in his head. he traversed the land when it was lush and the warm times and when it was covered with a frost, the cherokees' described as clouds frozen on the trees. wilderness was indeed crockett's cathedral. .. >> here's our lineup on booktv on c-span2. in just a minute we'll be joined by toure whose most recent book

is called "who's afraid of post blackness?" then in about an hour james glick will be here. he's a technology writer, and he's written a new book called "the information." you'll be able to talk with him as well. in about two hours, we'll show you an event with condoleezza rice. it's the second half of her memoirs. she was in conversation recently with donna she lay who is the president of the or university of miami. in three hours we're going to introduce you to author leslie brody who has written a book on jessica mittford, and then we'll be joined by john avlon, newspaper columns and their impact on american politics. and then in about four hours we'll wrap up live coverage from miami with jim rasenberger who's written a new book on the bay bf pigs incident in the early

'60s. that's our lineup on c-span2, but you can also watch author events on book the.org. booktv.org. here on the campus of miami-dade college. so if just about two and a half hours or so, toure will be talking about his book, "who's afraid of post-blackness?" and he'll be talking about that book with the audience, you'll be able to watch that on booktv.org. that will be live webcast, and then stanley crouch, mike barnacle and pete hamill will be joining our call-in guest john avlon to talk about newspaper columnist and the art of writing a newspaper column. so you have your choice. you can watch booktv on c-span2, talk with authors, or you can watch booktv.org, and you can see some of the author

events being webcast. well, in just a few minutes we'll be joined by toure, and he will be taking your calls and your tweets as well. but we also want to let you know that the c-span bus is down here in miami as well passing out book bags. you can see the crowds there. so if you're in a area, come on down. our booktv set is right outside of chapman hall. come on down and say hi. about a month ago toure spoke at busboys and poets in washington, d.c. about his newest book, "who's afraid of post-blackness?" here's a little bit of that, and then we'll be back live to take your calls. >> chris ross joked that it's emblematic of modern racism from his 2008 stand-up routine kill the messenger, and it's about the posh town where he live inside a multimillion dollar home. his neighbors include patrick ewing and eddie murphy.

among the best in the world at their professions, legends in their line of work. they're also the only four black home own ors in town. then -- homeowners in town. then he says his next door neighbor is a white dentist. he wait going to the dental hall of fame. he's just a yank your tooth out dentist. 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 this 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. a way of advancing the idea that white supremacy does not exist, an attempt to mask its awesome power because the matrix doesn't want you to know it's there. 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 it 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 release a ruckus. modern racism is a much more subtle, nuanced, slippery beast than its father or grandfather were. it has ways of making itself seem to not exist which can drive you crazy trying to prove its existence sometimes. it's a powerful force shaping the post-black experience because it combines aceps of you don't belong, you're a second-class 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 you don't get as high as you feel

you should go, it'll still drive you crazy ask show you that your ability is not fully respected. blackness is expanding and broadening as black opportunities are improving, 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 the great indian writer posit, in one of the most mind-blowing analogies for it, like the president pardoning one turkey each year before thanksgiving. [laughter] in a 2004 speech at the world social forum in mumbai, roy broke it down. every year in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the president spares one particular bird and eats another one. [laughter] after receiving the presidential pardon, the chosen one is cement to frying pan park in virginia to live out its natch ago life. the rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for thanks giving are slaughtered and eaten. conagra foods, the company that has won the presidential turkey

contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, 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 imdwrapts, investment bankers, the occasional koh -- colin powell or condoleezza rice are given absolution and a pass to frying pan park. the remaining millions lose their jobs, are are evicted from their homes and die of aids. basically, they're for the pot. but the fortunate fowls in frying pan park are doing just finement some of them even work for the imf and the world trade organization, so who can accuse those organizations of being anti-turkey? who can say that turkeys are against thanks giving? they participate in it. who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalization?

there's a stampede to get into frying pan park. so what if most perish on the way? the post-black era is a response in the number of blacks who live in or are fighting to get into frying pan park or alpine, new jersey, but post-blackness is no wonder truck that can cure or -- drug that can cure or altar white supremacy. what it means to be black is broadening to infinity, but it does not mean white supremacy is laying down its shield. racism is a key component in shaping who we become as people even in the post-black era. indeed, where racism in our participants and grandparents' generation was visible, modern racism often seems to function like evaporating smoke. plainly visible, but impossible to grab on to. as the number of blacks in frying pan park swells, it adds the empirical data that attempts to argue racism no longer exists even though you know it does. the cognitive dissonance can

make you feel crazy. ing is the security guard following you? you're not sure. you think he is, but you can't be certain. maybe he is, maybe he's not. maybe he's actually following another black person you can't see. [laughter] but he's probably following you. 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, but the guard's boss isn't black. or maybe he is. 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, or maybe -- and now you're just looking for tylenol for migraines when all you needed was toothpaste. [laughter] and that's one of the basist

examples of racism. 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 they were actually better than you, or because they were better at networking upper management, or someone wrongly assumed your not as good because you're black. there's a sort of existential angst that black people experience every day. you just want some socks, but in the process you're worried about the security guard and when he's following you, and you either get angry or make sense of it somehow. 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 miss out on opportunities to expand, develop, grow, and so forth. patricia williams told me there's nothing black people

would like more than to be happy in the world and to have the freedom to go through the world without being constantly self-conscious. but that's nearly impossible. maybe the storekeeper's scowling at you because he's had a bad day, or maybe he doesn't want his clothes to be seen out in the world on your black body. you just can't know. professor williams says 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'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 didn't sign it. i went through the entire rest of the day smiling at people because it could have been this person -- [laughter] it could have been that person. 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 that way. this is often what the face of modern racism is, invisible or hard to discertain, lurking in the shadows or hidden. institutional inequities that 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 that 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. the category of you are racist or you're not isn't useful. it's more useful to get people to think about the ways in which we perpetuate the kind of racial inequalities on purpose or inadd inadvertently that produce differences that we see every day. unless you're going to tell me there's some biological,

hard-wires reasons why people at academic institutions are always cleaning the bathroom or not necessarily teaching classes, then i think you're going to have to be honest with yourself about all the ways in which there's a privilege that accrues to people. we need to recognize that race is more subliminal, subjective and subtle in the contemporary moment. and i think we need to find a way to really articulate that subtlety because there are very few smoking guns, thank god, anymore. i asked my 105 interviewees, what is the most racist thing that ever happened to you? the response i received more off, the answer is unknowable. aaron mcgruder said i imagine it to be a thing i don't even know ever happened. it would be 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-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 did. 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 mind that secret incidences of racism are happening behind their back. they're consciously aware of racism as a ghost in the machine following them, impacting them even though they can't see it. there's a sense of malevolent ghosts darting around you, screwing out -- screwing you. elizabeth alexander said the most racist thing that ever happened to me would be the continual underestimation of my intellectual ability and capacity and the real insidious aspect of that kind of racism is that we don't know half the time

when people are underestimating us. we don't know when we're being cut out of something because someone is able to see us at full capacity. so i presume that happens and 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 anonymous flowers, could be looking at her as far below the genius she is. she evaluates 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? >> host: and now live from miami, toure is on your screen to take your calls. toure, if we could start with, what's your definition of

post-blackness? >> guest: well, it's a term that comes from the art world, people talking about wanting to be defined by -- rooted by -- hold on. hard to hear myself when i'm hearing myself. you want to be rooted in blackness but not confined by it. you want to deal with the traditions and being part of what it means to be black, but not confined by it. i can take influences from europe, from asia, you know, from south america but then also bring that back to the community. it's sort of rooted in the story that i tell that i want today go sky skydiving. i was told black people don't do that. but i know blackness is portable, and i took my blackness skydiving, and i learned something about myself and about god, and i brought that more tangible belief i got from skydiving back to being black. so you can learn so much more about yourself when you're not confined by what it means to be black. so by post-blackness i'm merely talking about a vision of blackness that expands to infinity, that i can be black,

and i can be human any way that i want to be. it's not about leaving blackness or rejecting blackness. it's very much a part of me, but i want to have the right to perform it or embody it any way that i want. >> host: you have a chapter called 40 million ways to be black. >> guest: that's right. skip gates talks about in his class at harvard f there's 40 million black people, there's 40 million ways to be black. so it's not that one way that's illegitimate or inauthentic, you're realer -- those are ridiculous ideas about blackness. whatever way you want to embody it or perform it or do it, that's reasonable. >> host: here are some of the questions you asked 105 people that you interviewed for this book. what does black -- being black mean to you, does being black mean something different now than what it meant three or four decades ago. has what it means to be black changed over the last 40 years, and if so, how? is there an authentic black experience?

what do you think of the concept of post-blackness? do you think blacks have ways of imposing limits on black identity, etc., etc. and then you say, what did you think of the n word? >> yeah. >> host: what kind of response did you get? >> guest: well, to the last question, i mean, you know, can we say the n word on c-span? >> host: i'm not going to say it, but you can. [laughter] >> guest: you know, there's an interesting a array of responses to the word nigger, and people -- it's definitely a lightning rod word. and one of the things i was surprised to find the older generation, generally, people older than me are generally against the way that my generation and younger uses it. it's very public, very sort of revolutionary, we feel. but i was surprised to find that they use it in private spaces very much. when i was interviewing the reverend jesse jackson, he said it in this colloquial way. not attacking, not denigrating, but, you know, we've got to call

'em niggers and see what's going on with them. i was shocked. he said, no, i didn't say that. he didn't realize that he said that. kordell west talked ability dr. king using it colloquially in the last days of his life. creature culture for a lot of people. it is a word that the older generation, especially black men, used in private spaces. it is a word that my generation and younger uses in very public spaces, and that is the older generation's dispute with us. this is meant to be a barber shop word, and you've broadcast it on your albums or on the subway, you know, on a subway, you know, street corner or whatever. you know, so, i mean, it's interesting. in the course of writing this book and thinking deeply about what it means to be black now and think about a beautiful black family living in the white house that i began to think, i don't feel that it fits the

zeitgeist, right? it's not appropriate. it's a word that embraces, that america looks at us as monsters. and i was with that. i felt that. i thought that was right. but then when the obamas are living in the white house, i'm like maybe it doesn't fit right now. so i made a perm decision to stop -- personal decision to stop using that. i'm not going to tell others to not use it because i used it for a long time, and i understand the feeling of using it. you feel that you are attacking back and that you're taking their sort of flag and, you know, messing with themment -- them. i'm not sure that you are, i'm not sure that you are changing anything in using it in that way. but, um, it's an interesting part of american history that we have tried to reappropriate the word. and, you know, some people say, well, nobody else does this. well, that's not true at all. women's culture, i see in asian culture, i see in many other demographic subcultures that

people are reclaiming those words that were flung at them and repurposing them as words of love within the community. so, i mean, there are other people who are following our example of using nigger this that way. >> host: 202 is the area code if you would like to talk with toure, 624-111 in the east and central time zones, 624-11115 in the mountain and pacific time zones. twitter.com/booktv is our twitter address. withbesides cornel west, the reverend jesse jackson, who else did you interview for this book? >> guest: skip gates, a lot of visual artists, carol walker, glenn liegone, some recording artists, lieu pay my whereas know -- fiasco, sharon pratt who's the first black female mayor of d.c. and pamela harris, the attorney general of california. a lot of people.

dave chapelle i spoke to, there's a long chapter about dave chapelle. he was a previous interview, so i don't count him among the 105, but i did get to talk with him, and there's a long chapter in the book about chapelle's show because chapelle's show really gets an active definition of post-blackness. you see in that show the complexity of what it means to be black now as opposed to something like "grey's anatomy" which gives you a vision of post-racialism, right? which does not exist in the real world, but in art it does exist. i see a world where there's blacks, whites, latinos, latinas, asian, and you can just switch all those people around on "grey's anatomy" and it wouldn't matter, it wouldn't change the plot, it wouldn't change the characters really. in chapelle's show you're dealing with the complexity, the layers, the nuances of what it means to be black. that's why i had to spend a

whole chapter on that. i talked to all the major creative players behind the show. really deep show. >> host: chris tweets in to you, what's one thing that didn't make the book that you wish you'd included? >> guest: a friend. appreciate that. you know, i can't really say that there's anything that definitely didn't make the book that i wished could have made it. i spent two years on this thinking about it, talking to people and dealing with my ideas, bouncing them off of a lot of smart people. you know, of course, that's going to reshape your conception of your own idea. so, i mean, i can't, i can't throw out anything that wouldn't, that should have been in the book. i mean, i just wrote an essay that if i, perhaps, i would put in there now that on near times.com where i attack the concept of post racialism, and i don't know if i attacked it enough in the book. it's a bankrupt term, a sort of con man in the language.

you know, there is no such thing as post-racial, right? it sort of suggests that we think that race doesn't matter, racism doesn't matter. this is not a term that to my experience black people use seriously or at least without tremendous amounts of irony because we know that's not true at all. i hear white people using the term, and i feel like it's just a misunderstanding and a misappropriation of where we are in america. race still matters very much, racism is still very much a part of american life right now. so we can't honestly call this post-racial. and post-black is something entirely different. you know, i'm talking about the complexity of what it means to be black, certainly not saying -- it's not a stimulant for post-racial in any way. i guess if i put more of that in. but, you know, you spend so much time working on a book that you kind of end up getting almost everything that you want in it. >> host: here is the book. the first call for toure comes

from freeland, michigan. good afternoon, you're on booktv. >> caller: thank you very much, gentlemen. um, he raises so many interesting issues, i could talk to him for a long time. a couple of things though. i'd just like to mention, um, when he talks about things like white supremacy, white separatism and white privilege, terms like this, i mean, the average white person isn't struggling to most white people. i mean, you mentioned reverend jesse. even he acknowledges that just in terms of broad numbers there are more white people, there are more white people live anything poverty than black people and more struggling white people than black people. and when you use those kind of terms, um, it really turns off the average white person who's just trying to make ends meet. and they don't feel like they have any kind of -- >> host: caller? >> caller: -- professional

stairway to heaven just because they happen to have white skin, you know? and i think that's one of the big reasons we don't make much progress on this racial type stuff. >> host: caller? caller? >> caller: yes, my question, though, is about illegitimacy rate in the black community. i mean, even if there were no one except black folks in america and you had illegitimacy rate which i think is about 70% now, you'd still have tremendous problems. i wondered if you'd like to, um, talk about that now. >> host: caller, we'll get an answer from our guest, toure. do you find the illegitimacy rate offensive to you? caller's gone. go ahead, toure. is. >> guest: i think he raised some interesting points. i don't know the statistics, but i would push back against 70%. i don't think that that's accurate. >> host: he said 07. >> guest: yeah, i know, 70.

i don't think that's accurate. that certainly does not feel accurate to the world that i know. um, but to the first point, i know that white privilege acts in a way that you may not even realize, that you don't have to do anything to take advantage of white privilege. and the fact that many white people are unable to take advantage of white privilege does not defeat it or does not prove that it doesn't exist. um, and i would push back against the notion that talking about race and white supremacy and white privilege is part of the problem. that is working toward a solution. if you are turned off because we talk about white privilege and white supremacy, well, you are turning off of the problem, you know, the discussion of these issues is very important and valuable to moving forward to progress. um, and i think that creating black families to deal with the illegitimacy point of your

question, creating black families will be very important in if going forward -- in going forward to creating powerful self-esteem, you know, self-identified black people who really feel valuable in the world, right? i mean, you need a father and a mother or at least two parents, same gender perhaps, but two parents to really make you a fully self-actualized person in a lot of ways. a lot of great people coming out of single-parent home. but when you have two parents, it's much easier to become a fully self-actualized person, sell esteem who can really contribute to the world. barack obama comes out of a single-participant home, and he's an amazing individual, so it can be done. obviously, we need to have more two-parent black families. how do we do that? i don't know, it's not that easy. it's not like we can have a bill or a law that can work toward that. >> host: why did you choose to

capitalize black in your book but not white? >> guest: um, i feel like black is equivalent to an ethnicity like italian, german, french, these sort of things. and if we say you're italian, we would capitalize that. that, to me, is what black is equivalent to. and because we have lost the bond with the actual countries that we are from, it stands for that. i don't want feel that white is equivalent in a linguistic sense in that way. it is more of a come by nation -- combination of many european ethnicities, so it doesn't function in an equivalent way so i wanted to highlight that in a linguistic way by not capitalizing white and capitalizing black. >> host: steven in weaver, idaho, good afternoon. you're on with toure. >> caller: hello? >> host: speak up, please. >> guest: hi. >> host: steven, go ahead, please.

>> caller: hello, can you hear me? hello, can you hear me? >> host: steven, let's lose steven in idaho, please, move on to james in allentown, pennsylvania. james? >> caller: hello? >> host: go ahead. >> caller: hi, toure. >> guest: hi. >> caller: i'd love to have a beer summit with you. >> guest: so good. >> caller: i'm a white guy, the grandson of european coal miners, never had much in privilege but apparently i'm supposed to. i've been a worker all my life, mostly a roofer for years. i've noticed, i've never heard of post-blackness. i've heard of post-racial america which is really, basically, means demographically a post-white america which we seem to all look for. the new term that pat buchanan had in his book called ethnomasochism where white people almost glory and have a

gleeful outlook about the fact that they're going to be displaced in this country. i think that's a, it is kind of a white man's disease. but the thing i want today ask you about is when you look at transsending race, white people are the only people that really do it. look at the interracial adoption. tens of thousands of white people who adopt, crossing racial lines. of you never see blacks or hispanics doing that. whites adopt guatemalan children, chinese, african kids. they transcend race. that's a good thing, and you wouldn't see that with very wealthy chinese adopting poor white kids from appalachia. it would never happen. and the other thing i wanted to talk about is besides that is the future of america. we look at the, you know, if i sat down and had a beer with you, i'd ask you about america like what hispanics are really not going to play that game of being concerned about jim crow or your past because of where they came from. and ask you look at all the racial conflicts in america, in

l.a. county it's a war zone between blacks and mexicans, mass race riots in schools, prison riots between ethnic groups, whites are not even involved. the asians of south philadelphia who have to live in fear of blacks who are putting them in hospitals in schools. i think that blacks seem to be the most race-obsessed group in the country, and not -- and they have their own racism which i think they're blind to. and the final point i want to say to you is this -- >> host: you know what, james? we got two points there, that's plenty. toure? >> guest: extremely interesting points, james, i want to deal with in a very serious way. the adoption question, i think there's some generalizations going on there partly that example's a bit skewed because of the amount of white children that are available for adoption. um, you know, so i don't know if that exactly -- well, your point about tran sending racism. i think that black people are

correctly, you used the word obsessed, i would use the word aware of race was we are aware of how race impacts our lives on a day-to-day basis, and i'm not sure that you and transsending race as much as paying attention to it where you would see some of the ways white privilege is helping some. maybe it's not helping you, maybe it's helping a lot of your brothers and sisters. and being aware of how race affects you and the other people around you is more valuable than pretending that it doesn't exist. because when we pretend it doesn't exist, then we are, we're not helping the situation at all. um, i would love to have a beer summit with you. so many interesting points there, i can't even remember them all. >> host: the adoption point, the race obsession point. >> guest: yeah, i mean, and i wouldn't -- i would push back against the idea that black people are race-obsessed. i think we are correctly aware of how race impacts our lives.

and i think that's what we need to move towards. >> host: well, toure, what do you think about the trend of white people adopting babies of different ethnicities? >> guest: it's very interesting. look, i like to have children get out of adoption, i mean, that's a positive trend. is it hard for white people to teach black children how to be black? absolutely. so those children are going to have an extra challenge in life in figuring out who am i, and i have parents who can't tell me. so much of what i learned about being black comes from my parents and their friends. if you have white participants, you know, with a mostly white friend group, how can you learn how to be black? it becomes much more difficult. barack obama did it, very consciously reading himself into blackness and very consciously exploring it when he moves to thy and moves to chicago. you know, but that's -- it comes a little bit late.

i mean, a lot of people's identities are much more formulated by the time he starts reading and experiencing himself into blackness. i mean, obviously, the first thing is get the children out of these orphanages, so that would be the first thing i'd deal with. i'm not sure that the caller's point that, you know, that white people are adopting out of race and black and asian people tend not to is really proving the point about some transend race and others don't because there's so much more to that point. >> host: toure, where did you grow up, and what did your parents do? >> >> guest: i grew up in boston, my father was an accountant, he's now retired. my mother was mostly a homemaker when we were younger, then working in real estate when we got older. you know, lived in a community where we were the only black family growing up, and we got a little older, some other families came in. but i can remember moments, one or two moments where a rock came

through the window. before my parents moved in, there was a petition started by one of the people on the block to keep the black family from moving in. and none of the other families on the block would sign it. and it kind of threw my head for a loop when i found out ant that when i was about 6, 7 years old because i had actually spent time with that family. they had a boy who was my age, and i had gone to his birthday party many times, his parents had, you know, treated me with great respect and talked to me. you know, i was a little kid, i would be the kid at the birthday party who would sit and talk to the parents, you know? and they were great and friendly and lovely to me, and then to find out that this had happened before i was born was, like, wow. and it sort of throws you for a loop because it's like, well, this person might be nice and lovely and respecting of you, and at the same time there's some thought or perception in their head to where they would be like let's start a petition to keep the black people from

moving in. and that maybe we changed their mind because they got to know us. okay, we like you, well, that doesn't make me feel better. you still don't want a bunch of black people living near you. that doesn't make me feel comfortable. so it's a very complicated world we're talking about. >> host: here's a tweet, has blackness ever been confining? seems to always draw on and include an array of people, experiences and non-black cultures. >> guest: it is confining in that you often have black people telling you, black people don't do that. you're not being black properly, you know, because you're doing this, you're doing that, the way you walk, the way you talk, who you date or marry, you know, the things that you do. you do yoga, you sky dive, you know, you're reading david foster wallace, black people don't do that, you know? so there's a sort of religious

blackness that people want you to, you know, to take communion and be black in the correct, proper way. now, that said there has always been a sort of group of i call them sort of identity liberals who are pushing against the boundaries, you know, who are being black however the heck they want to be. and i'm just proposing that that group is expanding more and more, multiplying as time goes on to where now it can't really say you're an outlier because there's so many people in the outlier groups that the outlier is central. >> host: please explain herman cain. [laughter] >> guest: i mean, you know, herman cain is an extremely interesting sort of character. i mean, i feel like the rise of barack obama -- and i don't think we'd have cain without obama -- the rise of herman cain, i mean, the rise of obama created this alpha man, brilliant black man who became

our leader. and a black person to be our leader was very shocking to some people's systems. and the gop, naturally, attacked barack obama. some of their attack was racist, some of it was not, some of it was reasonable. there are very reasonable critiques of barack obama that have nothing to do with race, some of it they would have thrown at anybody democratic sitting in that chair. but for some reason they have been made or they are made to feel that they are being racist for attacking barack obama. you cannot dissociate that from the rise of herman cain who seems to liberate them from feeling that they are racist because, hey, i got a black friend too. so how can i be racist? i love this black guy. and i talk to some republicans who say, hey, we really like herman cain, um, you know, we see that he had to work harder to get to where he was because he's black. so it's not all just an insulation from racism, but

sometimes they like his blackness, and they use that to like him as well. i mean, partly what you're seeing, also, is that the gop does not want to go to mitt romney. there's a 23% threshold that mitt romney remains at forever. and when herman cain was leading the polls, and he's slipping now, i thought, well, he's the last one. we've speed dated to make megan mccain's analogy, we've speed dated everyone else in the country, and after we leave cain, we're stuck with rom think. and no matter how many mistakes herman cain makes, they're still going to stick with cain because we really don't want to go to romneyville, and this is the last stop before romneyville. somehow herman cain's numbers plummeted, and they discovered a new person to speed date before they finally settled down with mitt romney, and now it's newt gingrich, you know? so they are fighting against going to mitt romney which perhaps is inevitable.

i'm not sure, maybe it is. >> host: chris in des moines, you on with toure, author of "who's afraid of post-blackness?" go ahead with your question. >> caller: hello, toure. thank you for writing the book and thank you for being a smart black man. appreciate you, and we need more black images like you out there. so -- >> guest: thank you. >> caller: my question is, for one, with herman cain he made a comment about barack obama that he's more blacker than him. and another question is, um, with president obama being the first black president, do you think the reason why a lot of this legislation is not passed because of his race or because of him being a democrat? thank you for your time.

>> guest: of course. i missed part of the second question. >> host: i too. chris r you still with us? >> caller: oh, the second question was, um, a lot of legislation that obama is putting out as far as the jobs bill and as far as, he had a couple of health care, do you think the reason why a lot of the stuff that he's trying to pass, um, is not being passed because of his race or because of it's not the right time or, you know, whatever meaning -- >> guest: okay. >> host: great, chris. thanks. >> guest: great question. i understand your point. no, i don't think that barack obama's problems in passing legislation is because he's black. i think these are sort of his personal, emotional problems that he wants to always have consensus, he wants to bring everybody together, he wants everybody to feel that they are getting something of theirs. this goes back to, you know, things you read about him from

harvard law school. so, i mean, you know, he's trying to create consensus, and even at a time when the democrats had, you know, domination of the hill, um, this didn't make any sense that we could have created a lot of legislation that would, you know, be powerful for america, but he tried to bring the republicans in and work with them. we needed a bit more of a bully pulpit, and he was trying to, you know, work with everybody who at the time he didn't need to, and then the republicans took over, and now he really needs to work with them. but i don't think that in dealing in washington that the problem for him is blackness. the herman cain point about that he is blacker than obama, first of all s ridiculous. that has nothing to do with the future of the country and how we are moving toward something. i mean, why would we elect you or vote for you because you're blacker than barack obama? that's not a persuasive argument toward white or black people. i don't really understand the

argument. i mean, if it's that herman cain has two black participants and barack only has one, that doesn't make any sense because science rejects the concept of race, so as soon as we stand on a biological platform, then quick sand fills in below the platform, and it falls away. is it because he grew up in georgia and barack grew up in hawaii around not many black people? i mean, that's a ridiculous point. and the one good point, and i'm not saying you're not making that, but what herman cain is making, the interesting point out of that, i would say, is that sometimes black people who grow up around a lot of black people think that those of us who don't grow up around a lot of black people are those who grow up not around a lot of black people to be the only one in the college or the law firm or the job site, what have you become forgetful of what it means to be black. and that is not true. we are hyperaware of what it means to be black. i was not the only one. i was about 10% black people in

my high school class, and i found myself being hyperaware of being black and what that would mean in my moment to moment interactions and all the white people around me, certainly not forgetting. certainly not that barack obama was in hawaii or indonesia sort of forgetting that he was black. >> host: chapter four in "who's afraid of post-blackness?" shut up, toure, you ain't black. what's that chapter about? >> guest: it's a chapter that is dealing with all the racialized things that have happened to me that have perhaps shaped me as a racialized being. and it centered around a moment that was the beginning of the book for me that happened when i was in college. my freshman year i bonded very quickly. you know, when you arrive at college, you're looking for something to grasp on to. and so i started bonding with the white kids on my hall.

there were no other black kids on my hall. we became quick friends. i had a clique of boys who were on my hall, and that was my crew. and i was friends with some of the black kids in my class, but i was closer, went to spring break with the white kids on my hall. certainly no diss, but that's what i was leaning to. after freshman year i read the autobiography of malcolm x, you know, i grew up, i changed some, and i was very actively seeking out more black relationships on campus, started always sitting at the black tables, going to all the step shows and parties, and my friend group became very intensely the blacks then on campus and some of the black women. when i was a junior, i got the coveted right to live in the black house where only three people lived. i was the editor, creator and editor -- >> host: where'd you go to school? >> guest: emery in atlanta. the editor and creator of a

black newspaper. i was close friends with all the leaders of the black community. it was, it -- i was an african-american studies major. this is my friend group, i was a psychology major, and then i grew. these are years in which everybody's going through identity formation, so that's what i was going through as well. but, you know, some people were not going to let the past be forgotten and were still clinging to things that had happened freshman year. so we were at a party at the black house where i lived and, you know, a very vanilla argument broke out about who was going to clean up after the party. and, you know, we were just saying, hey, you know, don't leave it for us residents to clean up, really nothing

argument, and somebody said, shut up, toure, you ain't black. and it was horrificically embarrassing. it was mortifying. it sort of killed me a little bit. and i said nothing, i just retreated to my room. um, i made a vow to not think about this moment again because it was so painful. but i ended up writing about it just for me to try to make sense of what had happened. and i started to think about how who gives you -- who you don't even know me, i didn't want even know what that person's voice sounded like before they spoke -- who gives you the right to define me and what is blackness for me? because blackness was very important for me before i even came to emery. you didn't know that, you don't know me. so, you know, i may not be doing it the way that you want me to do it all the time, but you certainly can't say, well, you're not black. how could you say that? and i was already at a point dealing with how do i reject the

white gaze, how do i not live in a way that responding to white people in any way? and that moment said, well, there's also a black gaze that you have to reject as well and just live the way that you think is right. so finish the story was, like, well, i can't publish this. this is too embarrassing. and i said, well, actually, maybe i should publish it since it's embarrassing to you. so i did end up publishing it in the school newspaper, in the main school newspaper where i already had a column. and it was a massive moment for me and for the school, i think, you know, i mean, almost everybody on campus spoke to me about that story. it was the first time i saw what it was like to write something that, you know, is a bomb that everybody around you is like, oh, my god, that was interesting. and i heard the kid who had said that wanted to beat me up, but he wasn't actually identified in the story, but everybody knew who i was talking about.

but, you know, what it was is that i was talking about me and that i have the right to define myself and to define blackness and to define identity for myself. you know, it's not for you to define it for me. and that's a large part of what i'm talking about in this book. >> host: ken is salt lake city, thanks for holding on. you're on with toure on booktv on c-span2. >> caller: hello? >> host: hey, how are you? >> caller: hello? >> guest: hi, how are you? >> caller: doing great. thank you for taking my call, and i just want to congratulate you on the book. i am so proud to hear this conversation being had. um, i'm an african-american who moved, actually, from atlanta to salt lake city. atlanta, you know, a thriving population, black middle class population, to move to a state where there's, you know, there's less than 1% african-americans in this state. and i'm, you know, currently

pursuing a ph.d. in education. um, my question for you really has to do with the intersection of race and class, and you've talked about blackness not as a biological category. you talked about blackness not even as an into logical category, but something that's socially construct inside ways that allows people to headache assumptions -- make assumptions about an individual based on just this normative gaze. i want you to just talk a little bit about the ways in which class comes into the question particularly for african-american middle class and the what i call class-distinguishing practices that african-american middle class use to distinguish themselves from african-american working class or poor similar to what you mentioned in the book where chris rock makes this

distinction between black people and what he calls niggers. and so what are the things that african-american middle class people do to show, you know, this difference? that, you know, i'm not those kind of black people, i'm somehow another of a different class and ways to sort of make that distinction between themselves and the working class. >> host: thanks, ken. >> guest: yeah, excellent point. i mean, you know, i would caution us from making those distinctions and saying i'm not like them because that's counterproductive. we are still a community. and, look, you know, most black people who are able to reach the middle class have family and perhaps friends who are still working class, it might be your parents or your cousins, uncles, aunts, etc. so, you know, we're never -- and, you know, we're never more than a couple of missed paychecks from going back to the working class or a lost job back

to the middle class. -- working chatdz. we see rollback in the recession, of course, we are hardest hit by the recession. so those class issues are very tenuous. but, you know, part of the ethos of the book was this idea that the working class hegemonny over defining blackness is over and that this idea that blackness is equal to working class and anything else is not blackness, is not legitimate, is not authentic, is inauthentic is just flatly incorrect. as i say in the book, i've been to too many wildly negrofyed barbecues in beverly hills n oak bluffs, in d.c., you know, pg county to actually belief this lie -- believe this lie that, you know, we just had a great party at wile hi's house the other day, the great visual artist. it was a total throwdown and yet, you know, it was certainly not a working class moment, you

know, but, i mean, you know, the middle class those of us who can creep into the upper middle class are certainly, you know, bricking the blackness, the negatively tuesday to play every day. we're certainly not leaving blackness by any stretch of the imagination. >> host: when did you become toure? >> guest: when i went to -- well, i became toure when i was born. that is the name my mother gave me at birth. she had read about the president of guinea and loved his name and was like, okay, that's the name. and i actually went pack and found the article that -- back and found the article that she found, that she read. but when i left high school and went to college, i saw, okay, this is a moment when, you know, i can say, okay, i just want to be known as toure because that's the name that is meaningful to me. that's the name that was chosen for me. my last name is a slave name, you know? and not only that disruption,

but, you know, it's a name that we know nothing about. my father's father died before he was born, so we have no photographs, they all burned in a fire long before i came around, um, you know, we have no stories, we don't know that much about him. so, you know, there's not, there's a double disruption, a double dislocation for that part of my name. so i wanted to choose the name that my parents chose for me that has meaning, that has some connection to africa as opposed to this slave name that we don't really know about, that paternal lineage. and when i got to college, i had the freedom because i was the only one there. my sister was not there at that time, my parents were not around, so i was able to introduce myself to this community and say, you know, i'm just toure. and everything that i wrote when i started writing when i was in college, everything that i ever wrote was just published as toure. always the byline. >> host: this is your most

recent book. this is your third book? >> guest: fourth. >> host: fourth book? how did your journalism career begin? >> guest: um, i was working on the fire this time, the newspaper i founded at emery, at column, and i had occasion to call somebody at "rolling stone" for some reason to ask them some question. and i talked to the perp for a long time, and i said, well, who are you to have this time to sit on the phone and talk to me, thank you so much. and the person said, well, i'm an intern. and i'm like, they have interns at "rolling stone"? this is amazing, i want to be an intern. so i applied, and i got an internship at "rolling stone," started going there all the time. quickly realized that we are just here to be a free labor force. you're not teaching us anything. so i started to not do the things that they told me to do. i would delegate to the other interns the tasks that were delegatedded to me which

completely, you know, was not appropriate at all, not at all what i suggest interns do, but that gave me pockets of time to go around to the writers and editors and say how do you become a writer? i got fired, but i made a relationship which allowed me to get an assignment for the magazine. and from there i was able to start writing for "rolling stone" and slowly for other magazines and newspapers and start to create a career. >> host: next call for toure comes from holly -- haley in columbus, ohio. haley, good afternoon. you're on booktv on c-span2. >> caller: hi there, it's halle. >> guest: hi, halle. >> guest: i wanted to talk to you about the issue of the n word. i was raised in the farmland of ohio. my mother was a widow, and there was one word that you couldn't say. you could get away with quite a few words, but the n word was a word that just had no place.

and in fremont, ohio, there were very few black families, and it wasn't really until junior high school and in your school experiences that you met black families. and you had good relationships with people. so this would have been in the 'of 0s -- '60s. and most of our experiences with the assassinations and the riots, these were things that we saw, and that was our black history education, and it was assassinations, it was riots, it was things happening that were way beyond your imagination. and, i mean, my little farm town was surrounded by pumpkins and corn, and it just wasn't anything that you knew to have that kind of hostility and that kind of anger. and the n word wasn't spoken in the school. and it wasn't spoken among your

friends. and i went on to column at bowling green and the university of toledo, and the people that i met there, diversity, and no need for the n word there. >> host: so, halle, we're running out of time. get to the point. we're running out of time. >> caller: the n word just didn't have a place. and at one point someone said every word that's spoken on the television is broadcast forever into the heavens. and i would hate to think that that word goes out. and if it's among -- >> host: halle, we're going to have to leave it there. i'm sorry. >> guest: i think you're making an excellent point, and, you know, i think you were raised right to be taught don't use the word nigger. it's not appropriate in almost any situation that you would ever encounter. but when you're talking about the anger, i think there is