reboot or san antonio book festival on book tv dot org. >> up next on bush tv's author interview program, afterwards, randy collins dexter examines the relationship between like voters and the democratic party. she's interviewed by pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author was a lowery. afterwards is a weekly interview program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. >> thanks for joining us, i'm wesley lowery and i'm here for brandi collins-dexter to talk about a fascinating new book black skinhead. really happy to be here with you enchanting today. >> thank you, thanks for having me. >> so we have plenty of time, i wanna dive into the book but i feel like just a table set a little bit, tell me you views a little bit about who you are, your background, and how you get to the point that you are working on this book. >> i come from a advocacy

background. i'm actually a lawyer by trade, and i started in chicago doing policy work from people with criminal records. and trying to light remove burials to employment, and one of the things that became clear to me was that it didn't kind of matter if you shift the policies, if you don't shift the culture. and so i became very interested in not just like narrative work, but in general, one of the different structures of media ownership. what are the ways in which people are able to communicate and plead their own cause. and so that took me into the field that is called immediate justice, which is media rights access in representation. and i did that at center for media justice until i got brought on to -- change, i spent many years spending the media tax and economic justice department there. it's a really just doing that work around advocacy and doing corporate accountability in particular, and really just

looking at what are the different systems and institutions that are barriers to black liberation, and they began taking me on this journey towards writing a book, and the thing that really set it off was when i switched over to the research sites. i was seeing a lot of black discourse online, a lot of political polarization, you know, all of the things that we have been talking about and looking at particularly in the world. i want to know the answers i was, seeing and i felt the research out there was not really meaning what i needed in terms of answers. and so i switched over to the research side and i was doing my fellowship at harvard that i met the person that would eventually introduce me to my agent, and the book was born. >> and i'm a part of this book, is you thinking about talk going about and interviewing black americans. and getting a sense of their politics, and the politics in

this moment, and in this area -- error that we live in. and this era is obviously important lead defined by the election of a black president -- black president, and things become definitional to that. at one, point i wanted to go back at we, you're writing a message about the obamas, and how they pointed the picture of the black american dream. the obamas message was that if we work within the system together, pushing through challenges, we can make a truly work for us, that you get what you, earn that those who have previously held power can't keep us all, out and that those of us were able to breakthrough will come back for the rest of us. but the public and private systems that shape our everyday lives are not broken, but the real problem is those who control the systems and the people who don't show up to vote. can you talk a little bit more about the core ideology about

the obamas as a political project, and the politics of black america in the decades between the voting rights act and the election of a black president that lead us into -- much of what you write about, and the movies that we've seen of words, come as a response to these kept politics. >> sure, i think one thing to anchor this in is that i grew up in illinois. i'm from chicago, my family is like multigenerational chicagoans. and so the pride of seeing the rise of the first senator obama, and then president obama, you could feel the electricity on the south side of chicago. and i remember those moments, and the pride around him, it also a lot of that mirrored mayor harold washington, he was the first black mayor of chicago. what i find fascinating is that he became mayor i believe in 1983, and it was a very

polarized time. chicago is one of the most segregated cities in america. a lot of racism, i believe dr. cain once said, after he left, there and paraphrasing, but if you want to know how real racism looks, you can look no further than chicago. so the energy that it took to get maher washington elected in the 80s, it really take a coming together of communities organizing. this is also the era of kind of post fred hampton assassination in the city, and it builds what was called the rainbow coalition of different groups coming together, that had their identity interests, and came together through a shared economic agenda or even things like this, and so the leftover, the hangover from those groups, combined with a lot of work organizing with the black communities, a lot of work around local black media,

infrastructure, all of that was court to getting -- elected, and i think right now has names associated with the library. people know, i'm the first black mayor, but what they may not realize about him that he was a leftist in a populist. he was also highly surveilled actually by the previous mayor, mary daly won before even got into office, because of his activism, it was part of the mayor daily machine, and then realized the flaws of that, and moved out of that again to challenge the daily win -- and so a lot of the ways in which he rose to power, the way he was or able to organize people around this idea, he was a populist, but when the talk a lot about hope in possibility. and change. in that, together, we all could create a mass swell of power to challenge all of the systems

that have been working against us and all of the leaders that have stood in the way of equity and so when i think of president obama, and his rise, it very much parallels it is very much built on that infrastructure. this idea of black power, but also like equity across the board. but one of the things i feel like we saw that was different with president obama, is that a, but he was a little bit more green then mayor harold washington. like before he became, there he was you know, an illinois in the state congress, and then was a representative going toe to toe with ronald reagan at the time. he was a seasoned political figure. he knew how things worked, and he wasn't necessarily of going to be direct around or have other people take that lead for him, but also, he was somebody who had a healthy amount of skepticism around corporate

power, and a number of other things, and i think president obama, what i see in him as somebody that took a lot of that energy and really build off of that to build that model, and expanded out the cross country in places like south carolina and get people to believe that something was possible that people hadn't really believed was possible before, because of the backlash, that we consistently see from the civil rights movement and these moments of equity but. he really centered people around this idea that we could win. and i think one of the things that we've seen after that, in part because he was coming and during the 2008 recession, but for a number of other reasons, is that black people at scale did not necessarily win economically. there's a lot of ways in which we still continue, the racial wealth gap still continues to

widen. wealth continues to be concentrated at extremely high levels, corporate power tends to maintain the status quo and provide cover to a lot of hostile entities they don't necessarily want to see equal rights for everyone. and so i think post obama, particularly with younger voters, using a more critical lens applied, not just a president obama, but to government in general. and this idea that maybe government isn't the way for us, which is a little bit of a break from what we've seen traditionally with black voters, and that's not everyone. i think we've seen a lot of rise a black elected-ism, and embracing, no we need to force the government to be accountable to us more. but either way, there is a scrutiny of the democratic party as a political home for black people that i think is awe leading to some different trends according to the ways in which people engage with their

political system. >> and so essentially, through the election of black president, we now got to analyze interrogate the limitations of a black president. and that in those limitations, what we found were black people who they themselves did not feel fulfilled by the promises as they were met or delivered or undelivered. and so what we now see is an additional kind of political response to the president itself. you describe this set of people in some ways as black skinheads, right? and that's not just the one side of the aisle or on the other side of the aisle, but can you talk to me a little bit about the history of that term, because it's interesting to me, reading through, this and i'm doing some writing now, specifically around white supremacist movements, and so i use that term primarily in that contest, but as you noted, the skinhead movement initially begins kind of rooted in music,

and in a different type of space, in a way that is more multi racial. >> so can you talk to me a little bit of how you get to this terminology, and the history of the idea of being a skinhead politically, but secondarily, how we start to apply this label to the set of people in different parts of the political spectrum, who are now mobilized or engaged via their disappointment and the limitations of a black president. >> yeah, it is interesting to be having this conversation right now with the death of the queen and a lot of questions that are coming up around the role of monarchy in colonial power, or in a lot of countries in the caribbean and other places, because this is kind of, so the skinhead movement began in the 60s, and it began in london, and brixton, working class, communities, and it was

the first multi cultural subculture in the uk, which had, up until world war ii, in pretty, i say ria, it's an integ way to frame it that way, because race is kind of in some ways a uniquely american construct, but a lot of the people that were a part of the colonized nations in the monarchy, they were not living in england, let's put it that way, and then world war ii happens, everything gets destroyed. they have to rebuild. and the wind rush generation comes in. and so it's people literally coming in on boats from jamaica, from another of other places, and moving into brixton and these are the communities. and they're living alongside white working class people. and they are all organizing around the music. defining solidarity around their love of music. reggae music, rock steady, soul

music, and also building this aesthetic that is like very working class. so a lot of them have to go to work and wear combat boots to work. that keep their hair short. and in the 60s, it was more style for people can wear their hair long, in the uk, you think about austin powers, but this is a much more rugged style of subculture anesthetic. and it initially was this multi cultural, in some ways, political up because of the working class element. and then, what we saw was with thatcher-ism, the rise of neo-liberalism, a lot of economic decay continuing to happen that it shifted a little bit, and so the next generation of skinheads that started coming in or more hostile to the wind rush generation, or to people coming from outside of the country, and developing this more solidly nationalist identity that was intentionally

exclusive to the different other groups that resided in the country. and that's how you start to get to white nationalism. and you have skin heads that are continuing to push back against that. but that is the tension that is playing out. and you see that mirrored actually over here as well with the rise of neo-nazis in the u. s. in the 80s and later, but i think for me, this term, black skinhead, one, it is a call to like, what are the identity politics within a multicultural society, and how do those things play out, particularly in a working class setting or some people feel like they're losing, and that others are winning, and that people particularly i think black folks in this country feel like we have been here. we built this country, even with my own, i had to do dna fit test for research purposes,

but my dna traces back to the 1600 slaves. so when this has been your home for so long, or even if it hasn't been your home for so long, but it is your home now, and people constantly tell you that it does not belong to you, and that there is nothing owed to you, that starts to breathe a certain amount of resentment and hostility, and particularly that becomes directed towards political structures in parties, and so that is what i'm looking at with black skin head. i'm looking at both the rise and development of black culture, the erosion of that, and the ways in which black voters who are expected to just show up and vote blue no matter who are starting really to question that on the left and the right. >> you write that the skinheads were united with a frustration with the status quo in the

sense that the working class was being left behind. and you talk about how that is a solid prism through which to understand black voters in both political directions currently who are breaking off from our kind of more traditional two party systems, both the black maga voters as well as many of the black, will it be marxist or more leftist voters, who find themselves deeply dissatisfied with the options otherwise offered to them by our political system. you know, black skin had also is the title of a kanye west some, -- >> [laughter] >> and one of the things that i kind of appreciate the -- appreciate about this book from the cultural context, in the personal memoirs well, let's talk about the basis of the political parts of this book, but let's talk a little bit about the cultural context. you are a black woman from

chicago, in the book that is title after kanye west some. talk to me a little bit about how kanye factors into this book. >> yeah, so he was in a lot of ways a place where i started from, when i began doing this research. in 2019, i was looking at online black communities and how information was moving in this different spaces. and it happened to be around the same time kanye west dropped the jesus is king album. he had already come out as a maga supporter, and we'll see them at the white house pleading the cause of larry hoover. having all of these conversations and dialogues with donald trump. but because he had to do publicity around the jesus is king album, he popped up and he kept making these comments like, no more living for the culture, i am nobodies slave, we are

culture less, presumably referring to black people. i am building in new culture, all of these new things that i thought instinctively, no, that can't be right, that doesn't feel true to me and so really examining whether or not kanye was an outlier, or part of a trend that was emerging with younger voters, that was the journey that began this book. and so i started talking about this. i talked about my own contradictions, i talked about my own contradictions with kanye. i commented in some ways as a fan, i'm a huge fan of his music, when hurricane katrina moment happened where talked about george bush does not care about black people and some of those other moments of political challenge, that resonated with me. his mother is actually a pretty big chicago legend. she was one of the first people

to talk about ebay onyx as a coated black language, and something that should be preserved and seen as part of how we developed our culture under the eyes of white surveillance. and so to have all of that and compare that in contrast that with him saying, we were culture-less, that was really what i was wanting to examine in the book and so that is what led me to this conversation with black voters, looking at pot culture. the other thing about it is that i am a large geek head. my mom hates when i say, that but she was a flight attendant, my dad was a basketball coach, it's why wasn't for the tv a lot. how how i associate things is about cultural memory. and so people will randomly say, oh, this thing happens, and i will always say, it just like that episode of safe by the bell that i saw once. or this wrestling match i saw once. that's my natural wave since making.

and so i try to bring that to the book. really drawing parallels between some of the political stuff that we are seeing, and how that aligns with pop culture moments that may feel familiar to people, maybe feel less familiar to people, but are interesting to folks in some way. and so throughout that, kanye comes in as a ghost, but yeah, i look a lot at music, sports, and i look at all these things that shaped me as a person, and but i think have shaped my generation, and i think that other generation as well. >> you talk about how black voters in black political thought kind of breaks down into different buckets of broad upheaval. can you talk to me a little bit about how those factions of but black voters and black political thought, you cite doctor michael dawson, and his six buckets.

the talk to me about those a little bit? >> so my -- doctor michael dawson is a professor in chicago, and he is done one of the most comprehensive breakdowns of when i was actually doing my research about online discourse and black spaces, i tried to create my own chart of black political expression based on what i was seeing, and it was like, yet already has it. i can see signs of that. and so he really looks at a number of historical figures, and when this was the process of years of interviews and data collection. he released black visions i believe in the early 2000s. >> thousand one. >> yeah, and it still remains again one of the best attempts to really identify all of the different ways in which black people politically identify, and so there are categories we. there is black feminism as a

category, i believe black nationalism as a category, we a lot of these overlap. there's liberals, there's dissolution, there's liberal as a category, black conservative, but he really looks not just a how people vote, because at that point, we were voting in a large block, but how people, what peoples political values and ideologies expressed we are and how they self identify. we and so like i wanted to break down those categories, and i tried to do it using this kind of worlds blackest cafeteria metaphor, because i thought, one, it's really important for people to

understand that black people are not a monolith. that we all have different categories, that we fit into an overlap. and what is actually kept us tethered is this idea of linked faith, which is another term, you know, from dr. dawson, which is this idea that we have to work to an act to uplift the group will, and that, when something happens to an individual within the group, it's happening to us and that is part of the reason why traditionally with black voters, you have seen someone who may express a personal ideology of being conservative. of being against abortion. we perot low regulation or no regulation of gun rats -- rights but still a consistent democratic voter because ultimately we have felt, for generations, as doctor -- also talks about, that the republican party cannot serve us, and that the democratic party can service. and so people, black people, have consistently voted in this

flak in service of our community. but what happens when we think that it is no longer serving us? or what happens when people don't necessarily feel an obligation of linked faith. i think pugh did a research a couple of years ago that the black people foreign away with the group most likely to feel -- by a significant margin, like 73%. the next closest group was in the mid 60s i think, asian americans. but that number is starting to go down overtime. people are starting to, for a number of reasons, and i speculate why in the book, are necessarily feeling that tethered to black culture,

black people or community. and so then, how does that manifest in terms of how voting works in a number of other different things. that's part of what i'm impacting in the book. >> what's interesting too is that other minority groups, other groups coming in, and to what extent we should assume that their politics in their political behavior to be similar to that of what black americans have had historically. black americans as a group have behaved politically kind of based on this concept in this idea of this core tenant and belief of linked faith, or linked faith. >> both. >> right? but what happens as we think about immigrants or the groups coming in is then a mistake to assume that they are also going to operate the same way. we >> you know, i think that's an interesting question. part of when i started doing the book, this was definitely a journey for me, and i had a lot of a hot moments, i was talking to somebody who was like an anthropologist or communications person, they would've been like obviously, but one of the things that was interesting to me is when you say black, that can mean race, ethnicity, or culture.

and that's not always true for other groups. but you have race as this census categorization, and that was something that was constructed in this country in part to preserve economic with cased. and so you have people who come to this country over the last generations who come into this contract, and have to check the census box, and that may not be how they're identifying their home country, and not in and of itself is a jarring experience. and then you have some of the experiences that people have with policing, a number of other ways in which hostilities towards black people are asserted, and that becomes a sort of traumatic bonding experience that forces people into this idea of blackness, but that is a very different thing than black as an ethnicity or versus let's say jamaican or something. and then black as a culture. and the culture that we built in this country specifically

through media, for black newspapers, through the shared story i'm not just struggle, but thriving and living and existing, and all of the things that keep us tethered together in that linked faith. and so i think, in previous generations, you saw black people coming to this country or people coming to this country and find themselves in a black identity. and then engaging with black culture through, you know, segregated neighborhoods. through these different situations in which black

people across class and ethnicity are working, living, and eating together, and that is creating a shared identity. but increasingly, you see that people are becoming more economically segregated, more segregated along a number of lines, and so that feeling of black as something other than this traumatic bonding experience, i speculate is happening less and less. and it's not a guarantee that people are going to come in and feel this black solidarity or commitment to, you know, uplifting us at scale in the same way versus maybe their own ethnic group or their family, on a more individual level. >> even beyond the broad idea of linked faith, you identify kind of four points that largely seem to be shared consensus across black political thought. the first is that racism exists, the second is that racial justice, however you to find, that is necessary. third, itself determination, land ownership, their fundamental goals for the ability for black people to obtain. and fourth, that having some type of share black agenda is critical to achieving the three things that come before that. how from the think that consensus is, even as you dive

in and talk to the various kind of black skinheads in different parts of the economic spectrum. as i read this, i was thinking, there are certainly probably some members of the right, black republicans or black maga folks, who might deny some of these things. now they might do that for political purposes, and one might say it's part of their political project, but i am wondering how firm you think these consensus are, even if we accept as a premise that they are massively divergent ideas about how to achieve those things. >> yeah, i mean i think it is rapidly changing. that is the thing that, to me, i'm warning about in the book. and part of this goes back to like my bread and butter background, which is in media and rights ownership, black owned and controlled media.

that was a mechanism by which we built a shared story, i think a shared story of black culture and identity couldn't really exist precip a war. you might have, you know, black micro cultures within different like physical spaces, but it was really, at that time we weren't really allowed to necessarily travel broadly. it was really hard to create this kind of shared story. it came after the civil war, after the rise of black media. i think in illinois alone there were like 150 black newspapers at one point. and you had like the pullman porters on the rail lines picking up these newspapers like the chicago defender, or others, transporting them across country, and one paper would circulate among 100,000 people in the community. and so that is how you are building the shared story, and through that, that there is a struggle, that there is racial injustice, that there are these lynchings happening that you might not otherwise know about and all of those things. and as we see, the mass swath of media spaces in lands and other things, i think that

shared story is beaten away, and i think the internet environment in particular has allowed for a lot of, drifting from different entities who can come in and be the kind of like blackface of white supremacy, quite frankly. it can say no, racism doesn't exist, that didn't happen to me, or organize around these ideas that are very i think disruptive to the broader economic cultural and social struggles to black people. and so that, i think that is some of the stuff we are up against. i think it also is as people move into segregated, like black wealthy people move out of black communities, and move into white suburbs or other spaces, like some of that alignment or humanity folks kind of erodes away, and so then it's like, why can't you just pull yourself up out of your boot straps? there's an increasing absence

of empathy in a way that black culture becomes again increasingly fractured along class lines. and so i think that, to me, as what i want to talk about, because i think that's what we are seeing right now. i'm curious what you think about that though. >> i definitely think that the fracturing of the media environment, broadly, is a huge part of it in terms of us no longer having, and this is not just the media, you have black and the americans in an ostensibly post segregated world or in the area of integration now having access and having to fight for that access still, but now having at least half of the door cracked open taxes to spaces that had prior been previously been explicitly segregated, right? and so because of that, the victories of one era must always lead to the problems of

the next era, right? and not that it even creates new problems, but it allows you to consider new problems that didn't exist before. you can't worry about voting if you are not considered human. and so you get, one and now you can worry about the other. you can elect a black president, but you can vote. now you can think about another thing. you can't dream beyond a black president if you can't have one. while obama does is to give permission to black people to think beyond representing the -- representation of politics, even though there haven't been other people doing that. but if you think about this area, not just in the media spaces, but in terms of the institutions across the board, we have black -- we have seen a erosion of black institutions, whether that be in media spaces, with hbcus, black economic centers, an economic power centers, in a number of reasons for these things.

in some cases, some of these economies environments were set up explicitly because of the denial of access, and almost all of them are set that way. and then somehow there was access to other spaces, and you see it splintering of the population, and yet because of that, you start to see a shared identity socially and politically, but we also see in a more globalized world, a post internet world, as a world where people now have the ability and access to information in some ways even more specifically to be connected to the places where they are from, to trace their ancestry in ways that they are not before. to connect with the diaspora writ large. and so in some ways, what that does is it adds errors of complexity to work collective black identity, but by the very nature of, that it begins to

splinter in different ways, right, and allows us to begin thinking and debating about how those identities intersect in places where it our experiences are not the same, in a way that i think is really interesting as well. i think beyond that, though, and as you know, there is this since, and this moment of, if you have a black president, does become a pivot point. it becomes a think the people are going to respond to in one direction or the other. and for some people, they're going to use it and take it as evidence of an ultimate victory in some way, and then their politics are going to be responsive to that in one way or another. i want to get into some of the specific people that you write about and talk about. i think you've done a really good job of setting the philosophical and sociological table, and on the ground where

people work, this fascinating famous book, but i think that the kind of, the moment when you have such level of black achievement, what that allows it creates a structure for at least some of black voters, and those mention you document, to now opt out of the belief that racial injustice is an issue and has to be remedied in some immediate way, and in fact, could lead to some of their other beliefs as well. so what i want to talk a little bit about our, who are these people? who are the folks, both on the left and on the right, who are largely opting out of this system as we've constructed it, or increasingly opting out of the system that we are contracting. but the majority of the people in this metaphor, the biggest part of the table is still the black establishment. folks who are democratic party voters, folks who believe largely in operating within the systems as they are constructed. even though they believe the systems need to change, or be reformed, or tinkered, but not

folks who are here necessarily for a full scale overhaul of things as they exist. but rather, you know, folks who believe in kind of the long arc of history working towards a more equitable outcome. your book focuses on the people who aren't at that table, who are all the other tables, who are those folks in this era? >> yeah, so this was one of my favorite parts of doing this book because particularly i wrote it between late summer of 2020 and then december of 2021. so we were still heavily quarantine, and the way we were socializing was really different. and the ways in which i was able to even find my own community was through these interviews. and so i interviewed black voters between the ages of 18 and 108, and try to get every political representation i could. and so i speak to folks like, one of my favorite people to talk to was korea, who was from mississippi, but was in the d. c. area now and as an irs agent, a retired one i think.

and she is like hard-core leftist. and it feels like i'm tired of marching in the streets. i'm tired of voting for political figures who don't seem interested in things that are going to help my community at scale, whether that's medicare for all, clearing student loan debt, rewriting funding to police into like social services and things like that but. and so she has started self organizing and organizing a group of folks across the country. at the time i spoke to her, it was leading into the 2020 election, and she was organizing a write in campaign around nina turner. that was like her candidate. but like i found it fascinating she knew, like other folks, i think it's like 73% or over 70% of black voters under 45 are potentially interested in third-party options.

and so she was someone that was worth thinking about, how do we radicalize the democratic party, but also what does it look like to build systems to support for those, like, third party candidates from green party, to the tsa, and others. and so that is one person i talked to introduce in the book. i spoke with a sex worker who, a porn actress actually, who went on to onlyfans, and i had this kind of awkward approach. >> you said you center really long message? >> it was a long message, yeah, and i also copied and pasted it wrong, and so it said, i promise to make things weird for you. and i was like, oh no, she's going to like call the web police, i'm going to get kicked off of onlyfans, it's going to be awkward, but what she responded and we had this conversation. and she was really interested and stuff around, how do we

organize around human rights for sex workers. if she came from what i would see as a black feminist politic, and the sort of next wave of feminism, and how that fight plays out online, and what sort of policies and what decision-makers do, and how we hold decision-makers accountable to ensure the full humanity of everyone online and off. and so that was another example, i would say, of a left-wing voter. and then i spent some time talking to some black maga folks. and that was interesting, and a lot of levels, and it was funny, because i was doing my video call with them and my mom, who is like, she sort of a cap of the democrat, but from a political agenda standpoint, she agrees more with bernie. she's like a former union president, all of these things, but she was like listening to the video call and the other room when i was doing it, and was like arguing, like these people are loony, why are you even talking these people, and i'm like mom, i'm trying to do the full research thing, shut up! but like they came from

different perspectives. there were some very traditional family values, and have this idea that the black family was being broken down, and that that was in part due to the democratic party and some of the platforms the democratic party, and that was their draw to republicans, republicanism, and donald trump. there are some people that were libertarians, and they come from that kind of booker t. washington, we just need to build our own black communities. we need to build black capital, and the government cannot, will not help us. but they were necessarily like a religious or family values. and then there were some people that were just, like i did want to see something different, and to me trump represents someone who can disrupt the status quo.

people that sound a lot of ways very much like kanye. and so like, i spent time with some of those folks breaking apart, why it was that they got to that perspective. and what i actually found is that, for a lot of the folks that i talked to, they still did believe that racism existed. and that there was a need for some form of a black agenda. they just felt like that agenda did not include the government, or included things like second amendment rights. that was really big thing. the ability to have guns, to protect themselves, school choice was not a big thing that i saw. but it was really fascinating to me because i was talking to all these people, and all of them at the end the conversation would be like, well there's no way i would talk to like a crazy socialist, or there was no way i would talk to like a crazy maga person, but i'm like, you all, that's how black organizing has traditionally happened. we have had people come from, like you know, in a philip randolph, for example, as a socialist, and milton, webster i believe it is organizing together around pullman porters to build an economic agenda. in fact, the only ways in which

we've been able to move an economic agenda that benefits black people is through cross ideological organizing. so it, to me, was a little alarming that we didn't have the space in place to at least talk to each other and know that we weren't going to agree on everything, but that, at a baseline, if we want to see and build economic power, that we had to be in the same space with each other. >> now, as you talk to -- i want to focus on the leftists for a little while. as you talk to folks who identify kind of outside of the mainstream because they are to the left of what the democratic party is, it does feel like they're present in our media conversation very often. in fact, it feels like, i would say all of these black skinheads in one direction of the other in that present in the public dialogue, right? it is a lot of debate i think with in washington about who speaks for black americans, especially on the left, and how

to, and how to grapple with the black activists class and where it sets, and how it might sit further left then a more black establishment class. that maybe is more representative of the biggest table of black voters in there for the base of the democratic party since we are in washington, but what do you make of that as a strategic and tactical conversation. that it is true that the black leftists and the black markets are a smaller proportion, a smaller table, that doesn't weigh in one way or another about what they're saying is correct. and so how do we grapple with the role of the black leftist in the broader kind of cross section of black political politics. >> yeah, i mean i think it is interesting on many levels. one of the things that dr. -- talks in her book, the loneliness of the black republican is that because of

the explicitly white supremacist turn of the republican party under nixon and others, and the dog whistle politics behind it, the black people, increasingly black republicans, felt like the republican party couldn't be a space for them. and so they moved into the democratic party, and she supposes towards the end of the book that this movement a black conservatives into the democratic party essentially taking over the party is part of what creates this conservative nucleus within the democratic party. and so that's, and you still see signs of that even in local politics, and with particularly like conservative black women, and local elections. >> and otherwise, that is socially otherwise, if it had not been an explicit decision made by the republican party, we would very likely still see

black people as popular splintered across the two parties, because a significant portion effect people hold relatively conservative political beliefs. >> not only that, but you see black people, i think more pushing the democratic party towards the left, towards a more sort of new deal era, democratic party. >> because they would not be counterbalance by the subsection. >> exactly. exactly. and so part of what is interesting is this inherent assumption that black people are conservative, it is true, with most religious group. that's a lot of conservatism within the black community. but if you pull black people on what would be considered more left, this policy like medicare for all, student data, or other things like that, or other economic policies, i guess i will say marks explicitly, there are disproportionately black people that are more left. and so, you know, i think in

terms of where the party is now, i think there's like a interesting dynamic playing out where we've seen some prominent black left-wing candidates, like nina turner, and i'll say india walton, even jamal bowman at times, who have gotten pushback from the democratic party, they've gone against them. they've almost thrown more weight at trying to throw the fire blanket over black leftist candidates, then what is happening on the right. meanwhile, what we see in 2022 is that there were 81 black republican's running for office this year, and many of them had support. various levels of support from the republican party. the folks i talked to in the book have been organizing for years and continue to organize, like black republicans, because

they see that space as an empty vessel. and so i think to go back to original question, i think the democratic party must make more room for a leftist politic. i think that it's important for the federal government, and i will say this, i think that president biden has actually made some really interesting moves in the last month. i think the inflation reduction act has been really strong, you know, i think that some of the stuff around student debt, i would say he could go further, but it's something and it's been very relieving for black communities. those very tangible economic gains are a direct response to the progressive to left base within the party pushing them. so i think that the democratic party has to look towards the younger generation and see where they are at, see that many of them i'm not afraid of third-party, not afraid to vote for different candidates. i think bernie got the largest amount of small money donations for black people than any other candidate in the democratic

primary, and really factor those voices and as the future of the party. >> then those voices be the future of the party if the party remains constituted with so many black conservatives in it. >> i don't think so. i mean, i think that's part of the thing, right? i think some of the talking point around hills that, you know, could it be that the republican party is going to become the party of the working class? and part of that, i think, comes from one, they're known for the populism and using populist language and speaking to people and their economic disillusionment, but also when you feel like your government is not showing up for you in tangible ways, in some ways, it's a lot easier to try to make the case that, well why do you need government? you need government out of your life. all government does is take money out of your pocket. all the government does is like put you in jail or all of these stuff. like, maybe we need to move away from the government. and i think that's the kind of

like tension point that's playing out. >> so, what i'm hearing you saying, and correct me if i'm wrong, if i'm paraphrasing, but part of what i'm hearing you saying is that by governing so conservatively, the democratic party does not show the value of whether the government, or the things that can be done, and that that, even as people continue to be failed, right? and so what that is going to do ultimately is lead to more people adopting more conservative views or becoming black skinheads in the other direction. >> or becoming, more to marxism, or looking at third-party -- >> it's going to radicalize. >> so we start that little section by talking about the black skinheads of the left, the marxist, right? talk to me a little bit about, you describe yourself as a bernie broad, and a few times on c-span, it wasn't my phrase, no one council before that! right? [laughter]

but i say that to say that you are of the left, clearly, and you also spent a significant amount of time working in the space exploring the folks who are on the right. maga republicans, black conservatives, what are the things you learned about them, about what they want, and what's mobilizing them and these moments? >> i think one thing that i learned from them was a deep frustration with local politics and local alderman and living in communities like pullman and illinois, where i talked to lisa, who is organizing black maga people across the country. people who had seen divestment from the neighborhoods. had seen a quality of life go down. in leaps and bounds, and we're blaming that on, you know, democratic leadership that they

saw. i would probably countered that maybe we should look at republican governments. republican governors, rather. but i think that seeing those signs decay around them in their community, and feeling like the government doesn't care, that was part of what was driving them towards republicanism. i think that again, this thing around gun rights actually, and the ability to safeguard your community, has proven to be a big draw for a number of black people that feel sort of under their -- under attack in their community in a number of different ways. mainly what i saw is that people want to see small businesses, small, independent businesses propped up in their community. i was a little bit surprised to

see how much talk in those spaces revolved around corporate power. and the role of corporations, and corporate cronyism, and all of these different things. and resentment towards the role of corporations in everyday life. and feeling like the democratic party was too tethered to corporate power. we can talk about that a little more and how much that is a real thing for the anti corporate talking points. but either way, i think that for them, that resentment of corporate power and the corporatized government was a huge draw, whether you were a traditional black republican or a libertarian, into the republican party. >> we are coming out of an election where republican

candidate donald trump saw a secrete increasing amount of support. where we are seeing republican candidates across the country receiving increasing amount of latino support. understanding that the democratic party remains a multi racial party, and yet there is some splintering and cracks in the coalition. as we look forward, into the elections coming this year and the governor's race in georgia, or in texas, for example, but then beyond that into senate races and the forthcoming presidential election. what do we expect to see happen? not in terms of who actually wins or loses, but in terms of how black voters are going to continue to behave? would you be surprised if those

numbers and support for someone like president trump increase further? what can we make of this splintering of the black skinheads off from the broader black coalition? >> i think that that is interesting. because of the sped up environment that we experience, and the way that information moves and is turned over, i think in a lot of ways it's a lot less predictable than it has been in the past. and so, i think anything could happen. you don't know, necessarily, what's going to get memes and share it and become important for one candidate versus the other. but in terms of some of the things that i have seen, i think that for many generations, the republican party has not been supportive to black republican candidates. in fact, when i talk to a lot of those candidates in 2020, one of the draws that black republicans had that were

organized and the local level, one of the draws was that they could do what they wanted to without having to deal with the national republican party. they weren't always in agreement with them, and they could organize their people under cover. but what we saw this year is that a lot more black republican candidates are endorsed by trump. they were endorsed by -- it will be interesting to see with that monetary support, and the ability to speak to a broader range of support, how that appeals to black voters on the local level. that's one of the things i am looking for. i think republicans are seeing this, can we finally peel off that 25% that we've been trying to? because mind you, the odds are in their favor. they only have to get 25% of

the black vote peeled off in order to solidify their power. and so, that is something they are looking to see if they can be successful at that. i am definitely looking at some of the races with candidates that have been endorsed by but democrats and others, to see how they are doing. what kind of support they are getting, whether or not they are able to organize their constituencies. but i think that what we are seeing is that as we continue to see the hangover from covid and the recession, and i think after the 2008 recession, we lost 60% of black votes. in the beginning of covid, i think 50% of black businesses closed, two. close their doors, and didn't recover. as we continue to see that economic decline and people feeling like representation of their tangible benefits, that is not enough. i think we will continue to see people more open to alternatives. >> the book is black skinheads,

reflections on the black political future. this is a really great conversation, i appreciate you being here. we've been talking the future of black thought, thank you so much, and thank you for your book. >> thank you again. afterwards is available as a podcast. to listen, becausiteemed dash span dot org, slash podcasts. or visit c-span afterwards on your app, and watch this and all previous afterwards interviews and book tv dot org. just click the afterwards button near the top of the page. >> recently, on book tv's author interview program, afterwards, former prime minister of australia, kevin rod, offered his thoughts on how the u.s. and china can coexist, and avoid war in the future. >> political leaders have agency. they have an ability to make

decisions which actually change the course of history. if not for mao, and nixon, guess what? the last 50 years would've been radically different. if it wasn't for reagan, if it wasn't for gorbachev, what would have happened? in terms of u.s. relations with the soviets back then. political leaders have agencies. what the book seeks to do is to say, if you think that we are just on rail ray tracks determined by some hague alien force, that we can't do anything about. this is what crisis and war could look like. it could be in material terms. if you think that we can make a difference, it's a framework. not just united states, but i argue a joint strategic framework between china and united states, and the leadership of those countries.

it recognizes the absolute complexity of strategic competition. but rather than being there -- are strategic guardrails around it, which i call managed strategic competition. and th'shat the book seeks to elabat >> afterwards is a weekly interview program with reva guest hosts, interviewing top nonfiction authors about her latestor. to watch this program and others, visit book tv dot org, slash afterwards. esteemed guests, welcome to the 73rd national book awards ceremony. tonight host is panama locked me and television host bestselling author. she is the creator, host, and executive producer of the critically acclaimed hulu series, taste the nation.