The Joe Rogan Experience - #1325 - Dr. Cornel West

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

Dr. Cornel West is a philosopher, political activist, social critic, author, and public intellectual. He is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and holds the title of Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He has also taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris.

Boom and we're live. How are you sir? Oh brother, I'm so blessed to be here man I want to salute you to work that you do and the fact that you were one hell of an artist man I'm telling you. Well, thank you very much. Come on stand-up comedy. Oh, that's strange times. Oh We the swing from the political the personal from the animals on to the uh the visionary it's just a beautiful thing to behold my brother thank you from you that is an honor i've been a huge fan of you for a long time so for you to say that to me means means the world oh it's a deep thing i can see your love for richard pratt man i walk in your space and i'm just transformed by the geist the spirit the spirit is place man yeah of this place, man. Hendrix here, Pryor here.

Then when you tell me you worked with the great Richard Pryor. I did. Oh, my God. For five weeks, I followed him when I was a young comedian at the Comedy Store. I went on right after him every night he performed. What was that like, though, brother? It was strange just to be in the room with him because when I was a 14-year-old boy, my parents took me to see Live at the Sunset Strip,

and I could not believe that anybody could be so funny just talking. That was my first experience with stand-up comedy. Other than that, I'd seen people perform on The Tonight Show and things along those lines. But with Bob Hope and so many others, he's highly talented. It was like, ha, ha, ha. It was okay. You know what I mean? But when you see Richard in concert in a movie theater,

I couldn't believe how funny it was. It didn't make sense. I had seen funny movies before, like comedy movies that made you laugh, but nothing, nothing like that. I'm like, this guy's just talking. It changed my life. But you can see the power of art,

and it's connected to freedom, because I've always viewed Richard Pryor as the freest man in the 20th century, It changed my life. his own sense of self. He doesn't care what other people think. He doesn't know that you're looking for other people's approval, recognition. He's going to be who he is. And he pays a major cost for that. Of course, I mean, anytime you that free in a world of such a, uh,

such unfreedom, you're going to pay a major, major cost. Well, he had spectacular honesty and he took, I feel like what happened was Lenny Bruce opened the art form up, and then Richard Pryor took it to a new place. That's true. In terms of the origins, the real greats.

That's exactly right. But then George. Oh, yeah. Oh, George Carlin. Well, he was the most prolific. He did an hour special every year until he died. Every year he did a new hour. And they're different.

Each one different. But all three. But you are in that tradition. I was saying, man, when I saw you doing the dogs and the cats and getting inside of their souls. You know how profound that is, though, man, as an artist and as a human being to do that. I said, oh, my God. And it reminded me of prior and so when i walk in and i see your connection i said i'll be i'll be i shouldn't be surprised well it was just being in

the room with him was strange i just couldn't believe it was real you know i was in my 20s you were in the 20s he was in his he was the end. And like I said, he couldn't walk anymore. They used to have to carry him to the stage. He performed. Sold out every night. Sitting in the chair? Yeah, sat in the chair. Really?

Yeah, yeah. But it was sold out every night. People couldn't believe they were there. I've never seen that before. I don't believe there was tapes of it. I don't believe anybody recorded it. If they did record it, nobody released it. This was in the 90s. And this was this was again this was the end of his life he just decided you

know he was dying and he's decided he'd go back to his love he wanted to go back doing stand-up because you got you all got that picture january 1stryor. My brother just broke down all the information. Yeah, Jamie. So tell us what he got. Because I didn't even know what he got arrested for. 35 days in jail, man. He had a woman that he knew. He moved to Pittsburgh, apparently, when he was about 22 years old.

Let me switch that in there. Pryor conviction. There it is. There's the mugshot. Wow. What do you got to get? So he had a friend of his, which is a woman that was singing in clubs her father was a cop and in his autobiography he wrote that among other things that he or she paid him or she gave him

money he admitted to beating her ass so i beat her ass first didn't think about hitting a woman as much as i thought about my own survival. That led him to being arrested. Sentenced to 90 days. He served 35 of them. And had a $7 fine. He had a crazy life, man. He grew up in a brothel. Yeah, right there in Peoria.

Yeah. Peoria, Illinois. No, the violence against any sister is wrong. But prior, though, my man, he was wild free cruel tender genius crazy wrong as he could be right as he could be he's a human being he's a complicated human being though you know i never met him before but uh his spirit means the world to me me as well i I tell you. Well, I think every comic.

I've never met a single comic that doesn't think he's one of the most important figures in the history of the art. Probably the most important. It's like him and Lenny Bruce, in my opinion, and then Kennison later. But Kennison for a much, much shorter time. Who would be the greatest female comic artist? I think Roseanne Barr. Roseanne? Yeah.

Roseanne is profoundly talented. There's no doubt about it. She doesn't get the credit she deserves because she's legitimately mentally ill. And that's one of the things I had on the podcast to highlight with her. Legitimately mentally ill. She was hit by a car when she was 15. I didn't know that. She spent nine months in a mental hospital. Really?

Yeah. She lost her ability to count. She was very good at mathematics before that and then after the car accident The severe head injury changed her personality Yeah, same with Kinison. Kinison was hit by a car when he was young as well and changed his personality radically too. Head injuries make people very impulsive very wild and impulsive and oftentimes a slave to their own impulses and i think uh kinnison was a big example of that as was rosanne but rosanne was the first really loud brash almost male female comedian who could kill like a man you know she was but what about the joan rivers and

the dealers and so i love mon. Monique gets to me. She touches my soul every time she's on stage. Have you ever seen Miss Pat? No. Miss Pat's a monster. Really? She's a monster. She's had a crazy life.

She's been on this podcast a couple times. Her life was insane. I mean, she was selling crack when she was 14. She had a baby when she was 14. Was it 13? She was pregnant at 13 with a married man had a couple kids with him yeah she's she and she is so funny she's so wild and funny yeah there's something about the and it goes back to aristophanes you know it goes back to those early comics in the history of the West who were were the first to really delve into everyday people's

experiences, not the well-to-do. That was tragedy. Tragedy only had to do with the nobility and aristocracy, but it was comedy that dwelled into the lives of everyday people. Then Plato takes the whole form and shifts it into the dialogue and makes Socrates, of course, the grand hero. But it was Aristophanes, at least in the West, who initiated this with the clouds and frogs and so on. And it goes all the way through from Jonathan Swift to Mark Twain to Nathaniel West to the brother Ishmael Reed. I mean, these are the great American comic writers.

Twain, Wes, Reed. And see, comic writers are different than the tragic ones. Dostoevsky and Kafka's comic in its own deep way, too. The greatest, of course, is Chekhov, though. Anton Chekhov. I know you check out Chekhov, right? No. Oh, brother, you haven't fully lived until you've read some Anton Chekhov. Yeah. Oh, you read Three Sisters of Uncle Von, you read The Cherry Orchard,

any of the short stories. He's had over 6,000 characters in his short stories, man. Whoa. To be thrust into the ravine or even misery, man. The greatest one is called A Student. It's only two and a half pages. It's his favorite short story. Oh, you read that tonight.

It'll blow your mind. Wow. You listen to it. You read that tonight. Listen to a little Curtis Mayfield. Okay. Listen to a little Stephen Sondheim. Okay.

Stephen Sondheim, No More, Into the Woods. Curtis Mayfield, I loved and I lost. And then the student checkoff. Oh, man, you'd be ready for some serious, serious cognac. On your recommendation. Oh, no, no, because I know you serious intellectual, too. You do your homework. But I'm just saying this in terms of just enhancing, you know, all of our lives.

I mean, the comic writers, the comedians of various sorts, be they on the stage or be they on the page, are, I think, vanguards of the species in a very deep way. You know, because we as a species have to objectify our grief and our pain and our sadness and our sorrow. And it begins with moans and groans, and you transfigure those moans and groans first into song, but song then moves into language. And the language is not rational language or philosophy and dialectic, but it's a language of stories, especially the stories that are self-critical. We laugh at ourselves, not at others.

We laugh with others rather than just at others. So it's not that sudden glory that Hobbes talks about in regard to the comic, where you're looking down and condescending. You see, that's an aristocratic conception of the comic. You're laughing at the ordinary people who are so dirty and filthy. It's profoundly anti-democratic, right? As if, you know, well-to-do folk don't fart right don't say don't don't don't do number one and number two and fall in and out of love and act a fool and live lives of inconsistency right but act when you get these democratic forms of the comic see that's you and prior and rosanne and monique and george carlin and all of that that's free

spirit though brother and most of our lives That's free spirit, though, brother. In most of our lives, you see, we're dealing with a whole history of a species of structures of domination, oppression. That's the history of the species for the most part. And there's moments in which there's breakthroughs, in which there's a freedom of spirit. And then you have some institutionalization of that, which is democracy. That's why democracies are so fragile and usually don't last that long because it cuts so radically against the sense of really wanting to be free. I mean, Dostoevsky's right. Most people really are afraid of freedom. They want to defer to authority. They want to conform. And when they're

introduced to freedom and it really catches hold, they say, oh, my God, it's a tremendous cost to be paid, but I like that. There's something about that. And they can hear it in the music. They can see it in your comic art, the priors and others. And it allows these effects and consequences in people's lives to really enrich their lives before they die. Why do you think people are afraid of freedom? Well, it's courage. I mean, there is no freedom without unbelievable, unprecedented, unstoppable courage.

And courage is not widely distributed in the species, man. That's a very charitable way of looking at people. No, it's true, man. Most people are rather conform they complacent they're complicitous they're cowardly yeah they well adjusted the injustice and want to smile and walk around as peacocks rather than cut against the grain and have to bear witness and therefore end up on a cross or like socrates condemned i mean most of the great figures that we know yeah and there's more consequences for

that now than ever oh yeah cancel culture that's exactly right yeah oh it's true it's very very true but i mean we live in a culture that's so corporatized commercialized marketized uh it's all about money money money status status. And you lose any deep sense of honor, of character. It's all about what appears to be the case. It's the culture of superficial spectacle. So it's all about image. Yes. You see?

Yeah. And image is just some surface phenomenon. Well, I can't recommend your book, Race Matters, matters enough and one of the reasons is because of your analysis of that your your understanding of this the superficial aspect of the pursuit that so many people are locked into from cradle to the grave and you just you encapsulated that so well and and the way you worded it and the way you phrased it, it resonates so well. And I really admire this lifelong pursuit that you have for not just understanding these things, but explaining them in such a succinct way where it's absorbable. Like that book, it's in the 25th anniversary i wanted to talk to you

about it because that's the one i read and it's so strange when you read something that's so it's so current even though it's 25 years old it rings true and does that sometimes does that feel futile where you you you have the same issues for that you spoke on 25 years ago and there's very little change in those 25 years no it's a wonderful deep question no matter i appreciate the times that you spent uh reading uh race matters but no it's never futile though man it's never futile because you have a conception of victory that is not messianic or salvific. You're not trying to save people. You're not trying to be a messiah to bring some kind of grand gospel to people.

You're simply trying to touch people's lives. So when you enrich and enable a person's life the way in which you've talked about that right there, you already talking about the ways in which you were touched mm-hmm that means there was no futility at all yeah oh it's certainly not because the fecundity of it it's all we can do you know as human beings is to try to inspire one another and encourage one another and enable one another and noble one another. And that in and of itself is what the great John Coltrane called a force for good. How do I become, based on a love supreme, a force for good in a cold and cruel world? Based on love supreme.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And love supreme. mediated through a Palestinian Jew named Jesus. But that's tied to a justice that comes out of prophetic Judaism, right? And we know Judaism, Christianity, Islam, all of these religions, for me, have no wholesale monopoly on how we understand the world because they all emerge at various historical moments. But when it comes to this love that allows us to persist in a world in which cruelty and envy, contempt, manipulation, dishonesty, and that's shot through all of us. We're not finger pointing the name card.

Oh, no. You know, I've called Brother Donald Trump a gangster over and over again. And I say that because there's a gangster inside of me. I got to reconquer it every day. So I know gangsters when I see them. And gangster is not a subjective expression. It's an objective condition. If you're grabbing a woman's parts, that's gangster.

You're stealing somebody's oil in another country, that's gangster. You're lying. These people have said that America's garbage. Quit lying. That's gangster. You're lying, saying these people have said that America's garbage. Quit lying. That's gangster. They got a critique of America. You did, too, an American carnage in your inauguration. You said, or you're talking about the four sisters in Congress saying, well, evil Jews.

No, they haven't said evil Jews. They said evil doings of Israel. Every nation state has done some evil things, right? If there's a Palestinian state, which I hope there is, they're going to do some evil things. Every nation state has to be accountable. U.S., Ethiopia, Guatemala, Israel, China, and so forth and so on. And every nation state has been associated with certain forms of barbarism. We know that.

But there's some good things. Some wonderful things about Israel. Some wonderful things about Palestinians and formation creating a state. There's wonderful things about America. I mean, a lot of people say, even Brother Trump, oh, they hate America. No, they love American comics. They love American music. You ask Sister Talib, you ask Sister Priestley, y'all love Aretha?

Aretha Franklin means the world to me. What about Mary J.? Mary J. means the world. Mary J. and Aretha are as American as Donald Trump, even more in some ways, because they've been here longer. They've been here longer. They've been here longer. They've been here longer. They've been here longer.

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They've been here longer. They've been here longer. They've been here longer. They've been here longer. They've been here longer. They've been here longer. They've been here longer. They've been here longer. They've been here longer. They It's been that 10th generation. Donald Trump's grandfather just arrived. His mother, straight from Scotland, precious Mary Ann. 1930 she arrived, right?

And so in that sense, you say, wait, wait, quit lying. Let's just be honest and candid, just like the comics. Let's just be honest and critically reflected upon, but it's that conflict that's rooted in incongruity. Things don't fit. So there's the possibility of hypocrisy, right? And we know hypocrisy is the tribute of vice to virtue. So there's standards and you fall short. So you can laugh at it. Now when it's really deep comedy, it's talking about the human condition. See, that's a deeper thing.

Now see, that's where you get Chekhov and Shakespeare and Joyce and the blues. lose because deep comedy is the recognition of limits and incongruity at the highest levels of the mind heart and soul that's a different thing so i mean you can start with comedy with uh you know the clown who's who's walking around slipping on bananas or the sophisticated professor who doesn't realize that he got a banana hanging out the back of his pocket when he's lecturing with the students. Everybody laughing. He don't know what's going on. Well, that's bodily based comedy, farts and bananas and so forth. It's important. But high comedy is the highest levels of human dignity, love, thought, music, mathematics, metaphysics, and then recognize all of those are incongruous.

They're broken. They're fractured. There's dramatic conflict of incongruity at the highest levels of who we are as a species. Now, that's deep stuff. That is deep stuff. Oh, Lord, Lord. And one of the most fundamental questions of Western civilization is, how come Socrates never cries and Jesus never laughs?

Ooh. Now, that's the question Thomas More was wrestling with in the Tower of London before he was executed in his dialogues on tribulation. Socrates never sheds a tear. What does that mean? The founder of philosophy in the modern West has a love of wisdom, but he never loves people because it's impossible to love human beings and not shed tears. You go to your mama's funeral and you're not shedding tears and you're committed to the Socratic ideal of self-mastery and self-control,

you need to get off the crack pipe. Get off. Show her the depths of your love for her through being outside of your self-mastery. The tears will flow.

You see it? And it's the other way. It's like your daughter. This precious thing that you got when we walk in for your daughter when she graduates you and your wife

are going to have tears of joy that ain't the moment for self mastery that's not the moment to be Socratic and so when Socrates is dying

his wife walks in Zanthippe and she's crying he said get her away I can't stand tears so that's a problem that's a problem see I come from Blackfoot

we start with tears all the mess we had to come to terms with you know what i mean cries and so forth the hebrew scripture begins with the cries of oppressed people too right but then jesus never laughs oh now see that's a deep one that is a deep one that's gk chesterton chesterton said jesus turns over the tables of the money changers. He does not conceal his rage. Crucial. Jesus does weep. That's one of the most profound verses in the Christian Bible, right?

Jesus wept. Unlike Socrates. Why did Jesus weep? He wept for Jerusalem. He wept for Lazarus. He wept for his friends. But Jesus hides and conceals his mirth. That's what Chesterton says.

Is there any laughter in the Bible? Well, Isaac means laughter. When you think of the joke of an older Sarah giving birth to a young person in an older age and so forth. But it's hard to catch Jesus laughing. None of the synoptic gospels have Jesus laughing. Some people thought they discerned a grin somewhere because he turned wine into water. He probably had a little grin on him.

A subtle grin. A little subtle grin, exactly, exactly. But you can never get the full scale and variety of the human condition in any one tradition. I think one of the beauties of what you're saying here, one of the beautiful things about what you're saying here is the complexity of human beings. And when you're dealing with the situation between these girls that call themselves the squad and Donald Trump, and donald trump and you deal with these very simplistic things like these chants of send her back or lock her up or they hate america or you know this this is simplifying things is is so attractive to some people and so attractive during political discourse right during these these times when you're trying to rally up a campaign and get the audience behind you, this is when these simplistic things resonate.

But as a human being, we know that things like – I don't subscribe to this idea that human beings are good or bad. I think there's – Go either way. Yeah. I'm sure. Like the way Donald Trump loves his family, I'm sure there's love in that guy. I'm sure there is. I mean, he's had some relations to his mother and his brothers and sisters that were not ones of sheer manipulation and domination.

There's no doubt. As a human being, it's important to keep track of his humanity. But at the same time, what happens is the dominant patterns of behavior. This is what worries me about Brother Trump, especially the fact that he's head of the American empire and head of the government. You see that when you have dominant patterns of behavior that are completely unaccountable. See, for so long, he's been able to get away with things with no accountability at all. Yes. That's what makes him a kind of uh

peter pan like figure up until he became president she grew powerful yeah but he hasn't grown up but even as president he hasn't grown up people would had thought that he would grow into the office no he just hasn't grown up he's uniquely tried to manipulate the office position to change to be what he is. That's right. And I think people love that. There's certain people that that resonates with them. They think that's so attractive. They love it.

Well, I think they love it. Because it's exciting. I mean, the first thing that Trump was able to do was to expose the prepackaged commodities that we call politicians. Yes. That he came across as somebody who was just himself. Yes. You see, just gangster that he is. Yeah.

And he just tell the truth. Oh, I was a close friend of Hillary's. I've been at the same weddings and so forth, because that's how the elites circulate. Yes. at the same weddings and so forth, because that's how the elites circulate in the American Empire. But then when they discovered, lo and behold, now he's posing himself as some kind of oppositional figure, and yet he's tied to big money, tied to big military. When he gets in, he brings in the old school militarist people.

He's still dropping bombs on the nine countries that have been dropping bombs for the last number of years. Tax cuts sound exactly the same that Mitch McConnell and others wanted. We thought we had something different here, you see. And it has to do with the, well, when it's a larger story, we have to be honest about this. larger story. We have to be honest about this, that we live in both a very fragile and precious experiment in democracy, and we live in an empire that is experiencing profound decline, decay, and deterioration, simultaneous. See, because from the very beginning, the United States was really, in some ways, much more tied to gold and resources and land. And so this very crucial democratic experiment

is predicated on the monstrous crime against indigenous peoples that we've never come to terms with. So you get a lot of neoliberal chatter about America's original sin is slavery. That's a lie. The original sin was we had to decide whether we were going to coexist with indigenous peoples or dominate them. And the decision was, for the most part, genocidal effect in terms of domination. So it's a settler colonial society, a colony of Britain, you see.

Then we enslaved the Africans who become the basis of our economy. And the vast majority of profits made were actually tied to slavery. That's why so many of the presidents, first presidents in America, were slaveholders, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court was slaveholders, and so forth. That doesn't mean that certain democratic practices were not being enacted, but it was enacted for white brothers with property. The white brothers who had no property, they couldn't vote at all. The women, of course, couldn't vote until 1920. So they had domestic households in which they had to find some sense of fulfillment. That's what history of patriarchy and misogyny in part are connected.

And then tremendous efforts come to expanding it, expanding it. And this is why even when Brother Trump talks about socialism, he doesn't realize the Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy, who was a socialist. The song, American the Beautiful, which is one of the most beautiful songs. Ray Charles sang that song, It'll Take You to a Different Place. I mean, he's seeing things that we can't see,

and you know he's blind, you know what I mean? American the Beautiful. Elizabeth Lee Bates, socialist, Professor Wellesley. Who was our greatest poet? Walt Whitman, deep ties to socialism. Who was our greatest philosopher? John Dewey, democratic socialist his whole life. Helen Keller, deaf, mute, blind, graduate of Radcliffe, socialist.

Reinhold Niebuhr, the greatest Christian thinker of the 20th century. Democratic socialist, moral man in a moral society. Martin Luther King Jr., Democratic socialist. Ella Baker, Democratic. Democratic socialism is as American as apple pie. But with the communists and the communist threat and the Soviet Union and all of its repression and regimentation

and violation of liberties and killing of the culottes and so forth, in the American mind, socialism becomes associated with communism. And so you saw Brother Lindsey the other day, right?

He looked like a cartoonist version of Joseph McCarthy. They're all communists. They're all communists. And you see, what happens is in a neo-fascist discourse, it's true anywhere around the world. If you can define a community as pure and then characterize those on the outside who are threatened as impure. And then view yourself as those coming to the rescue to preserve the purity. It can be based on race. It can be based on religion. It can be based on politics.

Preserve that purity. We saw it in the 50s with the hysteria. The communists were what? Smith Act. They're deported. Or they're taken to jail. I mean, the first city councilman from Harlem, Benjamin Davis, went to jail because he was a communist, you see, because they were the impure. Now, communism needs to be radically called into

question in terms of its dominating forms like the Soviet Union and China on the mile and so forth and so on. But at the same time, when you look at Karl Marx and his critique of capitalism, this is prior to Lenin, prior to Stalin, he says capitalism is tied to this obsession with profit that puts profit before people, and it will generate oligopolies in which there will be grotesque levels of wealth inequality, and the only way that poor and working people will be able to gain access to any resources is through organizing and mobilizing. Now, you can accept that Marxist insight without being a Marxist. He's just telling the truth.

Do you think that socialism just hasn't been implemented correctly? Is that what you think? Because the argument has always been, show me a socialist economy or socialist government that ever worked right right right but there's so many people that find the idea of socialism attractive because it it combines this idea of a community with a nation and that we're all tied together and we we obviously have some socialist aspects to our civilization in terms of like utilities and military we're not going to outsource the military firefighters firefighters police there has to be some kind of governmental control but the the

problem is this that if we have to view democratic socialism as a moment in the larger movement of democracy. My dear brother Jeff Stout, who's one of the great philosophers and thinkers of democracy, calls them egalitarian freedom traditions. And that's simply a way of saying that if you look at the world through the lens of the masses of people who are poor and working people, what are the conditions under which they can have security from domination? What are the conditions under which they can have dignity by holding forms of oppression at arm's length? And for me, it's not an ism. and have dignity by holding forms of oppression at arm's length. And for me, it's not an ism. You see, if capitalism vis-a-vis feudalism can generate liberties and freedoms, I'm for it.

And that's precisely what the middle classes did when they broke from feudalism in Europe or broke from feudalism in other parts of the world, right? You had to overthrow kings and queens in the name of personal liberties. But those personal liberties were confined too often to white brothers with property. And the white brothers with no property, they're either trying to hold on to their whiteness so they become like the white brothers with property, or they make moral choices and said, I want to be a person of integrity. I want to fight with the folk who are being excluded. And this is one of the problems in talking about race and white supremacy in America, because, you see, we think too often in monolithic categories.

There's never been a white supremacy without fighting against white supremacy, and that includes white brothers and sisters. There's a tradition from Ann Braden, from Miles Horton of Highlander Center. You've got that wonderful picture of Rosa Parks. She was at Highlander Center four months before she was arrested, before she sat down on a bus in order to stand up for justice, right there at Highland Center under Miles Horton. Who was Miles Horton? A white brother who brought black folk and white folk together, went to Union Seminary, trained under Reinhold Niebuhr. He had cousins in the Ku Klux Klan. Wow. So his Thanksgiving dinners were very complicated.

But that's true for a whole lot of white brothers and sisters who fight against white supremacy. And Braden, Rabbi Abraham Joshua, Edward Zaid. You have a whole tradition of white brothers and sisters who've been fighting against white supremacy. You get it in the music. Beck Spider Beck, he's sitting at the feet of Louis Armstrong. And he's a great artist. Louis is genius of geniuses, right? And that middle class brother from Iowa, you ask him about white supremacy.

You ask Brubeck about white supremacy. You ask any of the, Paul Desmond, all of these folk who are connected to traditions in which black humanity, brown humanity is seen and affirmed. You had a point in the book, Race Matters, that resonated with me that I never really thought of before. And what you said was that because of the fact that the United States has this deep history of slavery and the slavery of African Americans, that white people became white people instead of Polish and German and Italian, instead of it being like most other countries where the Italians think of themselves as Italians and the Greeks are the Greeks. Those were white people. They're all, they combine as white people.

I never thought about that before. No, I mean, you've got these scholars of American studies. white people. I never thought about that before. No, but I mean, you've got these scholars of American studies. I mean, Nell Payne is one of the towering ones, but it goes all the way back to Brother Alexander and David Roediger and some others who've been talking about the way in which whiteness was created. Take, for example, an Irish brother who goes to Ellis Island. His people have been dealing with 800 years of vicious British colonialism and imperialism, vicious attacks,

various famines that were in some ways created or at least enabled and so on. They get to New York and they're told that they're white and they say, no, no, because we know the British are white and we're not British. Right. At all.

At all. But then they say, yes, you are. Look at Brother West. Look at Jamal. Look at Letitia. Where are you going to go on the Jim Crow bus if you just get off the boat from Ireland? Right. If you go to the front, you're with vanilla folk. You go to the back, you're with the chocolate folk.

What you going to do? And for our precious Jewish brothers and sisters, it was even more complicated. More complicated, right? Because they get there and they say, no, we're not with the Goy and we're not with the Gentiles. Y'all been oppressing us for 2,000 years. Pogroms, ghettos, holocaust, vicious attacks, and so on. But then they get there and say, well, are we going to be in the back with the black folk? Some of them did. You see, because you've got a rich tradition of progressive Jews.

You know, Chomsky would have got back there. Stanley Aronowitz would have got back there with the black folk. You see what I mean? But you've got some other Jewish folk like any other group. Well, we kind of lukewarm. Let's just kind of move back and forth. And then some of them want to assimilate completely, especially the highbrow German Jews. We're actually white as well as the Gentiles. You're in America now. Get beyond that old world prejudice. You say, well, you better check yourself because every Christian civilization we know is shot through with Jewish hatred.

Don't don't believe the hype. Sooner or later, it's going to be manifest. You see what I mean? Don't believe the hype. Sooner or later, it's going to be manifest. You see what I mean? And so in that way, you can see the discourse of whiteness, blackness, brownness, redness, and so forth become so deeply rooted in American law, American structures, American perceptions. And this is why the arts are so crucial, because it's primarily in the music and in the arts where the breakdown of white

supremacy begins to take place in the country. It's not the politicians. It really isn't. It really isn't. There's no accident that the first massive form of entertainment in the United States is what? The minstrels and blackface. And you say, well, what was going on with blackface? Well, Eric Lott and others have talked about the love and theft. On the one hand, there's a fear of black freedom. Because black freedom somehow means less freedom for whites. There's a fear of black creativity. Because that means maybe white supremacy is a lie.

Maybe they're human just like us. Maybe they're just as creative, imaginative,'re human just like us. Maybe they're just as creative, imaginative and intelligent just like us. Then they hear the music and they say, ooh, they got something going on on the black side of town that we don't know. It's like you're going to see prior, right? If somebody had told you, oh, brother Joe, white supremacy America tells you that black creativity, black intelligence, black genius doesn't exist, and you go see prior with your parents and you go away thinking, this Negro's a genius.

Somebody lied to me. I got to recognize that. And then you recognize, oh, there's a whole tradition of Pride. And we can go on and on from the Coltrane, the Sarah Vaughan, and on and on and on, right? And so people begin to think, especially white brothers and sisters, our parents have been lying to us when it comes to black intelligence, imagination, and genius, and humanity. And yet the structures make it difficult for us to come together. We're talking about up until 1960.

That's a long time, though. 1776 to 1964 and 5. That's a long time for both slavery and neo-slavery to be in place. And here we are now, 54 years later, trying to create a multiracial democracy, which is a beautiful, beautiful thing. And it's already been enacted in the jazz groups, slide stones bands, multiracial. The comedies, the studying of the comedies that you all have. You sit down with comics. Y'all talk about the genius across race and gender as if it's a natural thing.

That already shatters the white supremacists and male supremacist categories of whiteness, blackness, all in different silos. But it's so hard to do it on the ground. See, part of the problem of talking about race in America, that's why I've been very critical of a number of contemporary black intellectuals, because white supremacy cuts so deep in the culture, people begin to think it has magical powers, and somehow it just floats above American history as if it's just part of our DNA in a biological way. But all conceptions of race in the modern world are grounded in predatory capitalism. So that the talk about whiteness and blackness becomes a way of rationalizing social structures

like slavery and Jim Crow. And it has to do with trying to extract labor resources. It's an attack on their humanity and identity, but it's tied to economic structure. So to talk only about race means we hide and conceal the social structures that are generating unbelievable suffering for everybody. Everybody, you see. And so the last thing you want is to talk about race. I'd say the same thing about gender. In a way, gender is much more complicated because gender has been around for so, so long, every culture that we know almost. But in modern conceptions of race are tied to modern conceptions of predatory capitalism, here and abroad, which includes imperialism, which includes empires.

So the United States comes out of the British Empire. We engage in a heroic, courageous revolt against the British Empire. It was a magnificent struggle. That's what I like about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Because I'm an anti-imperialist. They were anti-imperialists. They're urban guerrillas. They're picking up guns.

They're fighting. I don't go that far. But they're also white supremacists. You see? So as soon as they overthrow or push back the British Empire, what do you get in the Declaration of Independence? Beautiful words about equality. But you also get savages. We got to take their land. And you get an empire of liberty.

This is where the comics come in. What does an empire of liberty look like? Who's not in on the liberty? It's a whole lot of people not in on it. That was Carlin, right? Carlin had this bit about this country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free that's right and talk about american dream you got to be yeah you got to be dreaming to believe it you got to be sleep

do you think that much like this country is an experiment in self-democracy a very recent experiment when you look at human history right hundreds of thousands of years that we've been human, there's really only been a couple of years, a hundred years of this. Do you think that that's maybe the lens that we should look at something like democratic socialism through? Not that it can't work, but that it hasn't been implemented correctly before. That's exactly right. That's where we've got to get beyond the ism. You're absolutely right.

See, what makes not just the United States, there's been democratic experiments all around the world in various circumstances. We become central stage because we become a world power that understands itself as a democracy. With all the contradictions that go hand in hand with that, begin as a settler colonial enterprise, still got slavery, patriarchy. Workers don't have the right to engage in collective bargaining in the United States until the 1930s. Argentina had it in the 1830s.

Argentina's not known to being on the cutting edge for social justice. Love you down there in Argentina. But they know that. But they had collective bargaining. Why? Because our robber barons and our power elites were so powerful.

You see, Rockefeller and company had private militias that were bigger than a lot of public armies to make sure workers were not able to engage in collective bargaining. I was in San Francisco just yesterday at the Commonwealth Club, which is now lodged in the Longshoremen's Association, which is fascinating. The Commonwealth is a well-to-do ruling class. Harry Bridges, Longshoremen, strong union. Jack London, another great socialist there in Oakland, right? And what were they trying to do?

They were just trying to ensure that ordinary people gain access to jobs with a living wage, decent education. This is one reason why I spend so much time with my dear brother Bernie Sanders, right? Because it's a democratic project that simply says, how come poor children can't have access to some of the things that the children of the well-to-do have? They have the same value. And, of course, as a Christian,ian for me they have exactly the same value right so how will they get it well here come socialist movements that say first thing they want to do is we're against child labor laws that's that's the jungle that's upton sinclair

he's a socialist tried to be governor of california right and what were they doing what were these these capitalists doing? They're hiring these kids at six years old, seven years old. They were dying at 30. There were no laws against child labor and working seven days a week. So the labor movement brought us the weekend. And I'm not talking about the singer from Canada. God bless him. I'm talking about the two days we have off because if we didn't have that from the socialist movement and the labor movement they'd have been working young kids seven days they did that year after year decade after decade that's greed right that's that's greed there's no

accountability you see that's where that whole idea of the let the market decide falls apart because the market just wants profit, right? Absolutely. And that doesn't mean that markets cannot be used in democratic ways. But they need to be ethical. But they got to be ethical. You got to have some accountability and regulation. And child labor laws were very important at breakthroughs at that time.

But there are other, you need to have laws to make sure the water was clean and the food was regulated and clean and so there's a narrative that you get from poor people often or people that are lower middle class that are against the concept of socialism because they equate it with people that want a free ride that's right they equate it with people that don't want to work hard that's right. a part of our culture and our community. Why do you think that that is this narrative? And how does that narrative get reshaped? Because that narrative of that the only reason why people want socialism is because they want a free ride. Right, right.

Oh, that's a wonderful question. But the one is that first we have to listen very closely to our right-wing brothers and sisters and conservatives and middlers, because oftentimes they're human beings like anybody else, and they've had their own arguments. I don't think they have strong ones, but they have their own arguments. So the first thing you'd say about that is, what makes you think that the well-to-do don't have free rides. What is inheriting wealth all about? Well, inheriting wealth is free rides. Absolutely.

It's all it is. What is free, the connections of getting into the prep schools and the Ivy League schools and so forth, even though they work, it's still a kind of free ride. So if they're preoccupied with this issue of being free ride, the free ride. So if they're preoccupied with this issue of being free ride, we tell them, let's make sure that people do work hard and sacrifice and therefore in some way deserve what they have. Now, if just based on that principle, the upper echelons of American society would be indicted, Yes. Deeply indicted.

And it's not a matter of hating the rich, because I don't believe in hating anybody individually. I hate greed. Yes. I hate injustice. I hate white supremacy. I hate anti-Jewish prejudice. I hate anti-Palestinian prejudice.

I hate patriarchy and so forth. But the human beings where these ideologies filter through are still human beings. See what I mean? So that's the beginning of it. Now, of course, part of the question here has to do with, they'll say, well, we wasted this money on the poor. You say, well, wait a minute. Donald Trump just passed a $750 billion military budget.

Democrats voted for it, too. How much waste is in the military? Why is 60 cent of every one dollar coming out of the federal budget tied to the military? Why is there no close oversight and accountability of it? How come American people don't know about the four countries that we're bombing or assisting other countries in bombing? We can go right down, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, absolutely, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Iraq. I mean, we can go on and on and on, right? How come we don't know about the 4,800 military units units 587 around the world we got u.s special operations in 128 countries only 197 in the world right what about the soldiers who die

hardly any talk about it what about the innocent people we kill hardly any talk about it. What about the drones that we're still dropping? And not always on military combatants, but innocent people. Almost primarily on innocent people. Sometimes even disproportionately. Those are precious people, too. Yeah. And they have the same value as anybody in Ethiopia, America, Chicago. Don't you feel the drones are particularly insidious because it doesn't even seem like it's really happening because it's a robot doing it? Absolutely.

And it's done remotely. Long distance, remotely, no human sensitivity at all. Apparently the PTSD that's suffered by those remote drone operators is pretty profound, too. You can understand that. Yes. You can deeply understand. And yet, no serious public conversation about it in the country. I tell you, I was on the plane the other day, and the pilot says,

I hope you all are able to take a few minutes of your time because we've got a family outside waiting for the body of someone just killed in Afghanistan. It was an Italian family in Chicago. One of the saddest things you ever want to see in your life, man, is a family lined up and they're bringing the body out. And you say to yourself, how come there's no public spotlight on that? And you see, when I was growing up in the 60s, Walter Cronkite, Vietnam, we saw the bodies. Well, during the Bush administration, they made it illegal to take photographs of flag-draped coffins.

That's exactly right. Which is unbelievably insane. That's exactly right. And continued under Obama and company. And you say, well, wait a minute. They're paying this ultimate cost. And they change the narrative. And the tears of the families.

And they can't even put a public spotlight on it. My God. And then, of course, they lie to us. Well, our drones are not in any way killing civilians. And they end up killing an American. And they have a press conference the same day and economic compensation for the family the rest of their life. I agree with that. But what about the drones that are killing folk in Yemen and Somalia and Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Oh, they deny they're even killing them. You say quit lying. That's John Brennan and company. He's in both Bush and Obama administration. You see, how do we keep track of those in the name of what? Democratic accountability. That's not socialism. Socialism is democratic accountability, but there's been socialism without democratic accountability.

And what do you get? Tyranny. That's Soviet Union and company. But when you get capitalism with no democratic accountability, what do you get? You get capitalism with no democratic accountability. What do you get? You get a predatory capitalism with gross wealth inequality and everyday people, the masses of poor and working people fighting for crumbs. And there's also this denial of it amongst the most patriotic.

They don't want to consider it. They don't want to factor it in to what we think of when we think of America the great. You don't want want you don't want to factor in those innocent people which i what was the last time we checked it was in the 90 percent right of people that are that are killed by drones are actually innocent it's some insane number but we have to have voices that's part of the problem though you have to have voices that say i don't give a damn for popularity. I'm trying to be wedded to integrity. I want to put a smile on my grandmama's face in the grave.

And she told me as a Christian that if the kingdom of God is within you, then everywhere you go, you ought to leave a little heaven behind. You ought to leave a little heaven behind. And heaven takes the form of laying bare the humanity of each and every one of us, especially the least of these. That's the 25th chapter of Matthew, right? What you do to the least of these you do unto me. Who are the least of these? The orphan, the widow, the poor, the children, the elderly, the workers, the gays, the lesbians, the trans, especially the trans these days. They just trash like I don't know what. But the black folk, the brown folk, the white poor.

They're indigenous peoples, not just here, but around the world. And what does that mean? You have a certain kind of calling that will always pit you over against those who are well-adjusted to injustice, no matter what color they are. Well-adjusted to injustice is a very, very beautiful way of putting it. No, that's part of the problem. The American dream doesn't go far enough. That's part of the problem. The American dream doesn't go far enough. The American dream says, I'm going to work hard, sacrifice, and get mine,

and live large in some vanilla suburb, maybe with a trophy spouse, and feel good about myself. You say, nothing wrong with wanting to gain access to resources. Nothing wrong with working hard. Nothing wrong with living where you want to live. But then the question becomes, now you're successful, but you're not great. Greatness has to do with he or she who uses their success for something bigger than them. Service to others. Service to the least of these.

So that the great ones, like the Richard Pryors, you see, not a matter of how much money he made. ones like the Richard Pryors, you see. Not a matter of how much money he made. It's a matter of his soul in his comedy and the love that he left in his legacy. Martin Luther King Jr. died. Basically a broke man. Gave every penny that he won from the Nobel Prize to the movement. Malcolm X only had $150 in his pocket.

Who cares about the richest black person in 1968 and 1965? That's ephemeral. We're talking about deep joy, deep love. We will remember those who raised their voices and said, in the name of something bigger than my ego and my narcissism and my hedonism. And we all have it. We all have it. So, you know, we have to always be self-critical in that regard. We all fall short. You know the great Samuel Beckett, another great comic writer, try again, fail again, fail better. That's the story of our lives.

Try again, fail again, fail better. But even in failing better, we can at least raise our voices and try to connect it to movements and organizations and structures. And thank God we still do have a significant number of decent people in the American empire. They just feel powerless. Well, there's this conversation that's happening now, right? And there's a conversation that's based on the information of recognizing the fact that so many people have wasted deep aspects of their lives, long, long lives pursuing meaningless things. That was very true.

And recognizing that there is a lot of injustice in this world and that people are afraid of admitting that injustice because then they would somehow or another be complicit in the enactment of that injustice. I think it's one of the things that people are terrified of when you talk about doing something to reinvigorate poor and disenfranchised communities. That's right. They start talking about the welfare state or this is not how things should be done and people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,

not recognizing that everybody is in the same starting line. Absolutely. There's a concept that I've been talking about that if you really cared about America, you would want less losers. What's the best way to love America? Would you want more winners? You'd want everybody to be a winner. Absolutely.

If we have these disenfranchised parts of this country that have been that way forever, there's a guy that's been on this podcast who was a police officer in Baltimore. His name is Michael Wood. And he talked about how when who was a police officer in baltimore his name is michael wood and uh he uh talked about how when he was a police officer he recognized the systemic racism and how how crippling it was and one of the things that he recognized was they found a piece of paper that was a blotter report of all the different various crimes that were committed from the 1970s it was a some year in 1970 it was the exact same crimes in the exact

same communities that he was dealing with them and he was generation after recognizing the red lining about the fact that there was areas where black people were not allowed to buy homes that they kept them in these communities the same crimes kept occurring in the same places and all they were doing was going in there and arresting people and nothing changed and nothing was fixed and as a police officer he was realizing and just becoming aware of the fact that this is he's a part of this system he didn't want to be a part of the system anymore but he was a part of this system that is creating this problem when you address that though the people that don't suffer in those communities, that aren't a part of that community, there's a natural inclination to resist. Oh, that's true.

And it's because they don't want to do anything. They don't want to think they're responsible. They don't want to think they're a part of it. They don't even want to discuss it. Even discussing it, you feel resistance. They will end the state of denial. Yes. Trying to avoid and trying to evade.

No, that's very real. That's very real. But, you know, it also works within communities of people of color. And this is, again, why I think we have to resist any monolithic or homogeneous characterizations of people. So that any time you talk about white supremacy, you've got the John Browns. And you know Mary Ellen Pleasant, who was a black woman who was worth $347 million in the 1840s. Whoa.

She's called the mother of human rights in California. What did she do? She made a rich white brother and he died on her. So she ended up with millions of dollars. First thing she did, she gave John Brown a million dollars. Wow. John Brown had a note from her in his pocket when he was at Harper's Ferry. That's how he survived.

Wow. You see, now John Brown was killing innocent people. I think that's wrong. I don't believe in innocent people no matter who they are, no matter what color. But at the same time, John Brown had a love of black people much deeper than many black people have of themselves because he's willing to die for black people. But the same is true within, let's say, black communities. You've got, okay, 1% of the population in America who own 41% of the wealth. You've got three individuals who have wealth equivalent to 160 million fellow

citizens. But within the black community, the top 1% of black folk have over 70% of the wealth. So that means you got a lot of precious Jamals and Letitias out there who are told to live vicariously through the lives of black celebrities. So it's all about representation rather than substantive transformation. You get that in politicians. You got a black president. All of y'all must be free. Isn't that a beautiful thing? Live through him. Live through the family. Beautiful achievement. Magnificent achievement. But it's not about symbolic representation only. This is about fundamental transformation. So it's a challenge.

Mary Ellen Pleasant and others and Martin King and others are challenges for those of us who do have some resources to still raise our voices. Because you can be black, highly well adjusted to injustice economically in terms of race and so forth. And the the same is true you can be brown you can be so it's not just a matter of looking for that one individual who represents it's a matter of connecting that representation to fundamental transformation if there's no fundamental transformation you end up with a whole generation of peacocks. Look at me, look at me, look at me. All about forage. And what does that do? That falls directly into the culture of superficial spectacle. Last thing we need is just spectacle with no substance in that way.

And this is a battle within the communities of peoples of color because it's not going to be a matter of just pointing out white supremacy. Of course, white supremacy is a fundamental foundation and part of the country. It's not the only foundation because you've got resistance to white supremacy. You've got Lydia Maria Child. She wrote a book in 1834 called An Appeal for That Class of Americans Called Africans. It was deeply influenced by one of the greatest works ever written at that time by David Walker, Appeal to Colored Citizens of the World. She's a white sister. She is as vanilla as Doris Day in the 1830s. Fundamental part of the black freedom movement. Right.

Well, you see, those folk need to be lifted up because what does that do? That exposes our humanity in terms of the choices we make, not just the skin color we have. And I would say the same thing in terms of gender. The brothers who are fundamentally concerned about breaking the back of patriarchy, even we know patriarchy is shot through us because we grew up in the 1950s and 60s. No man escapes it, but you try to reconquer it all. And the same is true of our precious gays and lesbians and trans folk, you see. To be decent human beings who make moral choices. See, I believe in the primacy of the moral and the spiritual, the centrality of the artistic, especially the musical and especially the comics, as the vanguards who represent a freedom and a courage and a vision to connect us as human beings. Because you can't really be a comic with a wholesale Nazi ideology.

Now, you can be a Nazi genius like Martin Heidegger, who was a great philosopher and a genius and a thug when it comes to politics, you see. But a comic has got to be able to be open enough to deal with the incongruity and inconsistency and the sheer absurdity of it all. You talked about moments of freedom earlier, and I recognize that as one of the greatest things you ever see when someone's on stage and they're killing. There's moments where everyone's together. They're all together, locked up in the laughter, and they're all together. There's a sense of community that you share with the people that are in the room. Absolutely. It does bring people together, even if it's for brief brief moments for a few seconds or as long as it takes moments are not to be trashed life consists of moments yes you know what i mean yes definitely and see it's in a democracy

you see it's those moments that constitute the memory of what could be as opposed to what's in place. You know, the great August Wilson, the great playwright, black playwright, deeply influenced, he said, by the blues, Baraka, and Bearden, Romain Bearden, the great painter. Mary Baraka, of course, from Newark, like yourself, just like Sarah Vaughan and Philip Roth, right there from Newark. He used to say that performance authorizes alternative realities for the audience that gets them to unsettle their conventional perceptions of the world. And that's what great artists and great comic, but that's what you do in strange times, though, brother.

That you bring in the fact that we're living in such a grim moment, what I'd call, you know, the American empire in decline. And we all need to call for its regeneration, its democratic revitalization and regeneration. How do we do that? Only by example, man, because there's a difference between what the great Roberto Unger calls biographical time and historical time. All of us are born in circumstances not of our own choosing. We're only here for so long. We all have insecurities, anxieties, and fears knowing that our bodies will undergo extinction one day very soon. And therefore, to deal with those insecurities and fears and anxieties, you have to have certain structures of feeling and value that give you some sense of worthwhileness

as you move through time, from mother's womb to tomb, right? And it's only in biographical time, because we only got one life, this side of Jordan, and there's no person who's a Messiah. Now, people will tell you they are, but you say okay, just call it. Be self-deceived and drink your cognac and keep moving. There's no Messiahs out there. There's no saviors out there. There's no

Messiahs in groups. There's no Messiahs in collectivities. There's only lives to be lived. We're back to Chekhov again. Lives to be lived. Acknowled to Chekhov again. Lives to be lived. Acknowledging things were in place before we arrived. So therefore, we ought to have gratitude for the love that we received. That's how I begin my whole life.

I am who I am because somebody loved me. It's mom. It's dad. It's my brothers and my sisters. It's my brothers. It's my sisters. It's my friends. Right? And I don't deserve it. And I have to somehow follow in Ashford and Simpson. They say send it

like a puff of smoke. You got to let it go. Spread whatever. Love justice by example. Examples are the gold card of justice. That's a wonderful line in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Examples are the gold card of justice. That's a wonderful line in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Examples are the gold card of judgment. The judgments we

make are predicated on the examples that we have. And we must have examples of greatness. If you're going to be a classical composer, you better study some Ludwig Beethoven. You're going to be a serious composer, you better study some Ludwig Beethoven. You're going to be a serious artist

of musical theater, you better study a genius who's still alive named Stephen Sondheim. From West Side Story to Company to Sunday in the Park with George to Passion to Sweeney Todd across the board. Not to imitate, but

just to know what greatness is in your genre. If you're in hip-hop, you better study some Rakim. Oh, you better study some. Follow the leader. Tupac, that's right. You better study the folk who are greatest. It's the same way you studied Pryor and Bruce, Lenny Bruce, and the others, and Roseanne Barr and the others.

But that's one of the more important parts of being a person, right, And the others, Roseanne Barr and the others. But that's one of the more important parts of being a person, right, is to really, your diet of what you take in in terms of whether it's your art or whether it's your education, try to take in the best and most inspirational and the most spectacular versions of human endeavors. Absolutely. See, that's one of the reasons why sports is a kind of American religion. Sure. Because in sports or whatever form, I know that you got

the taekwondo thing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and you understand the role of excellence with the Greeks that that plays. But to be able

just to turn on our television and see Brother LeBron James do his thing. That's another context that cuts across race, class, gender, and so forth. LeBron, how you doing? Then memories of Mike Jordan and Jerry West. That's why Ali was so important. When he sat out those three years in the late 1960s because he wouldn't go to Vietnam?

Courage, man. Muhammad Ali, along with Richard Pryor, it was the freest black man in the 20th century. But see, the boxing is so crucial as well as the other sports because for black people, every other sphere in the society is unfair and unfree. But when you get in that ring and the referee is fair, you finally get fair competition. That's why Jack Johnson was such a threat. You remember when Jack Johnson was knocking white brothers out? There would be racial riots against black folk, killing black folk all across the country. Don't you get the idea that just because he beat the white man in the context of fairness yeah that you can beat anybody right and that goes all the way to muhammad

ali it's very interesting you know the time i spent with another genius named prince who we missed so so so very much there's nobody like him but he like miles davis viewed jack johnson as his favorite black man isn't that interesting well he was a pioneer because there was none before him jack johnson was literally the first all by himself in many ways there was one i think but not as famous not as famous but in terms of the spotlight yeah there was other great boxers that were black at the time but he but he just took it to a height and yeah leave the country and so forth yeah you see and what, you know, you've got someone who was just himself in the context of a social movement that was taking place at the same time.

So he would associate himself with the black freedom movement called the civil rights movement. He joined the Nation of Islam under the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. They became very close to Malcolm X and had to deal with the split in its own way and ultimately becomes a more orthodox Muslim, but at the same time recognizes his political consciousness was tied

to the Nation of Islam and so forth. And for him to do that, I mean to be associated with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam probably had about 0.1% approval in the country, and probably about 4 or 5% in the black community, because at that time, black folk and black Christians were just afraid of the black Muslims. But it was Malcolm X who, in all of his genius, made it so broadly conceived that even Christians like myself, I'm a Jesus-loving, free black man, but I can't live my life without Malcolm.

And he's Muslim to the core. He's praying five times a day. You know what I mean? That's just the beginning of it. Well, he's also very complicated, too, because his grandfather was white. Well, his grandfather was white. His father was a Garveyite. His mother was tied to the interracial, but his father was a Garveyite who was killed.

His mother, of course, put in a sane asylum. He's a foster child. The great stories he tells in the autobiography of Malcolm X, one of the great classics, really, memoirs in the history of American civilization. But he's very misunderstood in terms of the cultural narrative of who he was. Absolutely. No, it's true. He used to say, sincerity is my only credential.

Ooh. Isn't that powerful? Damn. Sincerity. Sincerity. So when he said, white men and women are devils and he believed it. Now he's wrong. White brothers and sisters

are not devils. Then he says, I changed my mind. They're not devils. Too many got devilish behavior. He's right. Because too many of all of us have devilish behavior. But when he said the first thing, he said what he meant. behavior, you see. But when he said the first thing,

he said what he meant, he meant what he said. When he said the second thing, he said what he meant, he meant what you said. How many folk do we have like that today? That aren't scared

to change their mind. And speak what's deep in their souls, you see. See, one of the great gifts of the artists, and I speak about this especially in the black tradition, is

what we could call soulful kenosis, K-E-N-O-S-I-S. Now, kenosis means self-giving, self-donating, and self-emptying. So if you go to a James Brown concert, that brother goes for four and a half hours and gives everything, every fiber of his being. And at the end of every concert, what does he say? I'm an extension of you. You're an extension of me. I don't exist without you. Did we fail to play a song that somebody came to hear and the sister Hollis. I you didn't play so Power and he say hit it bootsy. I got that song Because his service you see Al Green go to our green concert that brother can't walk

Hmm after the concert he's given everything from falsetto to tenor to everything well ultimately that's what happened with prince right i mean prince had such incredible pain in his hips jumping off pianos i saw him jump off that's how he got hooked on pain pills that's exactly and that's what killed him ultimately john coltrane blowing his horn as if his neck is going to snap every night yeah and then he gave a concert november 1966 right before he died in july 67 he drops the horn start beating on his chest man rashid ali say what's happening train he said i'm just giving the people all that i can in the now my horn's getting in the way oh wow you know what i mean but don't you feel that when you walk off the stage man when you walk off the stage, man?

When you walk off the stage at strange times, man, you're giving everything. All that Joe is at that moment. Now, what is that? You see, that is the example of a love supreme that is there to serve the people. Now, you're going to make a living, too. They're going to get paid. You're going to get paid and so forth. But that's not the primary thing.

That's not it. See, when Curtis Mayfield sings his songs that the radio won't play, when he's told not to go to the rallies and he shows up with his guitar anyway and plays We a Winner, that's self-giving, self-emptying. and i tell that to the young musicians these days because a lot of you know in the culture of spectacle nowadays you get these performers they just show up and think they ought to get a standing ovation for 10 minutes say no negro sang a song first man shit well this ain't no spectacle and peacock we, we want to. You're saying something that's going to stir our souls the way Sam Cooke and Johnny Taylor and Lou Ross, when the soul stirs, did.

It's the work. Now, we respect that genius and so forth. See, Beyonce is fascinating in this regard because she's a genius. There's no doubt about it. I think she's the greatest entertainer of our day. I've been very critical of her because there's a sense in which she's still tied to the cultural superficial spectacle in terms of the way she looks and girls in formation and so forth. But at the same time, she's also grounded in the tradition. And there's a new movie that she made.

You see that? No. Homecoming? No. I haven't seen it. Oh, man, you got to see that. It's one of the greatest performative films ever made, man. Really?

When she goes to Coachella and she shows up at Coachella with all of the bands of black colleges and performs all of her songs with all of them moving, 150, 200 of them. Wow. And then Reflexions and Nina Simone

and Aretha Franklin. Oh, no. Beyonce. See, I was wrong about Beyonce in a certain sense. Now, I'm telling you. That sister, she brings a tradition with her. That is the highest level of both respect and of excellence.

Well, maybe she changed who she is because of criticism like yours. Well, I've never met her. But it reflects, for sure. It really is hard to say. When people hear things like that, it does make them. I think that could be the case. I mean, she married to a genius, for sure. It really is hard to say. When people hear things like that, it does make them... I think that could be the case. I mean, she married to a genius. For sure.

With Jay-Z, too. And, of course, the kids and her lovely parents and family and things. You never know what goes on in the mind and heart and soul of a great artist like Beyoncé. What was it that led you to be critical initially? Oh, just because I'm very concerned by young folk. You know, I've made three Smoking Word albums with Prince. I've been singing with Prince. He would not allow any of his music to be sampled by hip-hop artists.

He was very hard on hip-hop. But when we asked him for Spoking Word, he said yes, and thank God we did. Same is true for the greatest soul singer of his generation, Gerald LaVert, who really deserves so much more attention, who's on the album and so forth. So I spent a lot of time with young folk in studios. Just did a thing with Tef Poe, one of the great artists coming out of Ferguson and the American Empire on Black Julian II. E40 coming out of Leo, I have great respect for. I've been blessed to do a number of things with the young folk.

But I tell them, I say, I'm old school, y'all. You need to know that. See, we into originals, not into copies. You see, that we into lifting every voice that's soulful so that we stir souls. We don't want to just titillate bodies. We don't want just stimulation of body edges. Now, I'm not a Puritan, so I believe in body stimulation at the right time. You know what I mean?

I ain't got nothing against orgasm. But the thing is, you can't just orgasmically move through life. You got to have context. You got to have tradition. You got to stir souls in that way. And so I put a lot of pressure on them. stir souls in that way. And so I put a lot of pressure on them.

One of the things that I bring a lot of critique to bear is, see, I am deeply shaped by the dramatics, the delphonics, the main ingredient, the whispers, Lakeside, James Brown's band, George Clinton, Bootsy's band. I'm shaped by the emotions. I'm shaped by the Jones girls, the miracles, the temptations, Marvelettes. All those were groups that expressed their soulful self-emptying in a form of sweetness. See, I believe in sweetness and kindness. And we're losing that. I go to the young folk, where is your dramatics?

Why is it we don't have large numbers of groups that sing in tune with a beauty and a sweetness and a gentleness and a kindness? When you hear the voice of David Ruffin sing Ain't Too Proud to Beg, the vulnerability, the flexibility of it, the intensity of it, and it goes straight to your soul. That's why the people keep listening to David Ruffins from Why Not Mississippi.

I would say the same with Ted Mills of Blue Magic. I get the young folk, just stop. Let's just listen to Ted Mills of the Blue Magic. Let's just listen to Russell Tompkins Jr., the stylistic. Oh, Brother West, you're just old school. You're just nostalgic. No, love, sweetness, gentleness never go out of style, as my brother would put it, Cliff. Never go out of style.

Everybody needs sweetness, kindness, gentleness. Everybody needs sweetness, kindness, gentleness. Black music used to be the fundamental conveyor of that sweetness. So that the Bing Crosby's, the Frank Sinatra's, these are great, great geniuses themselves. You ask Frank, who were you inspired by? Billie Holiday. Oh, you talking about the genius from Baltimore City, Billie? That's right. You Italian working class brother from Hoboken?

That's right, because I'm tied to excellence and sweetness. Now, Frank Sinatra, he sings some sweet, gentle songs now. But the younger generation these days, they've got Jaheim and some others who are beautiful, don't get me wrong, but it's

smaller and smaller. But it's partly a matter of the oligarchs in the recording industry. See, Boys and Men, in a way, is the last great group singing performative act that connected to the dramatics and delphonics that I'm talking about. You say, well, what happens? Well, they think they can make more money with just one Negro with a microphone running in their mouth. So you get a genius like Kanye,

deeply confused politically. We won't go into that right now. All this Trump connection. We need some serious pushing on that, brother. But they'd rather have an individual isolated, easier to control in the industry. And the same oligarchs run live performance, radio, and music, and the products. You know how they've now undergone this fundamental transformation in the industry, especially given the new technology and social media.

So I tell the young folk, I say, you know, I could not have grown up without the sweetness of those rhythm and blues groups. Now, I know the circumstances are different, but where do you get your sweetness from musically? What will be the soundtrack of your freedom movement? Geniuses like Kendrick Lamar provide some of the soundtrack. There's no doubt about that. And then there's others as well. But not enough. Not enough soul-stirring music, in your opinion.

Not enough soul-stirring. There's no Curtis Mayfield. Nobody near Aretha. Nobody near Smokey Robinson. Do you think that's connected to the peacocking? Oh, Lord, yes. Social media. Absolute image, spectacle, money, Instagram, push button culture.

Standing in front of the Bentleys. Always got to be in front of the commodity and so forth and so on. Big house, big jewelry. I mean, Peter Pendergrass, he had his sharp cars, but when that genius got into the studio and saying, love TKO, you don't give a damn what kind of car he got. He's going to touch your soul. You know what I mean? And it's not just on the black side. You know, you got vanilla blues men like Bruce Springsteen

and the Jewish Brothers genius Dylan from Minnesota, Robert Zimmerman. All of these folk were involved in the kenosis activity of self-emptying, but they were deeply shaped by the Sun Houses, the Robert Johnsons, the Muddy Waters, the Ma Rainey's, the Bessie Smith, the blues tradition. Do you know Gary Clark Jr.? Gary Clark Jr. I've heard the name, but I haven't studied. I got to check him out i'm gonna

educate you i need some education my brother he is one of those rare musicians where you hear you hear a riff and it's a gary clark pull up that pull up that video of when he played with my friend suzanne from honey honey yeah and he they did uh midnight rider from the almond brothers but he did it as gary clark jr he's got a a sound of his guitar it reminds me of hendrix in a way it's very different than hendrix but it reminds me in that it's so distinctively him oh i got to hear this yeah he'll pull it up right now thank you so much he's a brilliant guy and a great guy too but he's uh he's just a unique, unique artist. I don't know anyone like him.

And his sound, it's one of those things where there's no mistaking who's playing the music when you hear him play. He's got his own signature. Even when he's playing Midnight Rider, which is a classic. So many people have played that. Classic song. Yeah. Put this that. Classic song. Yeah. Put this on. Put up.

This is them up there. There's Gary. Oh, oh. There's Gary on guitar. This is me filming this. Is that right? Yeah, it was in the crowd. They did this midnight on a Tuesday in downtown LA.

Now, how long ago was this? Year ago or so. Oh, just recently, huh? This motherfucker. Ooh, love. He's one of my favorite artists for sure. I can hear that Robert Johnson in him already. He's got everything in him.

But it's also... Buddy guy, buddy guy. Once you hear more Gary Clark, you realize this is him. This is him. is him i hear you you could feel it in the air in that club there was maybe a hundred people in that club suzanne is reading the lyrics from her phone. She didn't even know the lyrics. They did this totally impromptu. Right on the spot.

Totally on the spot. Totally on the spot. Unprepared. They talked about it. They said, let's do Menn Dive Rider. Okay. So they weren't even, they didn't rehearse this. They didn't rehearse it.

They didn't at all. This is live. And he just takes off on it like that. Just takes off on it. Just did his version of it. Austin, Texas. Oh, he's from Texas. Oh, yeah.

Lightning Hopkins. He's a bad motherfucker. What. He's a bad motherfucker. Wow. He's a bad motherfucker. I got to check him out. He's one of those guys that you watch him and you just get a tingle. Like, he's like, there's an energy that comes out in him. Undeniable greatness.

Yeah. That's part of that self-improvement. Yes. Yes. But he's also an incredibly humble guy. No peacocking at all. Yeah. He's not that at all.

He's an artist. But that's a sign of spiritual maturity and moral security. Yes. It's the insecurity that makes you want to peacock all the time. Yes, yes. He's just devoted to the work, devoted to the art. How old, brother, is he now? Gary is probably in his 30s.

He's very young. Yeah. He's still getting better. His latest shit is his best shit he lives here in la goes back and forth he's around here all the time 35 yeah i don't know i think he's out here now right isn't he out here he was just suzanne just sent me a text message they were just jamming at his house last week so he must be out here oh yeah he's got some shows here in september i think he's opening for the rolling stones i might have just oh shit oh no oh shit good god almighty that's a hell of a show right

there yeah he's he's there's a signed poster of him over by the uh kitchen he signed something for me wow no no you educate me brother yeah gotta get some i'll check him i'll tell you which one to get it's uh He's got some great work. But there's those artists that when you hear their thing, whatever it is, it literally gives you energy. You feel it in your body. It's like a drug. It changes your state. Absolutely. have the very creative marriage of technique and vision of craft and imagination mediated through sound.

The vibrations that are sent are just beyond language. You know, the great John Coltrane had a whole philosophy of vibrations. Sun Ra was part of that dialogue as well. Eric Dolphy, some of the old geniuses of that time, you know. And these vibrations are just, they're as real as a heart attack, but you can never see them. It's almost like Charles Baudelaire defined a materialist as someone who is obsessed with utensils and afraid of perfume. Because perfume, you can't touch it, but it's as real as a heart attack. Well, the vibrations of deep music, Mozart to Miles or Mary Lou Williams or Jerry Allen or any of the great artists, it just goes through you. Yes.

And it's not simply cerebral. It doesn't bypass the brain, but it doesn't stay in the brain. It goes through your whole body, man. It's like a drug. It changes your state. It changes your whole... If there was a drug that you could take that made you feel the way you feel when a great song comes on, you would want to take that all the time. Take that all the time.

Yeah. If it had no side effects. Well, in a way, you can play that song over and over again. Yes, you can. I mean, eventually you get a little bit tolerant of it, unfortunately. But when you were growing up, though, brother, who were the major musicians that were shaping your sensibility? I was always into rock and roll. I was always into classic rock when I was young.

I was always into, God, everyone from Queen. I was a big Queen fan when I was a kid. And this is New Jersey. You haven't gotten to Boston yet, huh? No. Well, I left New Jersey when I was seven. Oh, no. This was Boston.

I lived in San Francisco from seven to 11. Then I lived in Florida from 11 to 13. And then Boston from 13 to 24. So it was mainly that Boston context where you had the classic rock. Yeah. A lot of Aerosmith, which is a Boston band, of course. You know, a lot of Van Halen. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot of that. See, I didn't get into classic rock as much as I probably should have. It's only so much time you have. There's only so much time to listen to music. That is an issue, right? There's so much great work, and every year new great work gets created. I keep track of all of it, because it was mainly rhythm and blues on our side of town.

You know what I mean? Yeah. In Sacramento, California. It was mainly rhythm and blues on our side of town, you know what I mean? Yeah. In Sacramento, California. Jazz came later, and then for me, musical theater came, and then classical music. I played classical violin for 20 years. Oh, wow.

And so classical music was always very important to me. Must absorb a lot of time to learn. It did. Oh, man, I was first violin, man. I used to conduct, too. Oh, man, I underclined to knock music with Mozart. We'd play Egmont and Beethoven and so forth. And as soon as it was over, I'd go home and, you know, rock with Otis Redding, man.

And with Isaac Hayes and Black Moses and Great Barry White and others. But it's fascinating how you begin to see these connections, the broader connections. And so classic rock was something that I got to real late But late as in you know, 21 22 right in that sense very much so But a world without music. Oh It's like Well, it's interesting too when you it's all about the context of when the music was created, too, because if you go and listen to Robert Johnson today, it's still undeniably brilliant.

But what's interesting is it was so good back then that people thought he sold his soul to the devil. I mean, that was the narrative. That was the legend. But if you listen to it today in comparison to something like Gary Clark, it's so simplistic. It's true. If Gary Clark could go back in time to when Robert Johnson was alive, they would think he was from another planet. That's the truth. They wouldn't even understand it.

They wouldn't even understand what he was doing. That's very real. I was blessed to have dialogue with B.B. King on a number of occasions. He was really the king in a lot of ways. King, not because he was the greatest blues artist, but because he was a great blues artist who, through his personality and through his generosity, was able to create such a presence that he becomes the king in that way.

I had a chance to see him live. You saw him live, too? Yes. He sucked at it. Was that at the very end when he was sitting most of the time? No, he was still standing. He was in the late 90s. Oh yeah, no, no, absolutely.

The power out of his voice. Oh man. But he used to say that the blues was a kind of high school vis-a-vis the jazz who were those who went to college. And by college, he meant just studying with Bird, with Armstrong, with Duke,

with Rutherford and Mary Lou Williams and the others. And I always tell him, I said, I don't know about that, because genius and excellence comes in a number of different forms. Most jazz musicians don't have the genius of a Robert Johnson. And yet, you know, Charlie Christian's guitar is more complicated in a variety of different ways than Robert Johnson, too, so that you have to be able to be flexible enough to see the differences, the development, building on the genius of those who came before.

So you can end up being a very good guitar player who plays some unbelievable chords that Jimi Hendrix created. Yes. But you build it on Jimi. Right. And it becomes almost not taken for granted, but something you can use as a launching pad.

Like Stevie Ray Vaughan did. Yes. He wrote Jimi's vibrations. That's a great example. And added his own feel to itan did. Yes. He wrote Jimmy's Vibrations. That's a great example. And added his own feel to it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And here again, you see, you have that common humanity that cuts across color.

And there's a lot of controversy these days about cultural appropriation. You know, can white brothers and sisters really be part of a black genre and so forth and so on? I had a dialogue at my class at Harvard this spring. I teach a course on black intellectual tradition, and I include some white intellectuals as part of it. It was a strange career. Jim Crow, for example, by the great C. Van Woodward. History of Jim Crow, which is the Bible. Martin Luther King said it was the Bible, the civil rights movement. Woodward was a white Southern brother.

And I asked him, they said, we don't understand completely, Brother West. I said, well, let me ask you this. Is Eminem a part of the hip-hop tradition at the highest level? Yes, he is. Yes, he is. That's what we're talking about. You see, you had to be a fool to deny the genius of Eminem. Yeah.

Of Eminem, you see. But relatively few. And there's no Eminem without Dr. Dre and so forth. Right, of course. So he immerses and soaks himself in it. Yes. But he puts his own distinctive stamp on it. Hall & Oates would be another.

Righteous Brothers, another. Average White Band from Scotland. Wow. You know. Average White Band from Scotland. Wow. Well, you know the Average White Band. Sure, sure. And the funk that they would generate. Yeah. Oh, my God. Now, of course, no Average White Band without James Brown. James Brown would take it to places nobody took it. Right. But shh. Right.

You let those Scottish Brothers play person to person on you. Yeah. Oh, Lord have mercy. Pick up the pieces. Why? Why'd you have to go? Why'd you have to go and make me love you?

And it's slow. Why'd you? I mean, it's just soulful, man. You say Scotland. Scotland. Robert Burns. Walter Scott. David Hume.

Colonized by the British Empire. Responding in their own creative ways. And by the 20th century, they soaked in rhythm and blues, too. Wow. Korea's like that today. Really? Oh, man. You know, K-pop and K-rhythm and blues.

I know. They've got a lot of break dancers over there. Oh, but it's not just BTS now. BTS is something else. They pack Madison Square Garden. But I'm talking about like Urban Sacapa, man. Oh, you put on coffee, man. Oh, Lord have mercy.

I played at the Danny Glover the other day on the Bernie Sanders campaign. We traveled way off in the country in South Carolina for Brother Bernie. I say, Danny, you're from San Francisco. I said, man, listen to these young Korean brothers, man. They're going to remind you of the natural four of Richmond. And I put it on. Oh, man, they can't be Korean.

What you talking about? Those Koreans got a soulful sound, man, that can't be Korean. What you talking about? Those Koreans got a soulful sound, man, and a blow. Yo, man. I was just reading a book called The Birth of a Korean Cool by Sister Wong. Oh, wow. And it shows, again, how that human spirit is always grounded in something local and particular like black music. But it travels. It's the roots and the routes.

Yeah. So the roots are black, but the R-O-U-T-E-S is global. Right. So just immersing themselves in the tradition and the culture of it all. It's like Japanese jazz. Jazz artists, man. Yes. Right.

You just got back from Thailand. Yeah. That was last year. Yeah. That was last year. Yeah. But now, man, it's Yeah But now man It's a It's a human thing

It's a global thing It's a beautiful thing The momentum of culture Is so strange Because Thailand's A great example of that It's like They're so different

They're so And the momentum of culture Like I just got back from Italy They're so different Wow But yet they're so similar Yeah But they're so

There's a momentum Of the way they live their lives. It's very unique and unusual. And I think that's one of the great things about traveling is you get to see, oh, well, the way we live here is like, especially here in Los Angeles, which is preposterous. I've never lived in Sacramento. I grew up, but I never lived in LA. Where do you live now? I live in Cambridge now. Yeah, Cambridge is fine.

It's fine until four months of the year when it's just a frozen wasteland. I know. I know. I used to perform at Catch a Rising Star. Oh, yes. Yeah, in Harvard Square. Absolutely. Right there in Harvard Square.

Cambridge is, I mean, it's a great place. It's wonderful. Well, intellectually, it's got some wonderful things to hang out with, brother. There's a lot of- Skip Gates and- Yes. Brendan Terry and, brother. There's a lot of... Skip Gates and... Yes. Brendan Terry and Thomas Shelby. Boston's a strange place.

It really is. There's so many different flavors to it, you know? But it's so goddamn cold. But it gets cold. But that's when it's time to go in the library and read some books. Yes. You know what I mean? It also builds character.

But that's true, too. There's something about people that grow up in cold climates. You got to come to terms with it, like Chicago like chicago yes chicago is a perfect example oh yeah they're great people there because they have character absolutely detroit they deal with that shit they got that deal with the terms yeah you're right about that though man i mean one of the sadder features of our our moment given all our the joy of reveling in each other's humanity and music and so forth is that

you got impending ecological catastrophe escalating nuclear catastrophe economic catastrophe is a grotesque wealth inequality all around the world spiritual catastrophe in terms of intensifying forms of depression, suicide, wasted lives, lack of self-respect, not believing in oneself and thinking that the only way you can really make it is by imitating the mainstream forms of conformity.

And then the political catastrophes of right-wing movements all around the world. And by right-wing movements, what I mean is the rule of big money, big military, and then scapegoat the most vulnerable and try to convince the most vulnerable that it's their fault that they're in the subordinate positions that they are, rather than giving them a fair chance, you see. And that's the makings of new forms of fascism and so on, you see. And you say to yourself, you know, how do we hold on to some sense of hope? And there is no hope without wrestling with despair.

If you're afraid of despair, you'll never have hope. You've got to wrestle with it. You've got to wrestle with despair. If you're afraid of despair, you'll never have hope. You've got to wrestle with it. You've got to wrestle with it. Not allow it to have the last word, but you've got to wrestle with it. When you're talking about your concern about nuclear catastrophe, impending nuclear catastrophe, are you talking about what's going on right now with Iran? Well, I'm thinking about Russia.

Russia, China. U.S. missile heads, Iran. North Korea. The possibility of war. U.S. bombing. missile heads, Iran. North Korea. The possibility of war. Yeah. U.S. bombing. Precious Iran. Iranian brothers and sisters are as precious and priceless as anybody else. They just happen to be under an authoritarian rule that does need to be changed and transformed.

There's no doubt about it. But you think, you know, all the hell they've been through, man. They had eight years when the United States was on the side of Saddam Hussein. Yeah. And they were all alone in the world. I mean, it's very much like our Jewish brothers and sisters felt in 1973. They'd already undergone a genocidal attack, one out of three precious Jews killed. And in 73, they're in the world all by themselves other than the U.S. Empire. And you say, oh, my God, who can I rely on? And that brings out the worst in people.

The worst in people because it's all about in-crowd, in-group security. Authoritarian on the inside and distrustful of the whole world on the outside. And this is why it's so difficult to have a discussion about the Israeli occupation with our precious Palestinian brothers and sisters, because to try to be able to cast a light on how an underdog, because that's the history of Jews in 2,000 years, is basically underdog. Became an oppressor. And how they become top dogs, tied to the U.S. top dogs.

Right. dog. Became an oppressor. And how they become top dogs, tied to the U.S. top dogs. Now, you always have, again, those Jewish voices and organization that are critical of Israeli occupation, critical of any actions of human beings, including Jews, that need to be called into question. But it's hard to keep track of the rich and priceless humanity of Palestinian brothers and sisters under occupation, second-class citizenship, when it's very clear that Jews have been so viciously treated for 2,000 years in the history of the West as well as the history of the Middle East. And yet we have a moral duty to keep track of the preciousness of Palestinian babies, just as we ought to keep track of the preciousness of Palestinian babies, just as we ought to keep track of the preciousness of Jewish babies.

And Gaza and Tel Aviv must have a spotlight in terms of what those human beings are going through on both sides of that divide, as it were, even given the asymmetric relation of power and the structure of domination called the occupation. I'd say the same thing about Tibet. I'd say the same thing about Kashmir. I'd say the same thing about Western Sub-Sahara under Moroccan domination. There's so many examples that we human beings generate that require our moral and spiritual witness and our analytical attention and our

artists who can authorize an alternative, even if only for a moment, an alternative. What is the art like in Palestine? The art? The art. The art in Palestine? Oh, it's unbelievable. I mean, I would imagine when you're dealing with such an oppressed group of people that are living in such a precarious situation in time and history. It's unbelievable.

I was just talking to my dear brother, Mark Lamont Hill. We just had him at Harvard for a dialogue on the Palestinian and black situation. And he goes back and forth, and he talks about the Palestinian hip-hop artists. Really? Oh, my God. They got one of the richest sub talks about the Palestinian hip-hop artists. Really? Oh my God. They got one of the richest subcultures of hip-hop. Isn't that always the case when you have a culture that's downtrodden?

Absolutely. You get the Kurds and Turkies who apply the disproportionate amount of influence on Turkish culture. What's a good Palestinian hip-hop band to look into? That's a good question, because I didn't really follow through. I like to listen to that, too, because I don't know what they're saying. I love listening to music where I don't know the language.

And you can just feel the spirit coming through and the vibrations. Brazilian. I love Brazilian hip-hop, because I don't speak Portuguese, and it's just amazing, the sounds. I've never heard Brazilian hip-hop. A lot of UFC fighters from Brazil, they'll come out to their soundtrack as Brazilian artists. Yes, yes. Amazing. features of being rooted in the arts and music is that no matter how ugly and

vicious and hateful things are it never suffocates the human spirit hmm somebody gonna tell a joke somebody a song touches so yeah what I mean yeah and it's almost a way of saying I love you, not in a sentimental Hollywood stereotypical way. But you know that song by Stevie Wonder, These Three Words? Mm-hmm. Oh, Lord.

You got that, man? We can't play it. Oh, you can't play it? Oh, I thought it was going to be right in front of you. No, because that was a video that you put up there before. Yeah, but that video was Gary Johnson singing in a concert. Oh, that thought he got. We'll get. No. Because that was a video that you put up there before. Yeah, but that video was Gary Johnson singing in a concert. Oh, that you did. Yeah.

Yeah, we can get away with that. You just listen to Stevie, man, because he's talking about how an aching heart can be kindled to smile and open and connect in a world overwhelmed by hatred and distrust that is shot through all of us. And we all contribute to it. We all contribute to it, you see. I mean, that's one of the reasons why even when I talk about, you know, Brother Trump as the gangster, I call him a kind of. Do you know him? We have created a fascist Frankenstein. And he's the creation of the worst of America in the way in which Martin King represents the best.

And they are both America's apple pie. But any critique of anybody ought to begin with yourself. Ought to begin with who we are. Because we all got gangster elements inside of us. No way of us. No way around it. Do you know Trump? No, I've never met him.

I met him one time I think at the end of a Anita Baker concert in the casinos in Atlantic City way back in the 80s. Wow. And it was interesting. He was there with Mike Tyson

I think. And it was interesting because it was a chocolate affair. You know what I mean? He's the only vanilla brother there. Right. And you know, one of the first things that come across to the brother is that he's just so glad to be there

hanging out with the black brothers. Cool and so forth. You could just tell he's just as square as a rectangle. You see, man, you go listen to your beach boys, man. We got James Brown, brother. We got Brian Wilson. We love you, but we got JB, man. We got Jace Brown, brother. We got Brian Wilson. We love you, but we got

JB, man. And it's a cultural dynamic because he was the richest one in the room, though. And Mike Tyson got a lot of money. Don King got some of that money, too. But it was a different kind of dynamic. And so

it's a context in which you embrace. We embrace them because that's the best of black culture we embrace everybody you know what i mean if donald trump's mother shows up from scotland in 1930 black people been here nine generation we ain't gonna say go back where you come from come on in here sister be part of this democratic experiment. We on the other side, the chocolate side of town, but we welcome you. But don't say nothing about our brown brothers and sisters coming in from Mexico. We left. Because if anybody's definitive about what is America, it's going to be red and black people.

Because they're the ones who undergo the monstrous crimes against humanity. The genocide, the stolen land on the one hand, and the stolen peoples and the human bondage on the other those are the pillars the worst pillars of the country then you've got democratic visions coming not just from thomas jefferson but they're coming from the slaves like frederick douglas see what i mean the border crisis is a very interesting one right because it's it Because it represents the fear of people from the downtrodden countries where they don't have opportunity trying to get into this country. Yes. But then it also represents the fear of criminals, of drug dealers and gangsters and gang members, cartel members making their way across and victimizing our citizens. And both things are human.

Both things are real, too. But if you tell the lies and make it as if the latter represent the whole, then that's what Trump specializes in, you see. Did you see the video of Pence when he was down there at the detention centers and just looking away? No humanity. Very disturbing. centers and just just looking away no humanity just very disturbing and it's so you know it's so sad because here's a brother who speaks his whole personal identity on christianity being a christian yes and you say to yourself like brother michael i mean as a fellow christian i'm not trying to call into question your christian faith or. I don't have the authority to do that.

But the Bible says in part, by thy works you shall know them. The works of love they exemplify, you see. And, you know, nowadays you've got commodified Christianity and a commodified culture of a declining empire. And you get Christian evangelicals, 91% or so pro-Trump, 79% say he's doing the best possible job. And you say to yourself, wow, Christianity seems to have lost the meaning of the cross and has become so accommodated to the empire. And it was the Roman Empire who put Jesus to death.

The Roman Empire. You had some neo-colonial elites who cooperated. But it was the Roman Empire who put Jesus to death. It was the greatest empire of its day. Very much like the Persian Empire. The largest, greatest empire of its day with Cyrus the Great. Now you got the Roman Empire putting Jesus to death. And here Jesus is sent there by the crowd, by the mob.

And you say to Brother Michael Pence, so you're going to accommodate yourself to Donald Trump? So you're going to accommodate yourself to Donald Trump. You're going to accommodate yourself to policies that are so inhumane and barbaric just to retain your position and try to then rationalize it as a Christian. We need some music and some comedy to try to get in contact with his humanity to change him. But most importantly, you just need a social movement. You need to get him out of office. You need some accountability. But with Pence, just seeing him in reaction to those people is just a failure of perspective. Just cold, distant, callous.

Well, the narrative is that they broke the law and that they're imposing upon our great nation. And, you know, this is, it's crimes of opportunity. They're just trying to, they're trying to find opportunity. They're trying to, they're coming over here because they want a better life. To not have sympathy for that. And other than indigenous peoples and my own African peoples, that is the history of the country. Yes. and my own African peoples. That is the history of the country,

to open and bring into the country those who are eager and have energy, willing to work and sacrifice and the unbelievable contribution of voluntary immigrants to the making of America. Now, America's not a nation of immigrants. I don't like that language because it overlooks indigenous peoples and involuntary immigrants like black people. And slavery was not America's original sin. That's another neoliberal lie that you

hear all the time on the corporate media is if indigenous people's suffering has to be rendered invisible to highlight black people. What's one of the least discussed injustices of this nation, right? And then their current situation in these reservations with extreme alcoholism and drug addiction. Social misery. And they still got their rich music and poetry and resistance, but the social conditions are just, but they are the casualties of a settler colonial enterprise. And we'd rather act as if they don't exist.

I mean, we black people became central because our labor and our imagination and culture became central. And we had a barbaric civil war, 750,000 people dead, each life precious. And that has been the central event in the shaping of America. So when people talk about race, they go straight to blackness, as if indigenous peoples and redness is not integral too. It's just that they've been rid of so invisible, and the vicious attack has been so immense. Well, it's so complicated too that they have their own rules on the reservations.

They're allowed to have gambling. They have their own sovereignty on the reservations. They're allowed to have gambling. They can have all sorts of, they have their own sovereignty in a certain way on the reservations. It's very odd. Oh, no, it's true. And I was blessed to be there in Standing Rock a couple of Decembers ago. It was one of the marvelous moments in my life to stand there with the group there. It was a multiracial group. People came from all around the world, Naomi Klein from Canada.

For the most part, it was a matter of the indigenous peoples coming together. Memories of Wounded Knee, 1890, over 400 people. Could you remind people what Standing Rock was about? Standing Rock was a struggle over that pipeline. Absolutely, trying to put pressure on the Obama administration to ensure that a pipeline was not built that would violate the sacred lands and many of the sacred memories of indigenous peoples. And it was magnificent because you had the coming together of indigenous nations because part of the problem, this is true for all oppressed people, is fighting among themselves and the difficulty of coming together. It was the first time you had the coming together of a significant number of indigenous people's nations unified against the greedy corporate elites who were trying to promote this pipeline

through Canada all the way down to the southern section of the United States. How did that go off? Well, first, we got an announcement right when we were there. It was freezing, too. It was December. And they were hosing people down, too. Oh, Lord, yes. They were hosing people down, wetting them down while this was all going on.

And it was about minus 15 or whatever it was. It was freezing up there, you know. minus 15 or whatever it was. It was freezing up there, you know. But no, we got an announcement from the Obama administration for a suspension of it because they had planned to do it too. I mean, you know, Obama administration

can be very accommodating to Wall Street interests and corporate elite interests and so forth, even given the image and spectacle of a black president being a progressive and what have you, much more progressive than Trump. That's not saying too much. But we got a suspension, and the struggle continues, really.

But it sent tremendous ripples through the cultures of indigenous peoples and their nations in terms of coming together. And the fact that it was successful. Absolutely. And there was at least a relative victory. All these victories are relative, but a very relative victory. It was beautiful just to see again. You can't downplay the role of joy, though, brother.

This is so very important. The joy in struggle. The joy in organizing. The joy in organizing. The joy in fighting for justice. The joy in the nightclubs. The joy in the churches and mosques and temples and synagogues. Joy is something that we need to come back to. That's one of the great secrets of the human conditions.

What are the sources of joy? What are the conditions for the possibility of joy? We've been obsessed with pleasure for the last 100 years or so. And there's nothing wrong with pleasure, but pleasure is not the same thing as joy at all. When you look at the sparkling eyes of your precious daughter,

that's not pleasure, that's joy. You and your wife. That's deep, deep joy, you see. That's what pleasure. That's joy. You and your wife. That's deep, deep joy. You see, that's what endures. You could be broke as the Ten Commandments financially, but that memory will bring you joy. That's real joy, not peacocking. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

You said so many amazing things today. This is one of my favorite podcasts of all time. I just want to thank you for being here. Is the time up already? It's already 11 o'clock. No. Good God almighty. But brother, man, this has been a blessing though, brother. My pleasure. And what an artist

you are. What a human being you are, my brother. You stay strong though, man. You too, sir. Thank you very much. Is it really 11, man? Yeah.