PG: Right, and it's obvious that these confrontations have led many in the mainstream American press to denounce you, but even then your popularity among poor and working people in America and across the world continues to grow. How do you account for that?
CW: Well, one important thing to keep in mind is that in the 65 events that I did, at each stop I would tell them that we must bring Reaganism to a close -- McCain and Palin were the last moments of Reaganite policy (unregulated markets, indifference towards the poor, stagnating wages) -- and that if Obama won, I would break dance in the afternoon and be his major critic the next morning. That's how I ended every speech. And so I broke dance in the afternoon [when Obama won in 2008] because we did stop McCain and Palin. But the next morning I knew the social forces behind him (Wall Street and so forth) needed to be called into question. So when I went after Larry Summers, went after Tim Geithner, went after Gary Gensler and all the Wall St. folk who inhabited his space, his cabinet, Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, and so forth, they [his supporters] said "you're turning on the President!." I said "no, I'm just being consistent. I'm being true to what I said." But then that's where the demonization set in. But, you know, that goes with the territory.
PG: Was there a break-dance this November?
CW: God, no! He's had four years and he's proved himself to be a Wall St. President, he's proved himself to be imperial to the core, he's proved himself to be a war criminal. And you have to call that for what it is. And people say "oh you hatin'" and I say "I'm a Christian. I hate the deed; I don't hate the person," because he has the potential to change. Malcolm X was a gangster for a long time; he was wrong, he changed and he became a great freedom fighter. All of us have the capacity to change, you see. And so in that sense, you know, as a Christian, "you love your enemies" which means you better have some! (laughs) Because if you take a stand for poor and working people, you gonna' have some enemies! That was part of what Jesus had in mind -- if you go through life with no enemies, you're probably not living a good life. You're going to have enemies if you take a stance. And, the question about loving them is not sadomasochistic: you're not loving your oppressors because they're beating you down but because they're still human beings and you know you have the capacity, inside of you, to actually engage in those same kinds of vicious forms of revenge, envy, domination, hatred and so forth. And therefore that allows a self-critique within your own soul. But, you know, I don't want to get too theological here but the point is that it's been a challenge. But what's interesting now is that more and more people are coming around. I gave a talk in San Francisco with 4,000 people; in New York, 3,000 people. You think, "wow, this thing is getting bigger and bigger and bigger!"
PG: Right, and the enemies grow apace.
CW: Absolutely! In this recent moment with the Middle East, you see it so very clearly that US policy is imperial to the core and Obama is right at the center of it. And yet he puts up with these criminal massacres of precious folk. That doesn't mean you have to be pro-Hamas -- Hamas has gangsta' proclivities too, but they're a resistance movement against occupation. No mention of the occupation at all in the US discourse. That's a sign that they're hiding and concealing a fundamental reality that not just Hamas but the Palestinian people are wrestling with. My God, I am against occupation no matter what! The sad thing is that if it was Palestinian occupation of Jewish brothers and sisters, Hamas would probably be heroes in America. In that case, I would be in solidarity with my Jewish brothers and sisters. I wouldn't be supportive of Hamas' attack on innocent people but I would be calling for an end to Palestinian occupation of Jewish brothers and sisters. But that kind of double standard, that's the hypocrisy that needs to be pointed out.
SR: On Democracy Now!, with Amy Goodman, you referred to Obama as a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface." Can you explain why that description is fitting?
CW: Well, because discourse in America has moved so far to the Right that Romney is far Right, and Obama is centrist. And a Rockefeller Republican in the 60's and 70's was in many ways very much what Obama is now. He's calling for cuts with little bit of revenue increase with the tax from the well-to-do, but it's going to be very modest, he keeps saying. There's no serious talk about a massive investment, private or public, for jobs, for decent housing, and for education. And his foreign policy is not only continuous with Bush but in some ways even worse.
PG: For that much, Rockefeller Republican would've been sufficient. So, why "blackface"?
CW: Well, because he's a black man. Because, you see, a black face in America makes a difference. Race matters in America. You can get away with a lot. Just by being black, people just assume you've got some connection to folk catching hell. Because when you get to New York, as soon as you get there, just go to the chocolate side of town and see the levels of social misery: the 50% of unemployment amongst young people, the 20% unemployment for everybody , the 40% of young kids in poverty, and so forth. So with a black face, they just figured that Obama must be progressive. Not necessarily ! Clarence Thomas? No ! Barack Obama is much more progressive than Clarence, but he's in the center. He's a centrist.
PG: So you mentioned race. And it's clear to everyone that, among other things, the relationship between race and class is fundamental to any understanding of US society in the present. You manage, more than many other critics, to hold the two categories together very well -- affirming, on the one hand, the irreducibility of race to class, how the suffering of Native Americans, Blacks and Latinos is about more than just exploitation, while maintaining, on the other hand, that poor and working whites have little in common with white elites and so are indispensable to the struggle against racism as well as capitalism. What do you find to be the challenges of thinking in this way and are you ever tempted to cast one category, race or class, as the more decisive political force?
CW: Well, I think it shifts from historical context to historical context. I don't think that history has any kind of essentialist narrative that always reflects the relation between race, class, gender, empire, region, and nation. All of these various categories have to be dipped in space and time, which is to say they have to take historical forms. And so various moments, for example slavery in 1860's, it's fairly clear, that's racialized. They're workers, but it's racialized because it was white supremacist slavery. And so the issue of race split the country right down the middle -- barbaric civil war, 750,000 now dead but it was still a class issue (as Dubois points out in Black Reconstruction ). It was still a class issue but it took a racial form. And more and more these days, race is taking a class form because you've got a black middle class that is often times indifferent to the black poor.
" It's not a matter of hating the black bourgeoisie, it's just hating their cowardice, it's hating their indifference, it's hating their complacency."
I'll give you an example: that if middle class brothers and sisters, who I love deeply, were going to jail at the same level as Black poor brothers and sisters going to jail, who I love deeply, we'd have a different kind of black leadership. A qualitatively different kind of black leadership. Because the mass incarceration of America is class incarceration, for the most part. And so in that sense, you see my god the class divide is much deeper now than it was before and therefore you have to raise those issues in the name of justice, in the name of truth and in the name of love, because it's not a matter of hating the black bourgeoisie, it's just hating their cowardice, it's hating their indifference, it's hating their complacency. It's hating the fact that somehow they think their child has more weight and value on the moral scale than Jamal and Latisha on the block. And that to me is just wrong.
Now of course that's also true for the larger society. Can you imagine white young brothers and sisters going to jail at the same level as the black poor? Oh shoot, there'd be a White House conference every three days! Every three days! Oh my god, Suzy's going to jail! Johnny's going to jail! (laughs) One out of three whites incarcerated? Oh my god!
SR: There's been a revival of Marxism: for example, commentators have noted that since 2008, sales of Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto have risen. You describe yourself as a "non-Marxist socialist'. Can you elaborate?
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