Well, there are differences. But the differences are more those of type, than degree. In other words, I have no reason to believe racism is any bigger a problem in one region of the country than in another. However, the type or style of racism does vary greatly. I think most people of color—particularly blacks—will tell you that in the South, for the most part, racism is more openly articulated. If people don't like you, they say so, and folks don't usually act like racism isn't a problem. In the South, we know it's an issue. It's part of our history and culture. At the same time, many folks say—and I tend to agree—that the South has made more progress in many ways than other regions. Forming cross-racial class alliances for example is much more common, as with environmental justice organizing. We've always been around each other down here, and so we know a little more about how to negotiate the tensions. This isn't to say we've conquered the past—and the sheer number of folks still waving confederate flags is evidence of that—but simply, that we have a head start in addressing racism, and ultimately, any movement to address racial inequity will, I truly believe, grow from this soil.

In other regions, racism is just as salient, but more covert. I go out West, or to the East Coast, and people act like: "Racism, what racism?" You get these liberal, progressive white folks in Seattle, San Francisco, or Portland, and they all think they don't have a problem. But ask people of color in those places, who have lived elsewhere, and they'll tell you those are some of the most racist places they've ever been. Why? Because the denial is its own form of racism: the racism of people who don't hate, perhaps, but who, with the simple act of denial, obliterate and negate the reality of people of color. In many ways that's worse than hate. To hate someone, you at least have to see them, acknowledge them. But to deny that person's reality altogether is to make them forever invisible. It denies them their humanity in a way that hatred never can.

The "Invisible Man" condition Ralph Ellison wrote about. I'd like to switch gears a bit and talk about history. I've recently learned about the "Black codes" in the post-Civil War South. Can you describe what those were?

Sure, the Black Codes were a set of rigid laws designed to primarily restrict the labor mobility of the newly freed slaves. The idea was to guarantee a supply of cheap labor to the white planters, and essentially maintain the dominant-subordinate relationship that had existed under slavery.

So, for example, the Codes—which varied from state to state—allowed for the arrest of any freedman without "lawful employment." If he was unable to pay the fine, he would be hired out to an employer. Basically, any freedman who wouldn't accept work at whatever wage white planters were offering, would be arrested and leased out. This essentially recreated the master-slave relationship. Blacks were also barred from certain types of employment—basically anything other than agricultural labor or domestic work—similar to South Africa's infamous "influx control" and other labor provisions of apartheid.

At first, the codes were weakly enforced, due to labor shortages in the years immediately proceeding the War. And of course, the beginning of Reconstruction ended them outright. But within a decade, as Reconstruction was toppled, thanks to the capitulation of President Johnson and then the 1877 Hayes-Tilden Compromise, (which promised the end of Federal occupation and a return to power by the Southern planter class), the Codes were reinstated in a number of different forms, and became the backbone of the emergent Jim Crow system.

I saw a debate you had with Dinesh D'Souza in Washington State about a few years ago that ended with D'Souza calling you the "Uncle Tom of Whites," which I thought was hilarious. Why did you want to debate D'Souza, and how would you describe D'Souza's work and history?

I had actually debated him twice before the event you describe at Evergreen (and will actually be doing so again in late April in Virginia), and a lot of people have asked me why I would want to do that, since it gives him the chance to spread some extremely obnoxious propaganda for the far-right. To which I respond very simply this: Dinesh is going to be invited to speak on campuses with or without me, or someone else to debate him. He is an extremely well-paid "policy analyst," at the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington DC, and a best-selling author, and he gives 40-50 lectures a year, according to what he told me back in 1996. So it seems to me, it makes more sense to encourage debates with him, where at least his message has to be held up to scrutiny, than to give him carte blanche, in the interests of remaining "pure and untainted," as some leftists seem to think we'll do by ignoring him.

As for who he is, I've just told you his professional affiliation. His views are among the most retrograde on race of any I've heard in recent years. His recent book, The End of Racism says, among other things, that whatever problems blacks and Latinos have today in America, is due, not to discrimination, or economic dislocation, but rather to a "civilizational deficit," between them and white folks. (And Asians, of course—of which Dinesh is one). He argues that whatever discrimination does exist today is "rational," and understandable, and even acceptable, since it stems from realistic assessments of black and Latino ability.

In other words, it's OK to treat all people of color like the worst elements in their respective communities, because the risks of treating them equally, without prejudice, only to find out that the black guy in the suit, with the college degree, really is a crack-dealer are just too great. He also says slavery wasn't racist, and Jim Crow laws were passed by enlightened, caring whites who only sought to protect black people by keeping them away from the few really crazy whites who wanted to kill them. As a policy proposal, Dinesh calls, not only for the end of affirmative action, but also the repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The book is filled with historical distortions, statistical fraud, and lapses of logic so dramatic as to boggle the mind, but I would recommend reading it just to realize how sick this country has become, that crap like this and the Bell Curve can sell hundreds of thousand of copies and their authors can be taken seriously.

In terms of fighting for racial equity, what specific things do you think whites can do?

First, recognize that racism is a white problem, and a problem that all whites must address. So long as the institutions of society provide us with racial privilege—however mediated it may be through class and gender divisions among other things—we have to take it seriously, and not treat it like just another "topic," which is something white leftists do all the time: "Oh gee, today, I'll save the rainforests, and tomorrow I'll go to a demo against bombing Iraq, and next week I'll write a letter to the editor about vivisection." Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying those things are unimportant, it's just that until we make racism something we deal with every day—the way people of color have to whether they like it or not—very little is going to change. We shouldn't have the luxury of choosing to deal with it only if we want to. By treating racism like just another issue, while we continue to reap the benefits of a racist system makes us complicit in evil.

Second, don't worry so much about interracial alliances and organizing. First, organize around racism in the white community; with friends, colleagues, family members, neighbors. I know we all want to work together, and build alliances with people of color, but unless we spend just as much time working on cleaning up our own shit, intraracially, then no long-term alliances are going to last. There are models out there for doing this kind of work: European Dissent, for example, in New Orleans. They're affiliated with the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, and can help white antiracist activists connect with others, and get them started on this road.

Third, we have to be accountable to people of color and their communities. People of color are the ones oppressed by racism, meaning that we can't just go out there and say, "alright, I'm going to organize against racism," unless we know what the concerns are in the communities most impacted by racism. So we have to learn to listen. We have to read the materials published in communities of color, like black owned papers, or the newsletters of community-based groups. We have to pay attention to what they're saying, and always be willing to accept their leadership and direction, even when you're principally organizing other whites.

Finally, to refuse to collaborate means refusing to give our votes to candidates who don't reflect an anti-racist agenda, or who give short shrift to these issues. To vote for a candidate who doesn't address racism or racial inequity because "we like his position on the environment," or "he/she is a supporter of women's rights," is to make the false assumption that any of these issues can be decoupled. No real champion of women's rights or the environment ignores racism or racial inequity. And to think otherwise; to believe in this "lesser of two evils" crap is a delusion, because once you start down that road, you never stop moving the line. It never ends, and pretty soon, we've chased the right all the way to social fascism. The more we compromise on basic principles, the more the other side can push the envelope that much further.

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