Cornel West, Ph.D.
Professor, Harvard University
"Race Matters"
October 6, 2000

It’s impossible to talk about race in America, it’s impossible to talk about the vicious legacy of White supremacy in America, it’s impossible to talk about race in health and health care without beginning in what I call loosely the Socratic spirit associated with Athens, what Josiah Royce called the "spirituality of genuine questioning." Seeking. Doubting. Trying to keep track of the forms of dogma orthodoxy. Rigidity. Idols. Fetishes that blind us, whether they take the form of respectability or prevailing paradigms or whether they take the form of our own self-righteousness and our lack of courage to dig deep into who we are as persons, as a society, as a member of the human family. Let us never forget what William Butler Yates said. He said it so well. He said, "It takes more courage to dig deep into the abyss of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield." And we’re never going to be able to deal with race in America unless we have that kind of courage to think, to question, to interrogate. I would say doubt but doubt is such an abstract term in the English language. We think of Descartes sitting there next to the stovepipe engaged in methodological doubt. Do external bodies exist? Do tables exist? Let me say we know Descartes did raise much more profound questions than that but I’m talking about the doubt that our fellow has of Desdamona. Visceral. Existential. A wonderful moment actually in Samuel Becket’s famous 1929 essay, "James Joyce." When he says, "James Joyce de-sophisticated language." He brought it down to the concrete and the visceral so the doubt that he re-invoked has to do with the sensual of hesitancy, the necessity of choice. Static irresolution that must be wrestled with and grappled with.

Another way of talking about this is that the Socratic spirit is one that forces us to deal with what Clinton called the "funk." We don’t like to be reminded that we are featherless two-legged linguistically conscious creatures born between urine and feces. The funk, emerged in the stink and the stench and that love-push got us out. You can’t talk about race. You can’t talk about health and health care. You can’t talk about sanity. You can’t talk about sadness and sorrow without starting with something very concrete in the form of thinking, critical thinking. And yet when we examine the Socratic experience rooted in Athens it’s very interesting that from a rendition of the agent of Socrates and the work of Plato and Xenophone and Aristophanes (but of course Socrates never wrote a word, he was too busy questioning), but in those texts they allow us to gain access to this towering pillar, among others, West. It’s unclear whether Socrates ever cries. I don’t know about you but anybody that has never cried more than likely has never loved. If you’ve never loved, you’ve never really lived, which means we also have to move to Jerusalem to talk about race. It’s not just the courage to think, it’s the courage to love, to give, to serve, to sacrifice. Elijah, Jeremiah, Jesus weeps. And for me any serious discussion about race in America, especially linked to when bodies have healthcare, is to engage in some coming together, not some synthesis, but some highly articulated overlapping of the best of the Socratic spirit of questioning. Why? Because the unexamined life is not worth living, yes, but Malcolm X adds, "the examined life is painful." And that pain, that hurt, those bruises, those wounds, those scars lead toward tears and laughter and in the end action. And in many ways I would argue that the best coming together of Socratic experience of Athens and the Jerusalem-based spirit of compassion in mustering the wheel and imagination to see what it’s like to be in the skin, the shoes of others, is manifest in the blues. Jazz. The US… the tragic comic sensibility that tries to keep alive the best of the democratic tradition to talk about race in America rooted in the best of the past has to do with trying to keep track of the blue notes that people of African descent interjected into American history. Dissonance. Flat fifth note. The weeping of European instrument. The saxophone of John Coltrane. Love supremes seeking but also serving, questioning but also connecting with others, trying to situate oneself in a story bigger than oneself. Trying to locate oneself in a narrative grander than oneself. But deeply grounded in the best of a democratic tradition that says that every day people’s lives have dignity, that lives are shot through with a sense of the problematic and majestic and the tragic, and that they ought to have a voice. And you all know the negro national anthem is what? Lift every voice. Allow the voices to be heard at the highest levels of the decision-making processes and institutions that guide and regulate their lives because anti-democratic conditions associated with voice-less-ness. The voice is not heard. A sure sign that more than likely you’re gonna catch some hell. Or as Malcolm X used to say, "You’ll be stuck in the mud." He is not talking solely about people of African descent. Our Brown brothers and sisters. Asian brothers and sisters. Indigenous brothers and sisters. White brothers and sisters. Human beings across the board. And yet how difficult it is to keep track of the note of dissonance and defiance, the blue note in American life.

Why is that so? There’s a number of reasons. I think it has something to do with the fact that we Americans tend to be a people that specialize in denying and evading and avoiding the lifestyle of the human condition and the underside of American society. We’re the city on the hill, the moral exemplar to the world, the hotel civilization, as Henry James put it, where the sun is always shining, in a hotel where the lights are always on. Now I appreciate you all putting me in nice hotel last night. I don’t want to take this thing to far here. But I don’t confuse it with the reality of Charlottesville. I know there has got to be some unnecessary social misery, some unjustified suffering, somebody catching hell in this town. Hotel civilization. Sentimental. Melodramatic. Happy endings. No problem we cannot solve. No limit we cannot transgress. No constraint can hold us. Sounds like the State of the Union every January, doesn’t it? That’s so American. And it’s positive. This is a generation of tremendous energy, creativity, restlessness, but it’s immature if you do not confront the night side of the human predicament in our own lives, in our society, in our world. And democracy is always about fundamentally raising two questions: What is the relationship of public interest and common good to the most vulnerable among us as citizens and human beings? And secondly, how do we curtail the deployment and use of arbitrary power? It produces injurious harm. It violates rights and liberties. Two fundamental queries.

It is no accident that any time we keep track of the "blue note" Americans. And by "blue note" I don’t mean just the situation of Black folk. Tennessee Williams produced a collection of plays. The first collection of plays is called what? American Blues, because he kept track of the "blue note." The American Hamlet. Blanche DuBois. Streetcar Named Desire. Keeping track of the "blue note." Eugene O’Neil. Ice Man Cometh. Blues sensibility. Melville. The whale might be white but the brother’s got a blues sensibility. Keeping track of the night side. Fitzgerald. Gatsby believed in the green light. Things will always be better if we can be bigger, diffusing greatness with giganticism-- so American. In the end self despiction and destruction at the spiritual, psychic, social, and political and economic level. How do we keep track of the underside? Writers have tried to accent something profoundly un-American, namely a sense of history. And I don’t have to remind you all here at the University of Virginia about a sense of history. But the question is what kind of sense of history is it? This is the grand house that Mr. Thomas Jefferson envisioned. I won’t say he built it. He could envision it, he could see it, but not put it together. Folk look like me building it. I wouldn’t call that democratic cooperation. But the question is can we keep track of his virtues and his vices? His vision of freedom on the one hand that could grow and deepen and be refined and at the same time acknowledge the ways in which he was a child of his age just like us. As F. Scott Fitzgerald put it so well. As they say in 1938, the crack-up. He said, "the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Is our sense of history complex enough to keep track of the best and the worst, the virtues and the vices, to build on the richness and to hold at arm’s length the blindnesses and sometimes even the ugliness and viciousness? For me any serious discussion about race in America has to acknowledge the ways in which Indigenous peoples’ lands and bodies were dispossessed, violated, attacked, maimed, sometimes murdered, subjucated. Not to engage in any cheap PC chitchat, but simply confront the underside of New World history. 22% of the inhabitants of the 13 colonies in 1776 were enslaved Africans and yet no substantive allusion to the institution of slavery in the US Constitution. That’s called denial. As Malcolm X reminds us, "the chickens will come home to roost." As you evade and deny the most barbaric of wars in the 19^th century. 620,000 dead-- Civil War over an institution not even acknowledged in the Constitution. What are we amending it to? Well there was something going on that we really didn’t accent but here are the bodies to show. More Union soldiers dead than all US soldiers in World War II. That’s how deep it cuts in the fabric of American life at the very beginning of its inception and denial. And grant it, there was effort to create the noble multi-racial society in many ways unprecedented in human history. Reconstruction, with all of its faults and flaws. 1877—it’s over. It‘s over. 1882—a statute—Chinese Exclusion Act. 1886—another Statute—of Liberty. All who want to come are welcome. Please! You have certain folk in mind. The oppressed and subjugated of Europe—yes. Asian brothers and sisters—no. Africans—no. Mexicans, with its changing border, owing to imperial expansion—only if they’re confined to the plantation-like work conditions in the Southwest and California. And again this not in any way a matter…and this is so very important, especially for the younger generation, to keep the Socratic spirit. It’s not a question of trashing or bashing. It’s a question of confronting and encountering in order to constitute ways of understanding the past that can serve as springboards and launching pads for our future. That’s what we’re talking about. That’s what keeps democracies alive. That’s what keeps them vital and vibrant.

T.S. Eliot used to say in his famous essay of 1919 Tradition and Individual Talent, "Tradition is not something you inherit. If you want it you must obtain it with great labor. You’ve got to fight for it. You don’t gain access to traditions by means of osmosis." Democratic traditions are like that too. Just like there are heritages here at the University of Virginia. Folks who come in as freshmen are just smiling and excited to be here. But by the time you march you know that you have gained access to the tradition of this institution by means of hard labor, at least between Monday and Wednesday. We won’t talk about Thursday / Friday. And you have been shaped and transformed. You’ve undergone some kind of metamorphosis. Looking at these brothers here in the black suits. Must be Alpha brothers. Looking very, very sharp. But you are in the process of metamorphosis. You are changing and being changed. You are shaping this institution within the best image of who you are and I hope you are being shaped in the image of this institution in terms of its best. You have something to contribute. They something to contribute to you. And you leave this place by making it better if we do it right. But that’s how any tradition functions, especially something as fragile and precious as a democratic tradition, not just here but around the world.

Look at what’s going on right now in Yugoslavia. Democratic tradition hemorrhaged. The demons having to express themselves. All of Africa. Latin America. Well there is some hemorrhaging going on in the American democratic process too. And one way of talking about it is looking at it through the lens of race. It’s not the only way. Can’t talk about race without talking about class. The vast majority of the people of color have always been what? Working people. You certainly can’t talk about race without talking about gender. You got to include my momma, my sisters, Brown women, Asian women and so forth. They’re the vast majority in all of our communities no matter what color culture. You can not talk about race without talking about empire. America today is the last great empire. 66 countries with troops all around the world. I saw a brief allusion to it at the debate last night. Made it brief. But the hemorrhaging taking place in the American democratic process, though in many ways more developed than so many other places, but it still has a long way to go. A long way to go.

I’m very blessed to be part of a series in talking about health and health care. It has to be understood within the larger backdrop, not just of the history but the present as history. It’s no accident that an ideology of white supremacy that begins by degrading bodies of people of color. Life having less value. Trying to convince people of African descent that we have the wrong hips and lips and noses and hair texture and skin color. Trying to convince us to hate ourselves and doubt ourselves. Doubt ourselves in the sense of having the very capacity to learn, think critically, organize, mobilize, fight, muster courage. What? Ideology and practice. Convincing the vast majority of humankind, women, sisters of all colors, you have less intelligence than man. Stay within the domestic space. Or, gay brothers and lesbian sisters, you belong in the closet because of your abnormality as opposed to expressing your desire and quest for pleasure in ways that call into question conventional morality and all of its respectability and oftentimes, though not always, all of its hypocrisy.

Notes of dissonance and defiance. Blue notes. Between 1877 and 1954, as we know, America had its own system of apartheid. Every two and a half days for 51 years, some black child, black man, or black woman was hanging from some tree. "Strange fruit the Southern trees bare," Billie Holiday sang about with such power. And the Jewish brother, Able Marapoe, writing the lyrics, wonderful black Jewish lines there. Trying to keep track of America’s underside. How do we keep these folk under control? We instill so much fear in their hearts and souls that they will not think enough of themselves to organize and mobilize in a massive way. Maybe if we can keep them in control, we can keep our workers and our women and our small farmers under control, because America is about, first and foremost, economic growth by means of corporate priority. That’s the sacred cow, never to be called into question. The most precious assumption that is never to be interrogated. I didn’t hear it last night. I didn’t hear it this week in the presidential campaign and I’m not holding my breath. The only one to raise issues is brother Ralph Nadar. That’s why I’m with my brother. I’m not here to proselytize. I’m just telling you where I stand.

How do we raise the most fundamental questions about American democracy? To do what? To make it richer, better. The great John Dewer used to say, "to cure of the ills of American democracy is more democracy within constitutional constraints." Now as a Christian, I don’t believe in cures in space and time. Had long debates about this brother. Along with the great Rein O’Neiber when he says, "American democracy is a proximate solution to insoluble problems." That’s my kind of tragic comic sensibility. I believe in the potential of human beings but I know the cracked vessels that we are is such that we are never going to extricate the deep anxieties and insecurities and fear that constitute the sources of bigotry and arrogance and haughtiness. So I do not believe in paradise in time and space. I don’t believe in utopia in time and space. I believe we are all in here trapped in time and space on the way to death, extinction of some sort. The question is how do we make a blow for freedom and justice in the short time that we’re here. As the folks used to say at the Black church, "If the kingdom of God is within you, then everywhere you go you ought to leave a little heaven behind." But it’s just a little heaven it’s not Heaven, capital H. Which means democracy is always what? Unfinished; incomplete; in process. But the challenge is, how do we expand it? How do we deepen it? And I believe the major obstacle for the expansion of American democracy, and any discussion about race, any discussion about health and health care, is the degree to which in the last 15 years or so we have constituted the market as an idol and a fetish. Markets are human constructions. They are created by law. They have virtues, yes. We don’t know of any price mechanism that allows us to adjudicate between the various demands and supply of heterogeneous mass populations. Yes, markets are indispensable. They are inescapable. But at the same time, under what conditions? Under what condition? When they become so unedited, unregulated, unfettered, they become a fetish. We ascribe magical powers to them. And it’s no accident that health care in America has become what? It is a sick market. A deeply sick market. It is clear that that particular application does not work in the way in which it ought if we’re serious about the basic needs of human beings, psychic and physical health.

Super markets are something else. Works fairly well. Let the markets do their thing. We have to be experimental, improvisation, jazz-like when it comes to this stuff. No ideologies or blueprints. The sad thing is that beyond the virtues of markets, their efficiency, the ability to generate high levels of productivity only to material sinners, working people. Karl Marx was absolutely right when he said, "A market is a relation of power." Asymmetric relation of power. Working people – bosses. Management – employees. Profit-making—and if workers are organized enough, they can partake. If they are not organized enough, they can be marginalized. Which means there has to be some democratic countervailing force to ensure there is some ideal of justice or markets will become…what’s the right word, especially in this sacred place. It’s problematic to say the least. Child labor, socialists, legislation. Nah, we’re just trying to protect the children. See, we can fit that in while you’re making your profit. You ask some transnational corporations today about the child labor laws that are not operating in Asia, in Latin America. Just began operating in the United States in the early part of the 20^th century. Democratic countervailing forces. Prophetic citizens. Christians, Jews, secular brothers and sisters, atheists, agnostics coming together to say there ought to be some constraints on markets. They can’t become so ubiquitous and so promiscuous that it downplays human dignity, especially among the most vulnerable children. They same wouldn’t be true for workers until 1930’s. The workers organized. Isn’t that something? They gave in legal collective bargaining. Argentina had it in 1836. America had in 1935 and Argentina is not known to be on the cutting edge of social legislation in Maderna. It’s a great country. They’re just not known for being that. That’s the power of management. Capital. It’s one of the reasons why, in the year 2000, that we’ve seen unbelievable escalating, galloping, and increasing wealth and income inequality. Now I hear Mr. Gore, sounding like a populist, almost sounds like the early Thomas Watson. And I think Mr.Gore, you’re so concerned about people, your critique of the power. You’ve been fighting so hard for the working people. Why is it that the wealth inequality has escalated under your watch, your and Mr. Clinton’s watch? Did you know that one percent of the population owned 48 percent of the total net financial wealth in America? It was 39 percent when you took office in 1992. Or if you’re speaking on behalf of the world, the three wealthiest individuals in the world have more wealth than the bottom 48 countries. That one individual in America has more wealth than 120 million fellow citizens in the same country. I’m not mentioning any names and as I said I don’t believe in demonizing anybody. Mr. Gates worked hard and so forth and so on. Sure. It’s not about him; it’s about the structural and institutional conditions such that one person can have that much wealth in a society in which 21 percent of it’s children live in poverty and 40 percent of Black and Brown children live in poverty and working people’s wages have been 2 and 3 percent in increase. CEO salaries are up 400 percent. CEO salaries of the top Fortune 500 companies are up 925 percent. It’s called corporate greed. Managerial greed. Why? Because there is no mechanism of accountability that allow working people to somehow revel in those profits. Between 1945 and 1973 when profits went up, wages went up. That’s no longer the case after 1973. So the result is what… a more and more Balkanized society. Class and race, with all of it’s concomitant consequences. Access to jobs of the living wage. Access to quality health care. Access to quality child care. Access to quality education. Students here at the University of Virginia, more than likely you will be part of the professional managerial class. And if things continue you will have a very, very prosperous life. I didn’t say happy, I said prosperous life. You may be spiritually empty and wrestling with existential malnutritions, but you’ll have abundant material toys. But you are human beings and fellow citizens in this country and your destiny is inextricably linked to the 2 million brothers and sisters of all colors who find themselves incarcerated at this very moment. Tied together. 2.1 million. Think about it—1994 was 1 million in prison. Today it’s 2 million. In 6 years it has doubled. And there’s more black brothers and sisters in prison now than there were all American brothers and sisters of all colors 6 years ago. 9.4 percent of all black brothers between 20 and 26 are incarcerated. I didn’t say on parole or probation. I said in jail. Now you either have to believe the young black brothers are genetically disposed toward criminal behavior, therefore you can turn your back. And we’ve still got some folks holding onto that. Or you believe there is something about the circumstances and the context. There is something about the market forces being so powerful that it shatters family, community, levels of underemployment and unemployment with mentalities, attitudes, and sensibilities that are market driven. Exactly. And by mentalities and sensibilities market driven, what I mean is views of the world that put a premium on short term gain or ways of looking at the world that are preoccupied with the 11^th commandment ‘Thou shalt not get caught." Get over by any means. And we’re seeing that. What is it now? 71 percent of high school students across race and region say they cheat regularly on exams. To do what? Success. It’s only about success. Capital "S." It’s fairly clear the Democratic party cheated in the last election. But they won. It’s over now. Sorry about that. "Yeah, but you can do your research stuff but I’m in the White House now."

Firestone. Lies. It’s a human thing. Not pointing a finger. I’ve lied before myself. I’m a lier too. Not proud of it. I need some accountability. What a future in talking about America. What a future in talking about race matters and a market culture that’s so obsessed with buying and selling and making and lending, that non-market values like love and trust and fidelity, sacrificed for something bigger than you, not just the next check, pushed to the margin.

Young children now wrestling more and more with depression. Six and seven year old wrestling with depression. I don’t know about the University of Virginia, but at Harvard we’ve got one out of six students who are depressed. Now I was there 25 years ago and we had political movements and social movements. It was about 4% of us that you could say were depressed. Now we may have had some flying high in the friendly sky, but we were not depressed. Something’s going on at the psychic and social level connected to the economic market forces. Market models of relationship. Short term. Bodies bumping up against one another and asking what the performance level of zero after the beer. I freak you, you freak me. Umm. Going on to the next body next week. Market model. Disposable. Just like so many workers after they are downsized. Just disposable. And the result is what? Low quality interaction, low quality relation, low quality community, low quality of life in the society especially for young people. Especially for young people! If we looked at American society through the lens of its children, we would not be living in a moment of such self-congratulations and such celebration. Let’s look beneath the meretricious glitter that’s trotted out all the time. And what do we see? Human beings -- shuddering, suffering, struggling. But the top one percent, having a party. The top 20%, relatively euphoric, where many of you all are headed. I’m not saying all. And I’m not putting it down because I don’t envy the rich at all. I’ve made a lot of money in my life and I’m broke as the ten commandments now. So I know what it’s like to have a lot of money. I just give it away. You see I’m a Christian. I’m a pilgrim. I don’t analyze none of this stuff. Three piece suit. Fine. I’m necked tomorrow. Fine. I’m going to say the same thing. Same message. Same vision. Same analysis. Why? Because, in part, when I went to college, I didn’t have a market conception of my education. I didn’t go to college just to gain access to high quality skills so I could get a dynamite job and live in some vanilla suburb. No. Not at all. Not at all. Market education. Narrow. Cheap. I wanted a skill, yes, but I wanted a democratic model of education. A critical sensibility, what it means to be a participatory citizen, connects me with various movements around the world with a sense of history. And of course, I know that goes on at the University of Virginia. But there is a tension. A deep tension. And there is no way that we can talk seriously about race matters and this connection of bodies, health of bodies – psychic and physical – without talking about these democratic models across the board.

Now I know that in many ways Virginia is part of the Bible belt, maybe on the margin, but close enough to North Carolina to qualify. And you would think religion would play an important role here. But American culture is in there with market religion. Gospels of health and wealth and prosperity. Shaking one’s tin cup in the face of God. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Can’t wait for my blessing. Market religion. Most Christianity in America is "Market Christianity," which means what? That it can’t serve the way it ought to kick in to a democratic struggle. Post-resurrection Christianity. "I’m identified with a winner, and I show up on Easter. I don’t want Friday. I don’t want cross. I don’t want struggle. I don’t want blood. I don’t want suffering. Let me know when all that is over and I’ll show up." It’s clear because look at the churches. Engage in an experiment with me. On Easter week, just drive around Charlottesville and Richmond and other places. And you’ll see on Thursday, the church is already saying, "He is risen!" He hasn’t even been crucified yet, but they want winners, winners, market Christianity. That does not serve democratic purposes. It allows Christians to adjust and adapt to the market culture rather than calling into question the idols of the culture, so you don’t worship before the altars of the culture. But that takes tremendous courage to think, courage to struggle for justice, courage to love, courage to cut against the grain. To be unpopular. To be nonconformist. And there is always a small prophetic minority. By minority I am using the moral and spiritual and political sense of that word. Certainly not skin pigmentation. Not at all. Clarence Thomas…God bless him and be with him. Skin pigmentation not a criterion of being progressive. The facts. But it’s not just Clarence Thomas. These days it’s most of black leadership. Most the brown. Most the yellow. Most the white. Who loves the people enough? Who respects the people enough to tell them the truth when they go out to the underside of the present day? When I hear my dear brother who I love deeply, Reverend Jesse Jackson, say Gore and Leiberman is the "Dream Team".

I said, "Brother, you better wake up and dream again. What are you talking about? The Dream Team? What have they said about increasing wealth and equality? Not a word. What have they said about 44 fellow Americans who do not have health insurance that brother Bradley before them was trying to highlight?"

"Well we’ll move very slowly and incrementally."

"What have they said about the children who are living in poverty? Why not just end it given all this surplus that we have? We’ll move incrementally. What about working people’s wages?"

"Well we’ve got unedited markets around the globe. If they can adjust, that’s fine."

"What about the environment, ecological conditions?"

"Well we’ll deal with that incrementally."

"Well ok, I understand that we don’t have Solutions, capital S, but where are your real priorities?"

business. Get down on your knees when the corporate elite come in and you tremble because you need their money for your campaign. And where are black leaders? Most of them are in the hip pocket of Gore and Leiberman, looking for voter registration money, hoping to be appointed or hoping to gain access to the Rose Garden after the election. When the masses of people suffering, even though they’ve been off in the masses in Africa and Asia and Latin America. Who’s telling the demos the truth, small "t"? I don’t believe in capital "T". It is a revisable Truth, a fallible Truth.

Let me be very clear and I’ll bring this to a close. You all have been very kind and patient. The democratic traditions are very fragile and they can become very weak and feeble. 1941 – 3 fragile traditions in the world. And if those older brothers and sisters of all colors hadn’t fought the forces of fascism, we wouldn’t be sitting here in such luxury. That’s the generation brother Tom Brokaw is so crazy about. I’ll give him credit. That was a serious generation. Hitler, Franco, Mussolini – suffocating democratic possibilities to step forward. 1960’s – American apartheid, sitting at the center of the most powerful empire of the world. Can you break the back of American apartheid? Or will you not only be a hypocrite, but will the legacy of white supremacy promote the arrested development of your democracy given that you are now the grand moral example vis-à-vis the Soviet union with all of its levels of regimentation and repression of it’s population but doing so much better when it comes to health care and literacy? What did Americans do in the 1960’s of all colors though led by Black folk? Broke the back of American apartheid. You all know it better than I because the scars of that legacy are still at work, not just in Charlottesville but in Chicago and Detroit and Los Angeles and other places.

What’s the challenge of the younger generation today? To hit this wealth inequality head on. Try to turn around this market driven culture with these market models that are sometimes applicable but also in many instances not applicable, as in health care. Last, but not least, generate some sense of confidence in public life. The ability of citizens to really make a difference in the world, because so many people who do attend to the underside of American life and the human predicament but feel so helpless and impotent. "I can’t do anything. My vote doesn’t matter. My organization is weak. I am up against so much. Multinational capital is so overwhelming, it mighty." And it is, but it’s not almighty. Things change. And if we do not keep alive the best of the democratic tradition regarding this underside, of which one of the best ways of getting entre to is by keeping track of the effects and consequences of the legacy of white supremacy and its relation to the issues of class and gender and heterosexism and most importantly public interest, because in the end, whether we believe it or not, we are all on the same ship. You may be inhabiting a certain portion of that ship and having a good time, but that ship has a leak in it. In the end we go up together or we go down together. The question is whether we can meet the challenge. Does America have the capacity to democratize its present day insufficient democracy, to acknowledge its oligarchic, plutocratic, and to some degree still pigment-o-cratic reality? And I don’t know. I think it’s an open question. All civilizations have structural limits and they all ebb and flow, they come and go. There is no doubt, in many ways, America has been a grand, though deeply flawed civilization, compared to other civilizations. It’s been a grand though deeply flawed empire. But one of its distinctive characteristics is that it tells too many lies about itself. And whether we have what it takes to confront the realities that the mendacious discourse hiding concealed is an open question. There is no guarantee. It depends on what we do individually. It depends on what we do collectively, in our words, in our deeds, in our policies, in our programs, and especially in our leadership. And I simply say to each and every one of you who are willing to take up this challenge that I’ll be there with you because I am going down fighting. I’ve had too much wind at my back to turn back. Thank you all so very much. I appreciate it.

It’s a good time for question and answer. I want to thank the sign language folks for communicating. I really appreciate it. We’ll take a good time for questions and answers, public conversation.