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but they won t go after medicare because that s middle class entitlements. there s a reason why the poorest sector in our society are poor, and for the most part minorities. and it s because they don t vote. they are underrepresented in washington, d.c. and so it s this is just a much bigger problem that s been coming at us now for 30 or 40 years. well, i mean, i think it depends on your framework, brother joe. and i must say i miss my dear sister, mika. but it depends on your framework, you see. because brother tavis and i decided when we met 25 years ago we would keep alive the legacy of dr. king until the day we die, which means we look at america to not spin how can we keep the debt down, but how can working americans live lives of peace and dignity. which means jobs with a living wage. how do we create conditions with ....
The bottom line, as i see it here in washington, at the moment, alex, there is a bipartisan consensus that the poor just don t matter. and as dr. west intimated a moment ago, if you don t speak the truth about the suffering of everyday people, then that suffering gets rendered invisible. so that poor people in this country right now are at best a political calculation. at worst, a political afterthought. do you think the, you know, the occupy protesters, certainly, i think, made an impact in changing the national dialogue to one that centered more on income inequality, but is it your feeling, dr. west, that the poor are still very much left out of that conversation? that it s too much of an emphasis on the working class? absolutely. brother tavis and i just finished this wonderful poverty manifesto called the rich and the rest of us. and it s very clear like the invisible man, poor people areç invisible. we do not accent their capacities or their abilities, and yet we are movi ....
Smiley show, tavis smiley, and princeton university professor, dr. cornel west. they are co-authors co-hosts, sorry, of the radio show, smiley and west. they went on a poverty tour this summer and are hosting a discussion tonight called remaking america, from poverty to prosperity. thank you both for joining the show. i want to first, dr. west, get your thoughts on mitt romney s comment that issues of income inequality should be discussed in quiet rooms and that this is really all part of an envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach. no, i think that s going to be one of the subject matters that brother tavis is gathering tonight on c-span. we re going to talk about the difference between righteous indignation and envy. working people, poor people, for the most part, do not have envy for rich people. they have righteous indignation, because they re suffering. they re hurting. they re in pain. and when investment bankers were suffering and hurting, they got a bailout. that s called ....
Professor west, we were speaking earlier on this show, as i m sure you re aware, over the past several days, aspects of basically a type of criticism, even if you think it s disingenuous, a type of criticism of the bain record and the roll of private equity in the u.s. economy has come from unlikely places. come from some of romney s competitors, including newt gingrich. you ve written a lot about how ideas evolve, how ideas move around in our conversation. what is your take on that? why do you think those ideas percolated up into the republican primary and where does itç go from here? i think what has happened is that both the occupy movement, also the kind of work that brother tavis and others have done on poverty, we re moving more toward truth. and we want to know, what is the truth about the kind of capitalism that we have? is it predatory, is it vulgar? is it justified? is it legitimate? is it vicious? do we take seriously the suffering of working people or are they just marg ....
Investment bankers. poor people hurting is envy. romney ought to be ashamed of 1 himself. wow, socialism for bankers. that is going on our twitter feed immediately. tavis, i want to ask you, there s a new pew research center poll out this morning that shows an increasing number of both democrats and republicans see conflicts between rich or poor. i was not as surprised by republicans acknowledging this, but a republican, 17 points up in terms of saying there is increasing conflict between rich and poor. does that surprise you, that the republican party understands this notion that there may be tension and strife among the classes? well, i m always polls can be specious, as you know, alex, because people tell pollsters one thing and behave in other ways. i wish that the public policy pronouncements coming out of those, like mr. romney and others, who want to be president, were more consistent with those numbers. ....