[inaudible conversations] hey, once again, good afternoon. And, again, want to welcome you to the National Black writers conference. Again, thank you so much for being a part of this great, great conference. Again, lets give the organizers a big hand for organizing, putting this together. [applause] they always do such a great job, and this panel part of the great job that theyre doing today. Race, power and politics is the title of our panel. Our moderator for the day is wallace ford. His panelists will be Marc Lamont Hill and obery hend distribution, so hendricks, so lets welcome our moderator for the day, wallace ford. [applause] thank you and good afternoon. Good afternoon, hello. Good afternoon. All right, okay. We would like to, first of all, just thank you for coming to the 14th annual black writers conference here at medgar evers college. My name is wallace ford, i am the chairman of the Public Administration department here at the school of business, and im the author of the point of view, contemporary commentary blog soon to be in a book form and also the host of the inclusion show which can be seen in various parts of the country. The introduction today has to do with the topic, of course, race, power and politics. Race and racism has been described as americas original sin beginning with the particularly odious form of raciallybased slavery which gab in this began in this country in the 1600s and which is carried forward in its many iterations to this very day. The issue of power has a threepart context; theres knowledge, theres economics, and theres the political aspect of it, of course. And it is one of the because it is a very important part of the concept of power, it is one of the reasons why it was forbidden for black slaves to learn how to read and write. Certainly was also the reason why black slaves were forbidden to own property. And, of course, we see iterations of that again Going Forward even into the 21st century. But after emancipation, the red line, if you will, was drawn at a different point, and that had to do with access to political power. And the battle with respect tos access to political has been going on, i would submit to you, really since emancipation. And weve had the laws and restrictions and the terrorism to keep black people from voting over many years. And here we are in the 21st century, and were still talking about Voter Suppression strategies and legislation being advocated by one major party here in the United States. And so we do have, of course, this notion of race and power now on the political side. Theres been a progression of politics going from, of course, emancipation politics to dealing with issues that weve seen articulated for so many years in the Civil Rights Era, and i would suggest to you again that the Civil Rights Era and the struggle for civil rights certainly has not ended, but its entered into a new phase. And certainly, you know, we had an era of political activity where there was the first black mayor, the first black governor, first black senator and so on in the modern era, and now weve had the first africanamerican president as well. One of the things that panelists will be discussing is where are we in this modern era of politics in terms of black people, and certainly, you know, the election of barack obama has brought about such terms as postracial politics, for example, and weve got to examine that and just see what it really means this terms of the political activity, the political discourse, the political direction that we see for the black community here in this part of, first part of of e 21st century. So im going to do my job which is a very pleasant one and one that im honored to do which is to introduce our guests. As was already indicated, jeff landny cobb, mr. Mark Marc Lamot Hill and, of course, mr. Obery hendricks and Michelle Wallace. And were going to ask our speakers to speak in that order, and we will then open the discussion up to all of you, pause this is meant to be an interactive event. Im sure our colleagues have much to say that is of and value, and, of course, so do you. So we want to make sure that we have an inclusionary process here today. So with that, and im going to just read from mr. Cobbs bio. Hes an associate professor of history and director of the institute of africanamerican studies. Professor cobb is the author of substance of hope. Barack obama and the paradox of process. The devil and Dave Chapelle and other essays, and a freestyle on the hiphop aesthetic which was a finalist for the National Award for arts writing. And he has a book coming up called antidote to revolution africanamerican anticommunism and the struggle for civil rights. Mr. Cobb has been a featured commentator on msnbc, National Public radio, cnnal aljazeera d a number of other National Broadcast outlets, and you have his twitter line there in the program, and youre certainly urged to follow him as well. With that, its my pleasure, indeed, to introduce professor jelani cobb. Thank you. [applause] one, id like to begin by saying thank you for inviting me. Its an honor to be here. Especially as someone who has been attending this conference for a very long time and from the point where i was a fledgling writer just trying to learn the ropes and find out, you know, how this undertaking, this artistic undertaking really worked. So this conference has been key to me in lots of ways over a long period of time, so im very happy to be here to talk with you today. I want when we saw the subject of this panel, i was somewhat apprehensive because i think its impossible to have this conversation without talking about the obama presidency. But its also a very fraught subject in that we have these dissonant impulses that determine in many ways the way that we respond to obama and the way that we respond to criticism of barack obama. You know, that was most evident to me recently when i made a to bleak criticism of the my brothers keeper. Well come back to that in a minute, of the my brothers Keeper Program and its rather obvious shortcomings, failings. And the difficulties implicit within trying to address issues specifically to africanamerican men while we have a black presidency. So as i was saying, i think the fundamental point here, and i will say this, that we are in a point of regression while we appear to be in a point of process. And this is not atypical. To see that there are strains of redepression implicit within something that appears to be progress is not uncommon. So in 2008 we saw the election of the first africanamerican president , something that we saw that none of us ever thought would happen. This 2012 we saw the reelection of an africanamerican president , and these two things have gone hand in hand with a movement to eviscerate the Voting Rights act which people have seen which has been somewhat significantly successful. The ongoing move to make it more difficult for people to have access to the ballot, the ongoing, unchecked excesses of a Prison Industrial Complex, the ongoing issues of income inwallty inewallty, the impact of the housing crisis and so on. So all these dynamics have happened at the same time in which weve seen a black presidency. And in talking about those dynamics, it is often taken as a criticism or referendum on the barack obama presidency. I dont think that anything, it should we should understand it as anything of the sort. Very briefly about my brothers keeper, the concern with that program, 300 million that was raised by the Obama Administration through private philanthropic efforts to support niche thetives relating specifically initiatives relating specifically to young men of color and their particular needs, 300 million sounds like a lot of money, but its actually less than the new york city budget for the parks d. For one year. Department for one year. 300 million spread over five years over young men of color across the United States. And this is less than what the Parks Department spends on its annual operating budget for one city, for new york city. Thats the first thing. The second thing thats really a particular concern here is that it says and, you know, in 1896 when booker t. Washington, 1895 when booker t. Washington gave the atlanta compromise address in which he said politics really could not get black people where we wanted to be, that we had kind of mistakenly placed our faith in politics, that statement galvanized what became the niagara movement, what led into the naacp, what became a centurylong push the attempts to gain Political Rights and to see where we could, how we could use the political system to better our condition. In looking at a africanamerican president who sees disproportionate black male unemployment, sees the circumstances of jordan davis, sees the circumstances of Trayvon Martin and the best response that we can anticipate is that there private philanthropic money, what it says is that we, perhaps, reached the ceiling that booker t. Washington was talking about nearly 120 years ago. That if this is the farthest you can go, the highest, the pinnacle of political expression, your expression of political power is to place someone in the white house, and if that person is incapable of addressing your needs on a specifically Public Policy and federal policy level, then it says perhaps we need to revisit what booker t. Washington was saying. Now, i dont want to take it to be seen that i dont think politics is useful. But what i do think, if nothing else, as we look toward the end of the barack Obama Administration, we have to have Difficult Conversations about what are the limitations of politics and what are the things that we, what are the new, Strategic Directions that we have to come up with if this is incapable of producing more than the anemic racial returns of the Obama Administration thus far. And ill stop there. Thank you, professor cobb. Our next up, we have professor lamont hill, and mark la monday hill is one of the leading hiphop generation intellectuals in the country. His work covers topics such as culture, politics and education has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Hes the author of hiphop pedagogy and the politics of identity. I want to echo the sentiment that this means so much and im grateful to be invited especially doctor brend brenda t has done so much organizing to make this possible. [applause] i hated to go second because i had the sense that he was going to cover interesting stuff that i agree with wholeheartedly. I am equally curious about what this moment means and im struggling to make sense of it in a way that is productive for us because i could spend an hour critiquing the policies but im not sure that would get us as far as other things might. At this moment is so bizarre to me for so many reasons and i will be brief. I wonder if over the last six years we have yielded a moral and Political Authority in deference to the Obama Administration. Are we so excited to have a black president that we are willing to no longer engage in critiques . People argue that w weve paintd the Political Engagement before obama that ira member in being in dc. It might have been free and over four. To resolve this talk about whether it was mass distraction for critiques of empire and all sort of stuff happening and then when i fast forward to now or september i remember we were talking about strikes and libya and people were defending preemptive strikes not retaliatory with the idea that we engaged in the preemptive war and that is the quintessential bush doctrine and the idea that maybe for the first time ive known in American History to be advocates of the war in support of the president ial administration that to me was puzzling and it made me wonder where our center was and where it was going. That was curious to me. We know there are predator drones being struck. We know what happened in bolivia is all this stuff happening and yet we havent had a critique. He talked about the my brothers Keeper Initiative and i cant imagine any other moment we would be celebrating an intervention through the Corporate Philanthropy as opposed to Public Policy. All these moments and i dont hear or see the critique. For 50 years they talked about poverty in a substantive way so it isnt just obama is an outlier as part of every expectation is he would be an an interception and a consistent set of presidencies that are marked by the indifference. That might be the limitation of this form of politics. But what i am curious about because i dont just want to talk about obama and how it is related to capitalism. Im wondering if we can have a different kind of conversation about the state of the capitalism about the role that the marketplace right now in our everyday life from the way in which education continues to be privatized. This is part of the issue of the politics that we have become obsessed with privatization and we have graced the privatization such that they have a kind of appetite because we imagined the privates to be good and to be bad and the public is bad because it is often marked on race terms Public Schooling and public options is marked as black and brown and therefore disposable and as a consequence, we buy into it ourselves. We think of Public Housing not as a subsidy that as a housing in the projects would have used that there is a way the economic agenda is the racial politics and one of the things that concerns me is we are obsessed with destroying the public good. It might be better than no child left behind but in other ways it is governed by the same logic when we see the mass incarceration going from 250,000, 2. 5 Million People incarcerated we see it as a crisis but it isnt just a crisis of crime. Very little of it is a crisis of crying and its not just criminalization although that is important to think about the way that the law is structured that there is a way in which weve created market values that normally normalized incentivize the companies, governments and individuals to support the wall that extend the mass incarceration so we have a conversation about the market and about the role the capitalism is playing in these sectors of our lives we need to do that to have a conversation and i will stop there. [applause] thank you professor hill. Appreciate those comments. We now have as the next speaker purpose or hendrix that is one of the last grand scholars and we received before the Program Began and we are hoping that you are not the last. Hes a former wall street executive and past president of the Theological Seminary the Oldest Institution in the United States. Professor hendrix is currently visiting and religion into professor at the new york Theological Seminary and hes contributed to the Huffington Post and the center for American Progress trustee for the American PublicResearch Institute in washington, d. C. And a member of the state Department Religion for in policy working group and is the author of living water a novel and the most recent book praised by governor howard dean as justice radical reflections on the bible, the church and the body politic please join me in welcoming professor hendrix. [applause] thank you. Im also glad to be here. I am a longtime participant and supporter and a beneficiary of the literature conference even before i thought about publishing any books. I would like to talk more about the subject but my colleague introduced and that has to do with the intersection of race and power. First we have to remember that race has always been a strategic tool used by the forces of capital to divide the workers is and weaken the workers and keep them from collective rising so that we could continue on with their uninterrupted profit for so they say that we are the problem, but it is a strategic tool that is used. They use the terms like undeserving, welfare queens and all that in their initial rhetoric. And they use this for the plight of Everyday Americans on what we might call the post government in a quality. When they call it to the mid america is really caused by the marketbased inequality. The concept of the post government, this is important. This is the cause of the wealth disparity is not of the capitalist excess crony capitalism and exploitation of workers were outright dishonesty both say that they ignore these factors as having anything to do with the economic suffering and dislocation of struggling workers instead postgovernment and equality says that the daytoday economic struggles of americans are the result of Government Policies that sees peoples income and wealth by way of the federal taxation which is then transferred or, here we go, or redistributed to be used for the benefit of the undeserving tax and spend up your credit score distributed to caricatures of the undeserving poor people which conjures up the image of black folks, supposedly leave the welfare kings and que