but i could not figure out. [laughter] i got about one 1/5 pages and is stopped. you have been so great to me. thank you so much. [cheers and applause] . . >> let me welcome you all, and it's my honor tonight to present mr. king with the mason award. it's amazing that when you look at everything he's done, and as i was sitting on the street watching you all come in, i was amazed at the variety of the age of folks who came out to hear him. most of the time i bring my kids, they are behind the stage, and if it's a political event, i have to bring them kicking and screaming, and tonight, they in the car 10 minutes early honking the horn afraid they were going to be late. [laughter] they know you best for "it," and my daughter backstage just said she had been scared for life after she saw the movie. [laughter] that's quite a testament. the award is named george maison, one of the founding fathers of the u.s. of whom the university also takes its name. the author of the virginia declaration of rights, mason is known as the father for the bill of rights and served as an orale proponent of freedom of speech. it's a reminder of mason's ideas and freedom of speech that he helped secure. stephen king is one of the world east most successful writers making his first sale in 1967. in the fall of 1973, he began teaching high school english classes in hampton academy, the public high school in hampton maine. he continued to produce short stories and work on novels. in the spring of 1973, double day company accepted the novel "carri e" for the publication providing him the means to leave teaching and write full time. he's published over 50 books including most recently the clutch in full dark, no stars, and has become one of the world's most successful writers. he and his wife are regular contributors to a number of charities including many libraries that have been honored for their philanthropic activities. it's my pleasure to present mr. king with the 2011 mason award that recognizes and honors his literary career that spans 40 years from his duvet novel through the 2011 nosm, a time traveling adventure surrounding the jfk assassinations due out in november of this year. watch your bookstores. before i present him the plaque, it's my understanding that your enthuse yat tick -- enthusiastic supporter of the basketball team, and i got the privilege to present the team with the key to the city, but the university gave me a george university mason basketball hat and t-shirt i'd like to present. [cheers and applause] >> swag! i love that. [applause] [cheers and applause] >> last, but certainly not least, the mason award. >> oh, thank you. [applause] thank you very much. [cheers and applause] thank you, all. that's terrific. thanks. [applause] thank you very much. [applause] >> and welcome to miami and the 2011 miami book fair international held on the campus of miami decade college in downtown mind, it's a week long event with hundreds of authors and thousands of people attending every year. today and tomorrow, you'll have the opportunity to talk with the authors and watch the panels. here's the lineup on booktv on crrksz-span2. we'll be joined by an msnbc cricketer who has "who's afraid of post-blackness"? then the technology writer who wrote "the information. in two hours, we'll show you an event with condoleezza rice, the george w. bush years. she was in conversation recently with the president of the university of miami. in three hours, we'll introduce you to leslie brody. then we'll talk with john avlon and the impact on american politics. in four hour, we'll wrap it up for today with jim rasenberger who wrote about the bay of pig incident in the 1940s. that's the lineup, but you can also watch author events on booktv.org. we'll be live web casting the events from chapman hall here. in just about two and a half hours or so, teray will be talking about his book and talking about that book with the audience. you can watch that on booktv.org. andy, the comedian, will be talking about the 50 funniest american writers also live webcast, and then stanley and pete will be joining our call in guest, john avlon to talk about newspaper columnists and the art of writing a newspaper column. that's all live on booktv.org. you have the choice. you can watch booktv on c-span2, talk with authors and call ins or watch booktv.org and see the author events being webcast. well, in just a few minutes, we'll be joined by teray who will be taking your calls and tweets as well, but we also want to let you know that the c-span bus is here in miami as well passing out book bags. you can see the crowds there. if you're in the area, come on down, our booktv set is next to the bus next to the chapman hall. come on down and say hi. a month ago, he 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 to take your calls. >> it's imblahmatic of modern racism. it's about alpine, new jersey, the posh town where he lived 234 a multimillion dollar home, had neighbors like eddie murphy, and they were among the best in the world at their professions. legends in their line of work, also the only four black homeowners in town, and his next door neighbor is a white dentist, the best in the world. he ain't going to the dental hall of fame, just a yank your teeth out den tigs. he has the point with a devastating point line. the black man got a fly to get something the white man can walk to. in modern america, blacks can ascend to the upper class, but they have to fight so much more to get there because white supremacy remains a tall barrier to entry. 23 you slip through the cracks as a way of advancing the idea that white supremacy does not exist and an attempt to mask the power because the matrix doesn't want you to know it's there. how can they argue they are racist when four black families live there welcomed by the community and unharassed by police? this is a fake argument. these extraordinary blacks would be welcomed anywhere, and alpine is not racist because it doesn't need to be. there's institutional systems in place to keep the number of blacks in alpine and beverley hills and other exclusive communities very low, but no so low that jackson can raise a rut cues. modern racism is a slippery beast more than it is father or grandfather were. it has ways to seem it doesn't exist driving you crazy trying to prove its existence sometimes. it combines the sense of you don't belong here, that historic racism has with the satisfy and creates a devils bargain. you may ascend higher on the ladders of power than previous generations of blacks could have imagined, but when you smack into the glass ceiling, it still drives you crazy and shows your ability is not fully respected. blackness is expanding and broadening as opportunities improve, but we all have to dual with racism, and it has an impact on the modern black per son that. it is a great writer in one of the most mind blowing analogies for it like the president pardoning one turkey each year before thanksgiving. in a 2004 speech at the world social forum in mumbai, roy broke it down. the president spares one bird and eats another. after receiving the presidential pardon, the chosen one is sent off to live its natural life. the rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for thanksgiving are eaten. the company that won the presidential turkey contract trains the birds to interact with school children and the press. [laughter] that's how new racism in the corporate era works. a few carefully bred turkeys, the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional powell and condoleezza rice are given absolute and a pass to frying pan park. the remaining millions lose their jobs, evicted, have their water and electricity connection cut and die of aids. the fortunate fowls in the park do just fine, and some work for the world trade organization, so who accuses those organizations of being antiturkey? some serve on the board, so who says turkeys are against thanksgiving? they participate in it. there's a stampede to get into frying pan park. what if most perish on the way? the post-black era is a response to the rise in the number of blacks who fight to get into alpine, new jersey, but post blackness is not a drug to cure or significantly alter american white supremacy and it suggests to me what it means to be black a broadening, but it does not mean racism is over, that white supremacy is laying down its shield. it remains a daily fact of life for blacks and a key component in shaping who we become as people even in the post black era. where racism was plainly visible, modern racism seems to function like evaporating smoke plainly visible, but impossible to grab on it. it adds the data that attempts to argue that racism no longer exists even though you know it does. the double consciousness can make you feel crazy. you're in target, is the guard following you, you're not sure. maybe he is, maybe he's not. maybe he's following another black person you can't see. he's probably following you, or is he? they were following you in the last store, and you couldn't see it, but you felt it. maybe the guard is black, so if you try to explain, they might not understand it, but the guard's boss is not black or make he is. maybe they're watching all the blacks in the store more closely and maybe the guard himself feels badly about that directive, but has to follow it because they are 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 a migraine when all you needed was tooth paste. that's the basic example of racism, nothing of the consolation of anxieties that flash through you when the stakes are high like going to school, buying a house, or asking for a loan when you wonder if the white person who appears less qualified got the promotion because they were actually better than you or better at networking upper management or someone wrongly assumed you're not as good because your black or there's an existential angst. you walk around the store and you want socks, but you worry you are being followed, but you undergo so many processes and it's we squander so many issues that we miss out on opportunities like expanding, growing, developing, and so forth. columbia professor patricia williams said there's nothing more than plaque people would like in the world than to be happy and not have to be self-conscious, but that's impossible. maybe the storekeeper is scowling at you because he has had a bad day and it has nothing to do with you or he doesn't want his clothes on your black body. you don't know. it's the necessary nuttiness of racism and the defensiveness is a consequence of what we have to negotiate. that's not victimhood. she compared the necessary nuttiness of racism, the fun house mirror untouchability of modern racism to one day in law school when she got flowers on valentine's day and didn't sign it. i went through the day smiling at people because it could have been this person or that person. i loved everybody. well, prejudice is the same thing in a negative degree. when a moment of racism occurs, you can wonder who else feels that way. this is often what the face of modern racism is, hard to discern, lurking in the shadows or hidden, and opportunities in inequities and racial profiling is hard to see at times and easily dismissed. modern racism is a beast. dr. john jackson, university of pennsylvania, said this idea there's a clicheed vision of a racist from the time they brush thaish r their teeth in the morning and just wants to end the life of every person is not the only way to talk about it. the category of racist or not is not useful. think about the ways in which we perpetuate the racial differentiations and inequalities on purpose or have issues we see every day. unless you tell me there's a bilogical hard wired reason why people of color at academic institutions serve you food or cleaning or not necessarily in the classrooms teaching classes, you have to be honest with yows in how there's a privilege that accrues to people. we have to recognize that race is more subliminal, subjective, and more subtle in the contemporary moment. i think we need to find a way to articulate that subtlety because there's few smoking guns, thank god, anymore. i ask my 150 interviews what's the most racist thing. the response was indicative of modern racism. the answer is unknowable. erin said, i imagine it'd be a thing i don't even know ever happened. it would be that opportunity that never manifested, and i'll never know it was even possible. so a decision is made in a back room or high level office by someone you'll never see about whether or not you get a home or home loan or a job or admission into a school or perhaps never allowed to know a home in a certain area or job is available. this is how modern institutional racism functions, and it weighs on and shapes a black person differently than the more avert racism of the past did. people who told me the most racist thing that happened to me is unknowable gave me the answer quickly. it's in the minds that secret incidences happen behind their back. they walk around constantly and consciously aware of race racism as a ghost in a machine following them. there's a sense of ghost darting around you screwing with you out of sight, but never out of mind. the poet and yale professor dr. elizabeth alexander who wrote a poem at obama's inauguration said the most racist thing for me is the inability 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 cut out of something because someone is up able to see us at full capacity. i presume that happens and has happened a lot. she presumes this racist miscalculation of her brilliance happens often although it never makes itself plain. how tragic. i see alexander walking down the street, the inverse of patricia williams correctly assuming anyone she's passing by or talking to could be looking at her at cut below the genius she is. she fights it by evaluates herself outside the judgment of others, but how can this battle to constantly reconvince yourself of your ability not become an exhausting, mental drain? >> now live from miami, teray is object on the screen to take the calls. what's your definition of post blackness? >> it's a term from the art world. people talking about, you want 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, that i can do anything i want to do, take influences from europe, from asia, you know, from sought america, but then also bring that back to the community. it's sort of rooted in the story that i tell that i wanted to go sky diving. i was told black people don't do that. i know blackness is portable. i took it sky diving and learned something about myself, god, and i brought that more tangible belief in god i got from sky diving back to being black. you know, you can learn so much more about yourself when you're not confined by what it means to be black, and so by post blackness, we're merely talking about a vision of blackness that expands to infinity, that i can be black and be human any way that i want to be. it's not about leave k blackness or rejecting blackness. i love it. it's very much a part of me, but i want to have the right to embody it any way i want. >> there's a chapter called 40 million ways to be black. >> that's right. skip gab talkings about that in harvard. if there's 40 million black people, there's 40 million ways to be black. it's not that one way of blackness is illegitimate or authentic or you're realer -- there's ideas about blackness, but it's how you want to embody it or do it. that's reasonable. >> here's some of the questions you asked 105 people you interviewed for this book. what does 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 2040 years, if so, how? is there an authentic black experience? what do you think of post blackness? you go and say what do you think of the n word is what you asked people. >> oh, yeah. >> what kind of response do you goat to those questions. >> to the last question? i mean, you know, can we say the c-span? >> we're cable, you can say it, but i'm not. >> there's interesting responses to the word "nigger," and 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 revolutionarily feeling, but i was surprised to find that they use it in private spaces very much. when i was interviewing reverend jackson, he said it in this clock yal way, not attacks or degrading. i was shocked. he said, no, i didn't say that. it came out easily, and he didn't realize he said it. dr. king using it colloquially. it's preacher callture for a lot of people. it's a word the older generation, especially black men, used in private spaces. it is a word that my generation and younger uses in public spaces, and that is the older generation's dispute with us. this is meant to be a barbershop word. you broadcast it on your albums or in the subway, you know, on a subway street corner. i mean, it's interesting. i mean, in the course of writing this book and thinking what it means to be black now and thinking about a beautiful black family living in the white house that i began to think i don't feel that it fits this. 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 felt that was right, but then when the obamas lived in the white house, it's like, maybe it doesn't fit right now, so i made a 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 like, you know, messing with them with it. i'm not sure that you are. i'm not sure that you are changing anything in using it in that way, but 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. that's not true, at all. women's culture, i see it in asian cultures, and many other demographic subcultures that people are reclaiming words that were flung at them and repurposing them as words of love within the community. i mean, there are other people who are following our example of using nigger in that way. >> 202 # is the area code. 624-1111, 624-1115 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. you can tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. who else did you interview for this book? >> skip gates, jamal by letter, a lot of visual artists, karen walker, some recording artists, quest love and fiasco, politicians like harold junior, the first female black mayor, and harris, the attorney general of california, and a lot of people. daft schappel who was in the previous interviews, he's not counted in the 105, but i talked to him when he came back from south africa because his show really gets at an active definition of post-blackness. you've seen the show, the complexity of being black now opposed to "grey's anatomy" which doesn't exist in the real world, but in art it can. there's blacks, whites, latinos, asians, and you can switch the people, and it doesn't change the plot or the characters really, and in schappel's show, there's the layers and nuances of what it means to be black, and so that's why there's a chapter on that and talked to the creators of the show. a fascinating show. >> a tweet says what's one thing that didn't make the book that you wish you'd included. >> he's a frent. appreciate that. you know, i can't really say that there's anything that definitely didn't make the book. two years on this thinking about it, talking to people, and dealing with my ideas, bouncing them off of a lot of smart people, and, you know, of course, that's going to reshape your conception of your own ideas, so i mean, 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 it in there now, i attacked the con cement of post racialism, and i don't know that i attacked it enough in the book. i think that it is a really bankrupt term. it's sort of a conman in the language. you know, there's no such thing as post-racial; right? i mean, it suggests that we think that, you know, race doesn't matter, racism doesn't matter. it's not a term that to my experience black people use seriously or at least without tremendous amounts of irony because we know that that's not true at all. i hear white people using it, 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. we can't honestly call this post racial, and post black is something entirely different. you know, talking about the complexity of being black and certainly not saying race is over. it's not a sin for post racial in any way. you spend so much time working on a book that you end up getting almost everything you want in it. >> here's the book. the first call for toure comes from freeland, mental anguish. good afternoon, you're on booktv. >> caller: thanks very much, gentleman. he raises so many interesting issues, i could talk to him for a long time. just a couple things i wanted to mention. when he talks about things like white supremacy, white separatism and white privilege, terms like that, i mean, the average white person isn't as struggling to most white people. i mean, you mentioned reverend jackson, and he even acknowledges that just in terms of broad numbers, there's more white people, more white people living in poverty than black people and more struggling white people than black people, and when you use those kinds of terms, it really turns off the average white person who is just trying to make ends meet, and they don't feel like they have any special stairway to heaven or anything just because they happen to have white skin, you know? i think that's one of the big reasons that we don't make much progress on this racial type stuff. >> caller? >> my question -- >> okay -- >> my question hoe though is about the black community. even if there was 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 talk about that now? >> caller, we'll get an answer from our guest. do you find the illegitimacy rate offensive to you? caller's gone. go ahead, toure. >> he raised interesting points. i don't know the statistics, but i push back against 17%. i don't think that that's accurate. >> he said 70. >> i know, i don't think that's accurate. that's not according to the world i know, 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, and the fact many are unable to take advantage of white privilege is not defeated or does not prove that it doesn't exist, and i would push back into the notion that talking about race and white supremacy and white privilege is part of the problem, that is working towards a solution if you are turned off because we talk about white privilege and white supremacy, you are turning off the problem, you know? the decision of the issues is very important and valuable to moving forward to progress. i think that creating black families to deal with the illegitimacy point of your question is creating black families that will be very important in going forward to creating powerful self-esteem self-identified black people who really feel valuable in the world; right? you neat father and a mother, at least two parents, same gender perhaps, but two parents to make you a fully self-generalized person in other words. lots of people come from single family home, don't want to disrespect them, but when you have two parentses, you can have self-esteem and really contribute to the world. obviously, president obama is from a single parent home and is an amazing individual so it can be done, but we need two parent black families. how do you do that? i don't know. it's not easy to create. it's not like we can have a bill or law that works towards that. >> why did you choose to capitalize black in your book, but not white? >> i feel like black is equivalent to an ethnicity like italian, german, french, these things, and if you say you're italian, we capitalize that. that's what black, to me, is equivalent to. it's its own ethnicity, and because we lost the bonds with the actual countries we're from, it stands for that. i don't feel that white is equivalent in a linguistic sense in that way. it is more of a 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. >> steven in idaho, you're on with toure. >> caller: hello? >> hi, how are you? go ahead, please. >> caller: hello? >> steven, go ahead, please. >> caller: hello, can you hear me? >> yes. >> caller: can you hear me? hello, can you hear me? >> let's lose steven in idaho, please, and move on to james in allentown, pennsylvania. james, go ahead. >> caller: hi. >> hi. >> hi. >> caller: i'd like to have a beer summit with you. >> good. >> i'm a white guy, a grandson of pennsylvania farmers and coal miners, and i never had much in the way of privilege, but apparently, i'm supposed to me having white skin, but i never experienced that. i've been a roofer all my life. i've noticed that -- i never heard this post-blackness. i've heard of post-racial america which means demographically opposed 20 white america which is what we all look for. there's a new term that pat by cannon had where white people almost glory and have a gleeful outlook about the fact they're going to be displaced in the country. i think that's -- it is kind of a white man's disease, but the thing i wanted to ask you about is looking at trance sending race, white people are the only people who do it. look at the interracial adoption. tens of thousands of white people who adopt crossing racial lines. blacks or his hispanics don't do that. they transend race. that's a good thing. you don't see chinese adopting poor white kids from appalachia. it doesn't happen. the other thing i wanted 20 talk about is beside that is the future of america. when you look at, you know, if i had a beer with you, i'd ask you about america -- like his hispanics won't play the game of being concerned with the past and you look at the racial conflicts in american and in l.a. county it's a war zone between blacks and mexicans, mass race riots in schools, prison riots, and whites are not involved. there's asians in south philadelphia, blacks putting them in hospitals. i think blacks seem to be the most race obsessed group in the country, and not -- they have their own racism which i think they are blind to. the final r point i want to say is this -- >> james, there's two points there, and that's plenty. >> extremely interesting points, james. i want to deal with them in a very serious way. the adoption point, and the example is skewed because of the amount of white children that are available for adoption. i don't know if that exactly points out the point about transending racism, but i think black people -- you used the word "obsessed," but i use the word "aware" because we're aware of how it impacts our lives on a day-to-day basis. i'm not sure you and others are trance ending race so much as not paying attention to it where if you paid attention to it, you would see the way that white privilege helps some. you say it's not helping you, but maybe 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. when we pretend it doesn't exist, we're not helping the situation at all. i would love to have a beer summit with you. so many interesting points, i can't even remember them all. >> the adoption point, the race obsession point. >> i mean, i wouldn't -- i push back against the idea saying black people are race obsessed. i think we're correctly aware of how race impacts our live, and that's what we need to move towards. >> what about the trend of white people adopting people of different ethnicities? >> that's interesting. i like to have children get out of adoption or fannages; right? that's a positive trend. is it hard for white people to teach black children how to be black? absolutely. those chirp are going to have an extra challenge in life in figuring out who am i? i have parents who can't tell me. so much of what i learned about being black comes from parents and friends.. if you have white parents with a white friend group, how do you learn to be black? that's difficult. you see obama did it consciously reading himself into blackness and very consciously exploring it, you know, in the way he explores when he moves to new york and chicago. you know, but that's -- it comes a little bit late. you know, a lot of people's identities are formulated by the time he reads himself and experiences himself into blackness. i mean, you know, of the first thing is get the children out of the ovennages. that's the first thing. i'm not sure the caller's point that white people are adopting out of race and black and asian people are not to is really proving anything, because there's more to the point. >> i grew up in boston, my father was an accountant, now retired. my ploar did a lot of -- my mother did a lot of things, she was a homemaker when we were young, then worked in real estate when we got a little older. lived in a community where we were the only black family. and then as we got older, other families came in, by, again, i remember moments where one or two a rock came through the window. there was -- 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. none of the other families on the block would sign it, and it threw my head for a loom when i found out about it at 6 years old because i 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 treated me with great respect and talked to me. i was the kid at the birthday party who sat and talked with the parents, and, you know, they were great and friendly and lovely to me, and to find out this happened before i was born it was like, wow, that throws you for a loop because they might be nice and lovely and respecting of you, and at the same time, their perception in the head where they are like, let's start a petition to keep the black people from moving in, and that maybe we change their minds because they got to know us, and okay, we like you, but that doesn't make me feel better. you like us, but you don't want black people living near you, like, you know, that doesn't make me feel comfortable, so it's a very complicated world we're talking about. >> has blackness ever been confining? seems to draw on and include an arare of people, experiences, and non-black cultures. >> 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, and the way you walk, the way you talk, who you date or marry. you know, the things that you do, you do yoga, sky diving, you read david foster wallace. black people don't do that, you know? there's a religious blackness people want you 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 and multiplying as time goes on to where now, it can't really say you're an outlier because there's so many people in that group that the outlier is central. >> another tweets in, explain her herman cain. >> i mean, herman cain is extremely interesting, sort of character. i mean, i feel like the rise of obama, and i don't think we'd have herman cain without obama. the rise of obama created this alpha man, a brilliant black man who became our leader and having a black man as a leader was shocking to many people's systems, and the gop naturally attacked president obama. some was racist, some was not, some was reasonable. there's very reasonable critiques of president obama that has nothing to do with race. others were critiques they would have thrown at anybody in the chair, white, black, asian, what have you, but for some reason, they have been made, or they are made to feel that they are being racist for attacking president obama. you can't associate 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. i talked to some republicans who say, hey, rereally like herman cain, you know, we see that he had to work harder to get to where he is 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 see, also, is that the gop does not want to go to mitt romney. there's a 23% threshold that mitt romney remains that forever, and when herman cainfuls leading the polls, and he's slipping now, i thought, realm, he's the last one, we speed dated everybody else in the country, and after relieve herman cain, we're stuck with romney, and no matter how ineffective, unintellectual, inexperienced, how many mistakes herman cain makes, there's still sticking with herman cain because we really don't want to go to romneyville, and this is the last stop before romneyville. somehow, his numbered plummeted, and they discovered a new person to speed date before settling with mitt rome any, and that's newt gingrich, so they are fighting against going to mitt romney with perhaps inevitable, i'm not sure, maybe it is. >> chris in des moines, you're on with toure, author of who is afraid of post-blackness. go ahead with your question. >> hello, and thank you for writing your book, and thank you for being a smart black man. appreciate you, and we need more black images like you out there. >> thank you. >> my question is for one with herman cain, he made a comment about president obama stating he was more blacker than him, and another question is with president obama being the first black president, do you think the reason why a lot of his legislation has not passed is because of his race or because of him being a democrat? all right, thank you for your time. >> of course. i missed part of the second question. >> i, too. chris, are you still with us? >> caller: oh, the second question was a lot of legislation that obama is putting out as far as the jobs bill, and as far as supplemental health care, do you think the reason why a lot of the stuff he's trying to pass is not being passed because of his race or because of not the right time or whatever meaning. >> okay, great chris, thanks. >> great question. i understand your point. no, i don't think that president 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, everybody to feel they are getting something of theirs. this goes back to 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, this just didn't make sense that we could have created a lot of legislation that would be powerful for america, but bring the republicans in and work with them and, you know, i mean, we needed a bit more of a bully pulpit, and he was trying to, you know, work with everybody during the time we needed to, and then the republicans took over, and now he really needs to work with them, but i don't think that his dealing in washington that the problem for him is blackness. the herman cain point about how he's blacker is ridiculous. that has nothing to do with the future of the country. why would we vote for you because you're blacker than president obama? that's not a persuasive argument for white or black people. i don't understand the argument. i mean, if it's that there's two black parents and president obama has one, that doesn't make sense because science rejects the concept of race so as soon as we have a bilogical platform, then quick sand fills in below the platform, and it falls away. 1 it because he grew up in georgia, and president obama grew up in hawaii? that's a ridiculous point. the one good point, and i'm not saying you're making that, but that's what herman cain is making, the one interesting point out of that is i would say is that sometimes black people growing up a lot of black people think those of us who don't grow up around black people are the only one in the college or the law firm or job site or what have you, become forgotful of what had it means to be black, and that's not true. we are hyperaware of what it means to be black. i was not the only one, but about 10% black people in my high school classes, and i found myself being hyperaware of in the interactions with the white people around me. you're certainly never forgetting. there's not a sense that barak obama was in hawaii or indonesia forgetting that he was black. >> chapter 4, who's afraid of post-blackness. shut up, toure, you're not black. what's that about? >> it's dealing with all the racialized things that happened to me throughout my life that shaped me as a racialized being, and it's centered around a moment that i could perhaps say is the beginning of the book for me that happened when i was in college. my freshman year, i bonded very quickly -- when you arrive at college, you're looking for something to grasp on to, and still, i started bonding with the white kids on my hall. no other black kids in my hall. we became quick friends, a click of boys in my hall, and that was my crew. i was friends with them in my class, but closer, went to spring black with the white kids in my haul. that was what i was realitying to. after freshman year, i read the autobiography of malcolm x, grew up, changed some, and actively speaking out with more black relations at campus, sitting at the black tables, going to the parties, and my friend group became intensely, the black man 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 creator and editor of a -- >> where did you go to school? >> emery in atlanta. editor and creator of a black newspaper called the flier. i was close friends with all the leaders of the black community. i was black african-american studies major. you know, i had gone through a transformation over a few years, and not that i ignored blackness before, and this is my friend group, my psychology major, and then i grew. these are years where everybody goes through identity formation, and that's what i was going there #u as well, but, you know, some people were not going to let the past be forgotten and were clinging to things that happened freshman year. we were at a party at the black house where i lived, and, you know, a very vanilla argument broke out about just who was going to clean up the black house after the party, and, you know, we said, hey, don't leave it for us residents to clean up. a nothing argument, and somebody said shut up, toure, you ain't black, in front of a group of 20 or 30 people. it was mortifying. i mean, it sort of killed me a little bit, and i just said nothing. i just retreated to my room. 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 -- you don't even know me. i didn't know what the person's voice sounded like before they spoke. who gave you the right to define me and what is blackness for me? because i -- blackness was very important for me before i even came to emery. you didn't know me. you know, i may not do it the way you want me to do it all the time, but you certainly can't say, well, you're not black. how can you say that? i was already at a point in dealing with how do i reject the white gays, the gaze, not live in a way that's responding to white people in any way, and that moment said, well, there's also a black gaze to reject as well and live the way you think is right, so finish the story, it was like, well, i can't publish this. it's too embarrassing. well, maybe i should publish it because it's embarrassing to you, and i did end up publishing it in the school newspaper, the main school newspaper where i already had a column, and it was a 345szive moment for me and for the school, i think, you know, i mean, almost everybody on campus spoke to any about that story. the first time i saw what it's like to write something that's a bomb and that everybody around you is like, oh, my god, that's interesting. i heard the kids who said they wanted to beat me up, but he was not identified in the story, but everybody knew who i was talking about, but, you know, what it was is that talking about me, and that i have the right to define myself and to define blackness and to define identity for myers. it's not for you to define it for me. that's a large part of what i'm talking about in this book. >> ken in salt lake city. thanks for holding. you're on the line. >> caller: hello? >> hi, how are you? >> caller: hello? i'm doing great. let any just thank you for taking my call. i just want to congratulate you on the book. i am so proud to hear this conversation being had. i'm an african-american who moved actually from atlanta to salt lake city. atlanta, a thriving black population to move to a state where there's less than 1% african-americans in the state, and i'm pursuing a ph.d. in education. my question for you really has to do with the intersection of race and class. you talked about blackness not as a bilogical category, but blackness is something, you know, really that's socially constructed, and in ways that allows people to make assumptions about an individual based on this, and 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 of the african-american middle class used 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, but i'm another of a different class, and in ways to sort of make that distinction to themselves and the working class. >> thanks, ken. >> yeah, excellent point. i mean, you know, i caution us from making those distinctions in 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, might be your parents or your cousins, uncles, aunts, ect., so, you know, we're never more than a couple of missed pay paychecks from going back to the working class or a lost job from going back to the working class. there's tremendous roll back of the asession into the middle class, and in the recession, we're hard education hit by the recession, and the class issues are there. part of the ethos of the book was the idea that the working class over defining blackness is over, and that this idea that blackness is equal to working class and anything else is not black, this is not legitimate, not authentic, inauthentic is just flatly incorrect. as i said in the book, i've been to too many widely spread barbecues in beverley hills, oak bluffs, dc, and pg county to actually believe this lie that, you know, we just had a great party at wily's house the other day, the great visual artist, a total throw down, and it was certainly not a working class moment, you know, but, you know, the middle class, you know, those of us who can creep into the upper middle class are certainly, you know, bringing the blackness, the area to play, you know, every day. we're certainly not leaving blackness by any stretch of the imagination. >> when did you become toure? >> when i went to -- well, i became that when i was born. that's the name my mother gave me at birth. she had read about the president of guinea and loved the name and was like, okay, that's the name. i went back and found the article that she found that she read, but when i left high school and went to college,
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