and of course, louis farrakhan- certainly you've heard of louis farrakhan- he, like a, you know, a lightning rod, he attracts negative attention from the media because he's a controversial and powerful figure, and he holds to elijah muhammad's teaching of a separate nation of islam, and he keeps to the quest here, at least to put it in my terms, of empowering african-americans and raising their self-esteem so that they can take care of themselves. now this gets mixed in with a variety of islamic traditions, islamic rituals- it's a wide-open question. one in this class, we've talked about this so many times, about the question of religious truth versus the question of religious power, whether one believes that teachings of the nation of islam are traditional islamic doctrine or they waiver from that. nevertheless, the power, the impact on the community is astounding. in fact, sometimes- people always say have you ever had any negative experiences in the classroom teaching- you know, when you teach a controversial subject. and remarkably- don't ask me why, but very, very few- but the most nega

and that makes it okay to hang out with farrakhan and reverend wright and makes everything good? guy is making chicago favre for people who are trying to get by is much more important. >> if he has-- if this is the same thing he said about whites and hillary clinton and said it about blacks, he would have been drummed out. >> sean: i agree with you. >> and oh, don't judge him by his words, none of that would come into play. if we truly don't know who he is why was he picked to do it. nobody knows who he is, why was he picked? >> he has criticized the behavior of people in the black community that are engaged in violent crime and criticized that. >> sean: wait a minute, but he still associates with a racist and anti-semite-- >> he's all about. farrakhan whether you agree with him or not has a following and he's trying to get to-- >> anti-semite and a racist. i've got to go. >> he's happening gangs with stopping gang violence. >> sean: coming up next, it's official jay leno is leaving the tonight show replaced by jimmy fallon. was leno too conservative for left wing hollywood? as s

farrakhan, farrakhan's mother was estranged from her father. she had a boyfriend.went back with the father, got pregnant, didn't want the boyfriend to know, so she tried to abort louis farrakhan three times with a coat hanger. and in the case of sharpton, sharpton lived a middle class life until his father abandoned the family, and then down to the ghetto. they talk about racism, racism as opposed to the centrality of fathers even though in their own lives the lack of their dads, in my opinion, had a very profound impact of how they view the world. one of the reasons they're so angry, perhaps, is because they didn't b have a father in the house, and instead of talking about importance of fathers and policies that can encourage people to get married before having children, they talk about racism, racism, racism. in my opinion, they're doing a disservice to the community. i think they're being leaders to the best of their ability, don't get me wrong. i don't think they're doing it in bad faith, but i think they ought to rethink what they're doing. >> host: leroy, ham

when louis farrakhan's magazine says the god to teaches me tells me the white man is a skunk of the planetth, is that racism? it sounds like it to me. >> it is racism. it can go either way, sean and chris should know better. for him to make that sort of statement, but then the other thing that this preacher talked about pushing blacks to the back of the bus and pushing women in the kitchen. come on. if the only way that they can get ratings is to say outrageous things in order to try and create some sort of controversial narrative, that is a display of trying to basically have a program where they want to try to help people. and they're not helping anybody, they're misinforming people. >> sean: but this is a problem. this is now the narrative that, as i think rush made a good point here, obama, joe biden, going to put you all back in chains. i can trace the history of the democratic party 1998 missouri ad you elect republicans, black churches will burn and many, many others. let's just take a look, this is now nbc news. now, supporting this, watch what everything is a dog whistle, racism,

but in america you can be a follower of louis farrakhan if you want to. [applause] we don't have to agree on every issue. so, you know, i think there are a lot of issues where we are all the men cannot agree on. but if we have a government that doesn't get involved in every issue, the government that kind of leaves you alone, it doesn't mean no government, doesn't mean government isn't involved in education. for example, one of the things i say it's not that i believe and no government. i believe in a government that spends what comes in, and that is not unreasonable. we bring in $2.6 trillion in money but we are spending 3.8 trillion. stevan the weidinger education is important and maybe you have a loan from the student government, not from borrowing it from china. i'm figuring out how to get it out of the 2.6 trillion that comes in every year because if we borrow it from china we are going to give you a student loan come to are going to graduate and $60,000 in debt and then you've got no job because we have borrowed so much from china that we are ruinin