bit. [laughter] and then here he is in the chapelle show episode being that wayne brady and then suddenly it's gangsta wayne brady. [laughter] i mean, it's really incredible -- i guess y'all have seen that episode. >> but they're making mincemeat of this idea that here's the way wayne brady is black. and it came from a very organic place, that wayne saw dave in beverly hills, and he pulled him aside and said, you know, you really hurt me last season when paul mooney said wayne brady makes bryant gumbel look like malcolm x. [laughter] i mean, like, wow. you know?

right. cold-blooded. >> and that's not me, and you know me better than that. so then they conspired to think of something that would sort of get at those things. so you see wayne come out and be that person we know him to be on stage. and then they show to a taped piece where he's a pimp, he murders somebody. wayne brady gonna have to choke a bitch. [laughter] and all sorts of -- he's mimicking denzel washington in training day. he makes chapelle eat character smoke, and it matters they are playing themselves in the sketch because you see him jumping back and forth, and it makes you question who really is wayne brady? and you even see him a police officer stops them. back to the corny sort of byron allen sort of black, right? [laughter] the appeaser, right? making him, you know, he even

pulled a microphone from his jacket so blacks are always ready to perform at a moment's notice. and who does he sing? dionne warwick w right? a little less edgy. if he does aretha or stevie wonder or marvin gaye, it's not the same. and then, bam, he twists his neck and drops to ground, and he drops the mic like michael corleone, and he goes back to being gangster. so i can go back and forth in a heartbeat, so don't test me. don't act like i'm some chump. i'm bryant gumbel, and i'm corny, and you can just put me in a box because i can do this thing over here, too, and we all have that ability to modulate. >> as you were reading the chapter and focusing on racism, it made me think about another chapter in the book which is throughout the book about the whole prison sort of keeping it

real. and it made me think, you know, i wrote down here racism versus keeping it real. whereas racism you're copps of the white gaze, g-after a-z-e. [laughter] what? what did he have to do with it? [laughter] so with racism you're self-conscious of the white gaze. with keeping it real, you're self-conscious of the black gaze. am i getting this wrong? >> no, i think that's wright. and i think i started dealing in high school, i think some of the people started dealing with it in high school, that responding to the white gaze is one level of maturity for a black person. and when you get beyond that and you say i'm not going to respond to the white gaze, i'm going to do what i want to do with my life and my persona without -- there's no response. i am not flipping them off, i'm not appeasing them. i'm doing what i want to do. that's one level of maturity.

and i think the next level of sort of intellectual development or personal development or maturity is when you say i'm going to do what i want to do, again, not flipping them off, not trying to appease my brothers and sisters, but i'm going to live the life the way that i want. and maybe some of the things i do will be valuable or interesting to them. and i'm sorry that, you know, it wasn't interesting to you that i wanted to go skydiving, and i wanted to go to moscow, and i like sushi, ballet, opera, whatever. but, you know what? blackness is portable. [laughter] it goes with me to those places, and it comes back. >> right. one of the things, what gave rise to this was in college when someone came to you and said, toure, you ain't black. >> yeah. >> and tell that story because he says this to you, and you had done all these black things. >> yeah. i waslying in the black house -- living in the black house. only three people lived, you had to fight to get into the black

house. we were standing in the black house when this happened. i was a black studies major, i was dating a black med school student, i was the founder of the black student newspaper, had all the shows and all the parties -- >> he was bona fide black. >> taking samarrament every -- sacrament every week and the whole nine. but, you know, i wasn't living exactly right for him, and maybe it was something in the way that i spoke, or maybe it's because i had some white friends or i just wasn't a recognizable black person to him. [laughter] and he didn't know me from adam. we had never spoken. i didn't want even know what his voice sounded like when he rose up to strike me down. so it's a whole question of how you judge me is a bit bizarre. but, you know, it was about 2 a.m., we're at the black house. 2 a.m. saturday ending going into sunday. there would have been a party there, and consistently everybody sort of left a mess for the actual residents of the

house to clean up, and we're not supposed to be the janitorial service for the black community in the black house. so we were, you know, i was kind of like, hey, you guys, we've complained about this before, can you help us clean up, just putting the stuff in the trash? it wasn't even a heated argument at all. and this guy comes out of nowhere and says shut up, toure, you ain't black. i mean, it's completely non sequitur. we were talking about cleaning up the house. he must have been drunk, you know? ill assume. i would assume. i'm actually waiting for him to jump up at up with of these readings and -- [laughter] let me tell you another thingment you still ain't black. >> you sure it wasn't wayne brady? [laughter] >> it was an extraordinarily painful moment. i think a lot of us in this room are beyond the stage of forming our identity. we're comfortable with who we are, but when you're in college,

you're an emerging adult, that's what the sociologists call it now, and for another black person to say in this a room full of black people, you anticipate black, it's very painful. and i had no retort. i had no witty response. i had no argument for him. there was about 20 people standing there. nobody said anything, i was crushed. and i turned around and walked away, and i said i'm never going to talk about this again, never going to think about this again. but i couldn't stop thinking about it. and i stayed up all night thinking about it. and i had to do some soul searching to get to a place where i understood, okay, that may be correct for him, but it is not correct for me. and i get to define what being black is for me, and he does not. and that was really the beginning of me saying i'm going to reject this black gaze and say i get to define it. and because you don't understand how i am performing or embodying blackness does not mean that you are right that i'm not black

because there's many different ways to be black. skip gates says if there's 0 million black -- 40 million black people, there's 40 million ways to be black. >> um, i'm going to open this up for questions to you guys. louisiana tissue shah, should they go to the mic? >> [inaudible] >> yeah. >> what do you say we give the audience on stage the first crack at it? is there anybody over here who wants to be first? >> wait one second. but just make sure that your questions are, indeed, questions and that they're short so that as many people can ask a question as possible. and forewarning, because i've given you that warning, i will cut you off if i think you're giving a speech or going on too long. [laughter] so first question. >> you bad. >> it has to be that way. >> no, he's right. >> i hope this reaches. >> you got it? >> wait, can you reach? >> i can reach. >> my question relates to --

[inaudible] especially now with social agencies, some new occurrences of racism. so choosing our battles today, you know, some of the -- [inaudible] issues there. fighting over, just let it go. people are going to understand why -- [inaudible] >> i mean, i think that's a really interesting question. um, we do need to pick our battles because there are, because there are issues of racism that will hurt you, and then there are issues of racism that will actually destroy you and change the trajectory of your life. and when we encounter these moments where with, you know, like rick perry owns some property where the word

"niggerhead" was once written, and it was painted over. it just shows his ignorance, and i kind of want to roll my eyes. now, when we end counter a moment like troy davis getting executed when there's a mountain of evidence saying maybe he didn't do it, maybe we need to think twice about if we're going to execute somebody we're not 100% guilty -- that's a moment of racism that we need to militate against. and we need to deal with the moments that have power behind them to change our lives and not get excised every time somebody says nigger. because most of the stories that people are telling me about what happened to them, they're dealing with something more than somebody said nigger. it can't be somebody rode up on their bike and called me a nigger and rode off. it hurts, it's annoying, but, like, whatever. [laughter] you know? but then when you don't get a job that you deserve and you know that you are better than

jill, you know that you've been working there longer than jill, and you're like why did jill get the promotion? i know i'm better than her. do you have a smoking gun that says this is racism? no, you don't, but you know. and i don't have an answer for how you fight that in the workplace because you cannot go to your boss and say this is racism because that end the conversation, and you lose out. so that's not a tactic you can use, but you have to find another way to battle that. of -- oh, wait, one more question from the stage. [inaudible conversations] [laughter] >> we're going to come to you guys next. >> i have a question. i have -- [inaudible] who has kids who are, like, 12 and 14. and she really makes a big deal to say, oh, my kids, they don't care anymore. there are all these racists, and they don't care about race anymore. it's really different. i mean, we're not that huge a

generation away, but it's just very, you know, adamant that all the young people they don't care who's white and who's black, who's asian, they just don't care. and i was wondering, do you view that as a good thing or a bad thing? do you think it's unrealistic? do you think it'll manifest later? duke it's kind of -- do you think it's kind of on the way to this post-racial thing? [laughter] i don't have kids, so i don't want to judge, but it sounds ridiculous. [laughter] >> no, that's interesting. i mean, it is a little interesting. one of the things that the sociologists tell us is the denial of racism is racism in and of itself. that is a form of microaggression, rice? or perhaps macroaggression in some cases. look, 12-1 is a bit early to have that level of racial identity. you know you're black. you know you're white. you know that other people are asian o or what have you, but they haven't fully begun to assign things, and they also

have no power. so, you know, i'm, like, they'll catch up. [laughter] they'll start to -- i mean, i knew, i know that they are aware of race. i had an extraordinary moment because my son is 3 and a half now. i don't talk to him about being black. i don't say these sort of things because he's a baby. you know, we're trying to deal with stay in bed at night. we're not dealing with race and racism. we took him to one of these play groups that they have when you're trying to get into a school, and all the kids are playing around -- he doesn't even play with dolls, so i don't know where the beginning impetus for this action was, but there were four doll on a shelf, and he had to really reach to get at them. there's three white dolls and at the end there's a black doll. and he reached up past the white dolls and grabbed the black doll and i want to play with this one. and i was like, wow. [laughter] >> that's my boy! that's what's up!

>> wrote that story up in the baby diary. so i know that there is a consciousness of race at an extraordinarily early age, and i don't buy this idea that her, you know, i mean, she's perhaps not even aware of how they are aware of race. who else wallets to get involved? -- who else wants to get involved? >> you have to come to the mic. >> you have to come to the mic because c-span's concerned about -- [inaudible] >> come on down. you're the next contestant on "the price is right." [laughter] >> remember, questions, please. >> we're going to come back here. >> okay. [inaudible conversations] >> please. we need you to go to the microphone. we can't -- >> will all right, all right: so, ma'am, come.

>> your turn. your -- >> a question from a different era. i'm trying to reconcile something. you're saying that race still exists, but at the same time you're now saying you're now in aen era where we permit people to have the luxury of liberation to be people, individuals. i'm trying to understand how you can have that luxury at the same time we recognize from our history that the only way racism was really defeated was because we had a collective identity, and it really kind of gave us values and visions and helped you define our actions, our behavior, our efforts. i really don't, i want to get down with the individualism which characterizes america, but at the same time american culture as i understand black people is much more communetarian and not individualistic. reconcile those things. >> i think that we can be individualistic and communetarian at the same time. i would take issue with the

comment that racism was defeated, but i think you're talking about the very specific incidents of racism. and i'm writing a piece about some of these issues now. you're talking about the montgomery bus boycotts, these sort of things where we banded together, and if anybody was not part of that, then that would screw the whole mission. okay. we don't have this sort of racism anymore. that would have a legal force or even a moral force that we with would need, that unity alone would allow us to supersede. the battles are different now, and unity alone is not going to supersede a glass ceiling, stereotype threat, even troy davis. even if, you know, 40 million of

us had marched in the street, they still would have done what they wanted to do. so there's two different sorts of things going on here, two different sorts of possibilities. the battle now cannot be won with the battle, with the tactics of before. that succeeded before. you understand what i'm saying? >> [inaudible] [laughter] okay, that's all right. the difference of opinion is what i'm talking about. >> obama was elected primarily because black people got together in south carolina, and they decided to act as a group. >> okay, that's true. >> your question. >> i wanted to know how you define, i'm a little bit postered by -- bothered by how you define blackness. because based upon a quote that i read with an interview that you did with cam -- i can't remember his last name right now, basically you, i guess my question is, how do you define blackness?

because it sounds like you define it based upon what i believe is a stereotype. like, blackness is not like you talk about people saying you're not white. when i think of blackness, true blackness is a cultural identity based upon who we are not, okay, this -- basically, a degradation of blackness. so what is the blackness that you say no longer exists? that's what my question is. >> well, what i'm saying is that we all have the ability to define it for ourselves. and i think before there was a multiplicity of visions of what it meant to be black, and now there's a multiplicity of multiplicities. part of what we are grappling with in dealing with the issue, what you're saying is that one of the questions i asked everybody is what is the centrifugal force of blackness. what is the thing that pulls us all together that unites all of us and not specific to us. universal and specific to us apart from white people. the experience of racism.

right? beyond that we don't share a culture, and certainly not as tautly as our parents and our grandparents did. >> but it -- because we're an extension. >> to the mic. >> oh, i'm sorry. >> to the mic. >> oh, i'm sorry, we are -- [inaudible] >> one question and one question only. >> i'm done, that's find. [laughter] >> i mean, what is the centrifugal for the of blackness? what is the thing pulling us all together, and nobody had an answer. so the question was falling apart, and i had to abandon it because nobody had anything close to an answer. i think there are the broad set of biological characteristics which we signify as black, but there are some people we know who don't signify as black, but they are black. there's the shared sense of history, but we all have a different to that and different knowledge of how much you know about it. right? and then we all have the experience of ray similar. but we experience that differently as well. so it becomes difficult to say

this is the thing that connects us. and partly this is because of the rupture from africa and the rupture from that basic national culture that we should have had, that we would have had that italians andgermans, etc., enjoy. >> question. >> okay. i follow you on twitter, and i enjoy your tweets. i think you're incredible, and your mind is very expansive. but i know that you're a musical journalist, and jay-z is one of your favorite artists. my question is, how do you feel about international superstars naming their songs n-word in? and, in other words, saying how do you feel about international black-american superstars using that n word so freely and then get upset when other people mock them and say the same thing? >> um, good question. excellent question. i love that song. [laughter] it's one of my favorite songs,

and i actually think that that title is brilliant. and here's the thing, it's that when you step on stage and being in a studio is the equivalent to being on stage, then the rules change, right? everything changes. so while i have made a personal decision to not use nigger colloquially and just see johnson, what up, my nigger, i don't do that anymore. i did that up until about two years ago. when obama came into office, i said i don't think this fits the zeitgeist anymore for me to be using it, but i'm not telling my brothers what not to do. but when you get on stage as an artist, there are other things that come into play. and i saw in particular niggas in paris was actually really brilliant because he's dealing with, hey, i'm from marcy projects. >> yeah, i understand. >> i'm from the hood. >> right. >> and if you came from what i

came from, you'd be in paris getting fucked up too. [laughter] and it's extraordinary that -- >> yeah, right? >> before you go on, my question is not really that, my question is, is there a responsibility for these international superstars not to use that word? because i don't use it, i don't want anybody around me using it. you know, i mean you can't say to them, you can't use it, but don't you feel like there should be at some height in your career a requirement that you don't use such an ignorant word? >> >> i think that the shock value of the word that we still feel is part of what he's doing. as a performer, as a person on stage who's trying to get a rise out of the audiencement i mean, look, you know, i see the value in the word as a performer, it's an extraordinarily powerful word. look, you know, i'm, i'm -- if i see some white guys or latino

guys on the street saying that word, i'm going to check 'em and be like, yo, what are you talking about? like, you should not be playing with that. but people on stage, it's a whole different math. i mean, like, i'm -- >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> you know, you wouldn't have to check those white guys and latino guys using the n-word if their favorite artist wasn't using it in songs that they're listening to at home. >> but you're right, but they should have the intelligence -- [applause] to know that's not for you. and many of them do know that, and, you know -- >> true. but that's a mighty high bar for a lot of folks. [laughter] >> i'd like to go a little bit deeper. we, i come from a two-culture background, both of them black. my connection is ghana and

african-american. so i've always struggled with what african americans define as what's being black. one thing i've boiled it down to, and i'd like to get your take on this, toure s the notion of permission. that's what i've broken it down to.q, i see us as black people, especially men, asking permission a lot to be men, to be heads of our families, to be in charge. to be who we want to be as a man first and then you just happen to be black. you know? so i think we waste a lot of time asking permission this various ways -- in various ways, various ways. some subtle, some overt. to be who we want to be and who we need to be for our communities, for our familiesan and for ourselves. and i think that speaks to -- >> i'm not so, i'm not totally sure that i understand the question or the concept of asking permission to be men.

i see black men being extraordinarily masculine. we talk about the feminization of the american male, they're talking about white men. they're not talking about us, uq. know? [laughter] i see massive black egos as a sort of armor against the world that would beat us down and tell us -- because that's what i see. >> what i'm talking about is being in a multiculturalqh situation and holding back because somewhere back here maybe i don't feel like i'm as high on the man totem pole asah the other race of men. and i see it a lot in our black men no matter how macho they may be. >> i don't know, i don't know if fully understand or i definitely don't agree that black men think that we are a lesser on the totem pole. psychologists talk to me about that we understand as black people that the outside world

sees us as lesser, but we know that that's a lie. so we're not fooled by that fallacy. >> quick example. >> last rebuttal. >> quick example. divorced or baby mama situation, can't go see my child because the man has a order out, and i i have to adhere to this and that. be a man, ands this is my take, be a man, go see your son, go see your daughter like men do. you don't need to ask permission to do what men do. that's -- i just wanted your take on that. >> okay, okay. >> young lady. >> so you've discussed a lot how black art, particularly black music contributes to an idea of a collective identity, um, and, you know, to one can deny what michael jackson and jimi hendrix

have contributed to, you know, a mainstream idea of black. but you've also discussed how music is not consumed the same way today that it was 50 years ago. there's no, as you termed it, massive musical moment that really defined an era. so do you still think that music has the same impact on racial identity now that it did 20, 30 years ago? >> she's referring to an essay i just wrote, why i miss the model culture. and i'm talking about how as far back as the early '90s, '80s, '70s, '60s, the systems of distribution of culture allowed that there were fewer artists in front of all of our eyeballs at one time. so somebody could become a massive celebrity and a massive icon, and think about the moment when "thriller" came out, and it was like everybody, white and black, was listening to it at the same time. and i experienced the same thing when nirvana's "nevermind" came

out. almost everybody was listening. dr. dray's the chronic, what's going on did the same thing. there's other albums that we could talk about. you know, james brown has this massive impact on all of us. and the system of cultural distribution now has changed because when before you were born there was three television stations. [laughter] when i was little, right? the next day everybody would talk about what was on johnny carson. is everybody watching the same thing? no. we're not watching the same shows, and you're watching the shows from last night because you have dvr, you know, or what have you. so it's harder for culture to connect us, and that is absolutely happening within black cultural identity. not just the sort of fragmentation of what it means to be black that we talked about with post-blackness, but also the fragmentation of culture in general.

so we think about a james brown figure who speaks to black people for the most part, all black people have an opinion on james brown, probably almost all loving james brown musicically. michael jackson doing the same sort of thing. who's doing that now? beyonce to a certain extent, but jay-z is certainly not universal. so, you know, kanye's very polarizing. i'm not playing kanye for my grandmother. [laughter] you know, so who can do that now? who can bring all black people together on a cultural level? i don't think that person exists. and it's for both those reasons and the problem with that i'm trying to deal with is there used to be generational touchstones. so we look back in the '60s,

and we look at what motown, we bonded over motown, went to partieses and they played motown. we talked about motown music. and what is that now? i name three artists he's never heard of, and there's nothing for us to bond over on a cultural level. so we're missing out on the chance to have artists who bring us together culturally. and that's not just happening for black people, it's also happening for white people as well. >> and we have -- >> i was going to say, would you say that the consumption of culture or pop culture is facilitating this post-black identity? it allows us more freedom to, you know, find our own way because we don't have these seminal icons that are sort of setting the tone? >> perhaps. i mean, i think that it's being driven more by the regional

diversity, the class diversity, especially the educational diversity and how that is allowing us. i mean, even, you know, again, to my parents and grandparents' eras of segregation, the classes lived together. the job to have lived near the -- janitor lived near the doctor. so we understood each other, we saw each other, we had a cohesion that is not possible now because the doctor lives on the upper east side with the rest of the doctors. i'm using new york examples -- >> but i'm with you. >> but the janitor live in where would that be? southeast, and the doctor lives where? >> somewhere up the street. [laughter] >> so, those are the issues that are dividing us more so. but i find it interesting that the one, the biggest argument when i put that idea out on twitter, that there is nobody connecting us now like a james

brown or michael jackson did before, and the number one name was beyonce. it department come up enough, but i say it in this room and nobody's like, hmm, you messed that one up, beyonce's the one. and if it was true, you'd say that, and i don't hear people say that. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> pulitzer prize-winning author alex haley had a 157-acre farm outside of knoxville, tennessee, where he lived before his passing anything 1992. former haley employee kathy long talks about haley's time in knoxville next on booktv. >> mr. haley did some writing here. he did the alex haley figurines while he was here and did some writing. although after the success of roots, i think that kind of

scared him out of writing. it was really hard for him to finish books that publishing companies were requesting that he finish. he just really had a hard time with it because "roots" took a lot out of mr. haley. the emotion that was in the story, the things that he had found out about his family and all was very, very emotional for him. and i think the reason, you know, he said he just really didn't ever want anything like the success of "roots" to happen to him again because it was so overwhelming to him. he had no idea that when he embarked upon this adventure to research his roots what the, how it was going to effect, actually, the entire world. mr. haley's first visit came to east tennessee was in 1982. he came here to visit the world's fair. while here, this was his first visit, and he just absolutely

fell in love with the area and the people. he became friends with mr. john irwin, a museum owner in our area that specializes in preserving the history of the pap latch chan region. upon mr. haley' departure, he had asked mr. irwin if property came up for sale in this area, please, let him know, that he would be interested in coming this way because at that time he lived in california. so it was six or eight months or so after mr. haley's departure from the world's fair, this facility came up for sale. it was a 125-acre farm, and the johnson family owned it and put it up for sale through their heirs. so mr. haley came out, and mr. irwin brought him down to look at this farm, and mr. haley just absolutely fell in love with it. the only two things that were on the property at the time of the purchase was this two-story white house and the capt lever -- cant lever barn which how olds the langston hughes

library. mr. haley just fell in love with it, so he set about at that time to purchase it. i think it was in purchased of around 1984. a lot of times we would do entertaining for him on the facility across, in front of the library. we would set up the wig black iron kettles on brick, and we would build fires underneath them, and we would have catfish fries and hushpuppies and corn on the cob and baked beans, and so the people from the movie and publishing industry really liked that. and then we would hook the tractors up to the wagons and take everybody for a hayride here on the farm. a lot of fun. and there would usually be a band playing from the gazebo, and a lot of times we would just decorate the place to whatever theme for the time of year that it was. and he just, he thoroughly loved this farm. mr. haley was 61 years old before he ever owned his first

home. and when he purchased this farm, he described it as a treat to himself and really loved to, for people to come here and visit. oprah winfrey has been a guest here, tom t. hall, maya angelou, spencer christian, lamar alexander, a lot of well known people have traveled through the facility here. mr. haley was just, he was comical at times, he was just simple and down to earth. had a very warm heart. he loved to help people. he's put numerous kids through college that couldn't have afforded to have went if it had not been or for him. he was talking to one young man one day, and he had told him, i'd really love to go to school, but he said, i can't afford it because i have to help my mother take care of my family, and mr. haley just asked him, where do you want to go to school? and the young man replied to him, and mr. haley paid that boy's way all the way through

college because he told him to go and go to school if that's what you want. and a lot of people, you know, think that mr. haley was broke, you know, when he passed away, and in a sense he was. but it wasn't because he squandered it, it was because he used what he made from "roots" he used to help people. he loved people. he loved being around people. mr. haley may leave here one day and tell us, you know, i want to have four for supper tonight, but when he come back home, he may have 30 with him. to give you kind of an example of that, he would a lot of times when he would write, he'd continue to go out to sea to write because i guess that's where he felt comfortable. we were in the lodge one day putting up corn because we glue a lot of vegetables on the farm and did a lot of canning. and he called us there the airport, and we weren't expecting him in. but he had called and said he had arrived early, and he wallet today know if he could bring a

few guests out for dinner at the farm. and we told him sure, you know, we told him we'd been putting up corn and stuff, so we happened to ask him about how many he thought he was bringing, and he said, oh, i think about 110 would be a good number. what had happened is he had met this plane load of teachers who were in route to a conference, and they were having mechanical problems with the plane, and mr. haley had got to talking to them, so he represented a bus from the greyhound station and had those teachers bussed out here. of course, we were all frantic trying to get a meal together for 110 that we with respect quite prepare today know was coming, but we made it, and everything turned out great. but he would do that to us a lot, you know? if he was out here and there, he'd meet someone, if he knew we were cooking tonight, he would invite them to dinner. he never met a stranger. he was just always a caring and compassionate person. and he could never tell anybody

no whatever they asked of him. he would, he would try to accommodate, you know, if he could. he allowed the university of tennessee to utilize this facility for many of its functions, and he actually donated his literary works, the research papers for "roots," he donated that to the university of tennessee. he may come in and be here at the facility for two or three weeks, and he may be gone, he may leave and be gone for, you know, several months if he was going back out to sea to write. but as he got older, it was a little harder for him to get around. he started having some health issues. he kind of started staying here a little more and would try to do some of his work here at the farm. but he really kind of just wanted to use this place as a place to come and unwind and to relax and to just enjoy the serenity that he found here. the last time i ever saw mr. haley here at this, at his home here in tennessee was he walked out the back door of the white house and got into the car