Unfortunately, the greater consciousness among Whites about Black equality has not carried over to the new victims of racism - Muslims and Immigrants. There is no racial enlightenment for these groups, which are huge. Millions of Muslims and an equal number of immigrants, who whether legal or illegal, face discrimination both legally from the government and extra-legally from White Americans - and sometimes Black and Hispanic Americans. The Democratic Presidential candidates are avoiding these issues in order to cultivate support among White Americans.
I think that seeing as much support as somebody like Obama as a black candidate running for president in a country that historically has had issues with the African-American people, and them having issues vice-versa, is a miraculous thing.
The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people's expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn't care if you are a white person who likes Black people; it's still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don't look like you.
Think the very fact that somebody like Mike Pence is seen as useful to the [Donald] Trump campaign would be analytically a sign of difficulty for him because, you know, the Republican Party over the last two decades has needed to include his support among women, among Latinos, among blacks, among young people, and among highly educated people.
While it has become “cool” for white folks to hang out with black people and express pleasure in black culture, most white people do not feel that this pleasure should be linked to unlearning racism.
If you look hard enough, you can find race issues and racism in everything. I know people who say, 'See, I don't play pool 'cuz that's where the white ball chase the black ball off the table. So I prefer bowling, where the big black ball knock down the white pins with the red necks.'
I think that the movement is weak in Zimbabwe, much weaker than it is in Italy for example, much weaker than it is in Spain, much weaker than it is even in Germany, although there the groups are small they are very vociferous and you get them speaking loudly and organising.
Music documentaries are hard to tell, but I think they're an amazing vehicle to look at racism, our attitude to sex, the way we judge drugs. There's the ability to get a big audience because of these incredible, iconic, charismatic people. You can look at a number of issues - the challenge is to make sure you choose something that has all those issues. Popular music is like a mirror of culture, of who we are.
I'm very disappointed in Barack Obama. I was very much in support of him in the beginning, but I cannot support war. I cannot support droning. I cannot support capitulating to the banks. I cannot support his caving in to Benjamin Netanyahu. I think many black people support him because they're so happy to have handsome black man in the White House. But it doesn't make me happy if that handsome black man in the White House is betraying all of our traditional values of peace, peoplehood, caring about strangers, feeding the hungry, and not bombing children.
When a black man is stopped by a cop for no apparent reason, that is covert racism. When a black woman shops in a fancy store and is followed by security guards, that is covert racism. It is more subtle than 1960s racism, but it is still racism.
I think that America certainly has racism, I think that any industrialized country does. But when you see how many million fans Barack Obama has who are not black, it would lead one to the conclusion that millions of Americans are in fact not burdened by the albatross of racism.
Toni Morrison is challenged regularly because she is a black author who writes about the real world. She speaks with so much knowledge about black issues she can't be accused of creating these (issues). People find these issues threatening.
It's very hard to understand just what our strategy is in Syria, frankly, and on Iraq that this is Iraq's war, that the role of the United States is to help Iraq, to arm, train, support, provide air support, but this has to be Iraq's war.
It's a known fact, that in life, you can't have everyhing. In my heart, I knew that I loved them both as much as it is possible to love two people at the same time. Conrad and I were linked, we would always be linked. That wasn't something I could do away with. And I know that now--that love isn't something you can erase--no matter how hard you try.
We've seen a lot of people come together, no matter the race, and have support of black people. I think that's a huge thing. I don't know if it's going to fix all our issues, but I think it's a step in the right direction. I go out and I've protested, I've marched.
As a black person on the outside, because there's so much black art and so much of black people's work circulating, so many people imitating what black people do, you would think that there'd be more black people on the business side. It didn't cross my mind that every label head, for the most part, is a white guy.