Transcript
>> HINOJOSA: Her studies in
identity, inequality, and
exclusion challenge how we see
race in America.
Princeton professor, author, and
political analyst Melissa
Harris-Lacewell.
I'm Maria Hinojosa, this is One
On One.
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, it's so
good to have you on the show!
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: It is incredibly wonderful to
be here.
>> HINOJOSA: So your book,
Barbershops, Bibles, BET, is
kind of a very important book in
terms of understanding African-
American political thought and
formation in this country, but
you have said that you have
moved on from that book.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: ( laughing ) Yeah.
>> HINOJOSA: That you love what
you did there, but that you kind
of have moved to a place where
you're looking at things now
more from the perspective of an
African-American feminist.
So who are audience
in... you know, you don't hear a
lot of talk on mainstream
television about
African-American feminism and
feminists.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: No.
You know, it's so interesting to
hear people respond to that
first book, 2004.
You know, I started that book
as a dissertation, right?
It was sort of a set of a set of
explorations, of ideas-- me
trying to figure out a lot of
how I thought the world worked
in terms of race and politics--
but very much informed not only
by my academic scholarship, but
by, you know, a particular
formulation that came from my
life experiences.
So you know, I'm the child of a
sort of freedom fighting
African-American first
generation college professor,
and in many ways, it was my
father's voice, my father's
experiences that helped to frame
my understanding about what race
in America is.
Now, coming into adulthood and
into true adult scholarship and
into thinking of myself as...
>> HINOJOSA: Because that was
baby scholarship?
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yeah, well, I mean, it was...
>> HINOJOSA: ( laughing )
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: ...I think it, you know, that
early stuff is still... when
people claim to be writing
objectively, I really believe
all professors are always
writing books about themselves,
if you look carefully enough.
So for me, as I started working
at the University of Chicago-- I
spent seven years there as an
Assistant Professor...
>> HINOJOSA: Heady place.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: An amazing, intense,
exhausting place.
But I was very lucky to have
these amazing colleagues--
Michael Dawson and Cathy Cohen.
And particularly Cathy Cohen who
is an African-American woman,
she's a lesbian, she's a
feminist, and every day, she
asked me questions that were
much harder than any questions
I'd ever been asked before
around not just race in
politics, but race, gender,
sexual identity, class.
She and my students and others
around me really pushed me to
think in different ways, so
that...
>> HINOJOSA: So what was one of
those questions where you
thought you had it all pat, and
then all of a sudden she poses a
question to you and you're
stumped?
What kind of a question?
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: So I mean, this is a silly
example, but I'd written an
introduction that in part
included a reference to The
Cosby Show, and saying that "In
the 1980s, so many of us who
were growing up related to one
of the characters in The Cosby
Show."
You either thought of yourself
as Denise or Vanessa or Rudy.
And she says, "You know,
Melissa, if you're black and
queer, you didn't actually
relate to any of them."
You know, if you're black and
lesbian or black and gay, then
your experience of The Cosby
Show is still one that
marginalized your experience as
a black person.
I went, "Oh, well, yeah; I
hadn't really thought about
that."
In other words, always asking me
not only to think about how my
personal experience was
reflective of broader racial
ideas, but how my personal
experience was also privileged.
How I missed all sorts of other
identities by looking through a
single sort of racialized
lense.
>> HINOJOSA: But you were... all
of your work, at least up until
that point, had been kind of
looking at the world through
this prism of "the other"...
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Mm-hmm.
>> HINOJOSA: ...right?
Even though your mom is white
and your dad is
African-American, you identify
as an African-American woman,
but you've always had this kind
of prism of looking at things
through "the other," and it was
almost as if they're saying,
"There's a whole other
'otherness' that you need to
understand."
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: That's right-- secondary
marginalization.
And so for me, it wasn't that I
wasn't a black feminist, it's
that I didn't quite know what
that meant for my research, and
so over those years, as I
developed as a teacher and as a
researcher, I discovered that
for me, black feminism is simply
asking the same question over
and over again-- of myself and
of my students and of my work.
And that question is: "What
truths are missing here?"
So even if you're telling
something that's mostly true,
there's always some other truth
that is missing, some other
story that's not being told,
some other question that's not
being asked.
And so it becomes not just about
making sure that women's voices
are there or making sure that
not only heteronormative but
also queer experiences are
there-- it's about asking every,
single time, "Who's story isn't
being told?
What truth isn't being
revealed?"
And it's... I find it very
challenging, and I'm certainly
not up to it all the time, and
none of us can write...
>> HINOJOSA: ( laughing ) That's
a challenge!
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: ...the perfect work, but
that's the challenge, yeah.
>> HINOJOSA: So what happens to
you as an African-American woman
when you see what happened in
our country-- we'll get to
President Obama in a minute--
but Michelle.
I mean, that notion that
Michelle Obama, at one point,
was one of the most disliked
African-American women out
there...
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Mm-hmm.
>> HINOJOSA: ...because
apparently, she may have had a
moment of questioning herself,
her identity, her relationship
to the country, and now Michelle
Obama is a star-- a bigger star,
even, than Barack Obama.
( laughing ) What's going...
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well again, I spent seven
years in Hyde park, so I'm not
that surprised to discover that
Michelle Obama might...
>> HINOJOSA: Okay, Hyde Park,
south side of Chicago where
Barack Obama and his family
lived up until they
moved to the White House.
It's where you lived for seven
years.
It's where I actually spent, you
know, 20 years of my life
growing up.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: That's right, that's right.
>> HINOJOSA: Strange little
place, but Hyde Park and
Michelle Obama because...
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: So Michelle Obama was working
at the University of Chicago
during my years there.
She was a fixture in the
neighborhood.
Barack Obama was my state
senator.
He was my senator.
He was my neighbor just around
the corner at a condominium
complex.
You know, I'd see him running at
the... actually, he'd lap me
running at the lake, because I
run very, very slowly.
It's much more like a walk with
my arms bent.
So in many ways, I think those
of us who weren't intimate
friends of the Obamas but were
sort of just in the orbit often
saw Michelle as at least equally
the star if not more the star.
She has a kind of graciousness
and a bigness of her personality
that never... it never
overwhelms the people with whom
she's in the room, but it's
there.
You want to be with her.
You want to be near her.
I always found Barack Obama
slightly more off-putting than
Michelle.
Michelle was attractive in a
deep way.
So the most surprising thing for
me was this woman with whom I
related so closely as a mother,
as a professional woman, as an
African-American, that she could
be reviled was very painful to
me during the election.
That New Yorker cover that
represented her as some sort of
outsider; as some sort of
American-hating terrorist, even
if it was satirical...
>> HINOJOSA: She was carrying a
submachine gun, right?
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yes, yes.
>> HINOJOSA: And that's our
First Lady.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: That's right.
She was not... she not yet our
First Lady, but it was such a
bazaar representation, I mean...
>> HINOJOSA: What did you... you
know, when you say it was
painful for you, tell me what
that looks like.
You know, people have this idea,
"Well, you know, she's a
Princeton professor, she's an
author, she's published," you
know?
"Eh, pain."
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Right.
( laughing ) That's right.
>> HINOJOSA: What did that feel
like, when... you know, deep
inside, what did that feel like?
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, so I think it's
probably best expressed by Du
Bois himself who talks about the
notion of "double
consciousness"-- to be black and
to be American; to have the two
warring selves in one dark body.
And I think that's almost such a
normal part of being black in
America.
To love your country, to be of
your country, to want nothing
but the best for your country,
and simultaneously to feel
rejected by your nation, to feel
unrecognized by your nation.
That misrecognition of Michelle,
that fact that people could look
at her and see something so
dramatically different suggested
that who knows what people saw
when I walked through the
world-- or when my daughter
who's seven years old walks
through the world?
Do they also see us as little
budding, frightening militants
who hate our nation?
It's... it's just a sense of
wanting to be seen for who you
are and then experiencing the
sense that if this woman is not
seen, you probably aren't very
well recognized, either.
>> HINOJOSA: And that means
feeling, essentially, okay, but
you know, like unloved...
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yeah.
>> HINOJOSA: ...in your own
country.
It's deep.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: It is, and it... you know,
it's... it doesn't mean that I
don't have all of these
privileges of being a Princeton
professor, of you know, owning a
home-- and in fact, really no
one cares how you feel in a very
important way-- but what I do
think is critical is the extent
to which that sense of double
consciousness leads many
African- Americans, and not just
African-Americans but many sort
of "outsiders within," to feel
as though we are on the margins
of our own national story.
In the context, for example, of
Hurricane Katrina and the
aftermath, we know that black
and white Americans were both
very upset about what happened,
but white Americans primarily
saw what happened as a kind of
bureaucratic failure-- a failure
of the government to respond.
African-Americans for the most
part saw the failures after
Hurricane Katrina as racialized.
They believed that their country
had not come for them because
they were black.
Now, whether that's true or not
is less important than the fact
that you have whole populations
of citizens...
>> HINOJOSA: Who could
actually... who could actually
feel that way.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: ...who believed that their
country would allow them to
starve and die on television
simply because of their race.
That is the thing that needs
healing.
And it was difficult to watch
that kind of rejection of
Michelle.
>> HINOJOSA: So now, where
Michelle is kind of the... you
know, we are... and you
sometimes write, you say, "You
know, when I'm having a bad day,
I think about Michelle, and boy,
it's got to be worse for her!"
But I'm thinking about, "Well,
how's Michelle doing today?
What is she doing?"
You know, I'm really glad she's
got a lot of support in that
household-- because she does,
lucky her; we all wish we did--
but you know, how is she
handling it?
And I do often think, "It's got
to be rough."
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yup.
>> HINOJOSA: It's got to be
rough for her.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: You know, I'll say that... so
the acceptance-- the coming to
love and find Michelle Obama as
iconic-- in one part helps to
heal that anxiety I was talking
about, but if we go back to
Cathy Cohen's push, it's also to
say, "Okay, so the acceptance of
Michelle Obama still ends up
marginalizing other folks."
So my mother, who's retired and
lives in the home with me and
helps raise my daughter, loves
the Obama family mostly because
Mama Robinson is part of the
Obama family, and she was like,
"Yes, they have a Grammy, too,"
right?
>> HINOJOSA: Who's living with
them, yes!
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Who's living with them; who's
helping.
She was like, "I could give her
all kinds of advice."
That said... and so she goes,
"We're just like the Obamas."
And then I say, "Well, mom, no
we're not, because I'm a single
parent.
So we're just like the Obamas,
but we're not."
So there's this way that as
wonderful as it is-- this
acceptance of the Obama girls,
this acceptance of Michelle-- it
still has the impact of
marginalizing, for example, the
fact that a majority of
African-American children are
being raised by... in households
like mine, where you may have
intergenerational women, but
where you don't have a present
father.
It is still true that, for
example, gay and lesbian
families don't have the same
kind of social recognition.
So if you're a Michelle Obama
but you're in a lesbian
household, does the acceptance
of the kind of heteronormative,
you know, traditional picture of
the Obamas, does that, you know,
kind of continue on and lead to
a broader acceptance?
I don't know.
And I'm certainly, you know, a
little distressed that at the
same time that we have Michelle
Obama, we have Precious.
>> HINOJOSA: And you're
concerned about it because... I
mean, that movie-- I haven't
seen the movie, I read the book
when it came out a long time
ago-- is so incredibly painful.
Do you... what's the issue there
for you?
Are you uncomfortable with the
fact that it's so out there?
Are you uncomfortable with the
fact that the conversations that
are happening after the movie...
we don't know what those
conversations are like?
What...
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, I believe in the
relative autonomy of art, so I
think grotesque is fine; I think
that over the top is fine;
pushing, you know, the edges on
a piece of fiction.
What does concern me is the
sense that there is a kind of...
I mean, the mother in that film
and in that book is so
extraordinarily horrible, and
she also represents a sort of
remembrance of this 1980s
welfare queen who abused the
state as well as abusing her
children.
So her resurgence, her
reinterpretation-- although I
think Mo'Nique does an amazing
job as an artist performing
her-- I do think there's
something about sort of
America's need to simultaneously
have the Obamas and to have this
grotesque image of a black
mother; of a poor, single,
abusive black mother sitting
next to each other.
And it's okay; it's part of the
tension...
>> HINOJOSA: But the fact that
it's always got to be kind of at
the same time.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: I do worry about that.
>> HINOJOSA: You... your next
book is called For Colored Girls
Who...
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: ...Who've Considered Politics
When Being Strong Wasn't
Enough.
>> HINOJOSA: And you write about
the sadness and the loneliness
that exists for African-American
women in politics.
It's a very specific kind of
topic.
It's not like a lot of people
are walking around thinking,
"Hmm, I wonder how
African-American women who get
involved in the political
system, whether or not they're
feeling sad."
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yeah, well again, remember
what I said: I think professors
are always writing books about
themselves.
>> HINOJOSA: So does that mean
that you want to run for office?
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Oh, gosh, no, although, you
know, my partner is in fact
running for office, and so I
am...
>> HINOJOSA: In the city of New
Orleans.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: In the city of New Orleans
he's running for mayor, and so
I'm, you know, intimately
involved in a campaign in a way
that I never have been before.
>> HINOJOSA: But you're also a
big critic.
You're a big political critic.
This is what you do when you're
on the cable news shows talking.
You are... and I find it very
interesting that you're like,
"Yup, and I'm going to marry a
man who's trying to run for
mayor in New Orleans" of all
places!
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: ( laughing )
>> HINOJOSA: That you would kind
of believe... I mean, you have a
profound belief in the electoral
system, then...
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: I do...
>> HINOJOSA: ...in straight
party politics, even though you
very openly call yourself a
person on the left.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yeah, I'm definitely a lefty,
I'm definitely a progressive,
but I'm also someone who, when I
teach the Declaration of
Independence, I stand up on the
table.
I stand on the desk because
those lines by the slaveholding
Thomas Jefferson, and yet he
doesn't write a slaveholding
document, right?
He writes that it is self
evident that all humans are
created equal "and endowed by
their Creator with certain
inalianable rights, and among
these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."
So I believe that our ideals can
be bigger than the limitations
of who we are practicing our
politics.
So as much as I am a critic and
I will stay a critic-- including
of my dear James' administration
if he is to win...
>> HINOJOSA: Oh, I'm going to
see some sparks flying there!
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: ( laughing ) But that's... I
think that's part of how we love
our country.
We love it in part by
representing, again, this
question: "What truths are
missing?"
For me, this new book about
black womens' emotions in the
context of politics is, in part,
a book about trying to answer
that question.
African-American women are often
called the "backbone" of the
black community, and of course
that is important, because they
are both in the back, and
although sturdy for everyone
else, I worry about how black
women's political work is too
often on behalf of everyone
else, not frequently enough on
behalf of themselves.
>> HINOJOSA: And so what... what
should be the primary struggle
of African-American women in
politics now?
What should it be?
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, I mean... so again,
people have to set their own
agenda, but I do wish that we
would be equally concerned with
the future of our daughters as
we are with this particular
construct of the endangered
black male.
A lot of African-American women
that I speak to talk about
losing black men, the loss of
black male patriarchy, and
although I'm of course concerned
about our sons and about their
future, I also think that in
doing that, we miss the
victimization and the
marginalization of black women.
We talk about crime and
incarceration as though it's
just a black man's problem when
black women are the
fastest-growing population of
newly incarcerated people.
We don't talk about HIV/AIDS,
and its impact in particularly
young, African-American women's
lives.
The leading cause of death for
African-American women under the
age of 35-- HIV/AIDS infections.
So these sorts of blindnesses to
the very experiences that women
are themselves having at the
moment that they're having it--
because they're so engaged in
politics on behalf of everyone
else-- I think is the problem.
We have to be sure we are on our
own agenda.
>> HINOJOSA: You have a really
fascinating life story, and when
you read it, you're almost like,
"How did that happen?"
So your dad's family can trace
their roots back to slavery.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yes.
>> HINOJOSA: Your mom was raised
as a Mormon...
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yes.
>> HINOJOSA: ...which is a
religion that, up until the year
1979, did not allow any
African-American members of that
church.
So growing up, how does this
happen?
And actually, is it so strange?
I mean, actually, is that kind
of stuff happening a lot and we
just don't necessarily see it?
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: I mean, it's part of what was
fun about watching Obama run is
he kept telling his story, and I
was like, "Oh, man; you've got
nothing on me!"
>> HINOJOSA: ( laughing )
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: "You should hear my story!"
But that's true.
My mother's people were Mormon
pioneers who pushed a handcart
across the American West,
settled in Utah and in the West,
and my mother went to Brigham
Young University while my father
was contemporaneous with Stokely
Carmichael at Howard University.
And the two of them met, of
course, in graduate school,
which is the place where these
sorts of things happen.
>> HINOJOSA: Oh, for graduate
school!
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Oh, for graduate school!
So and I'm the youngest of five
children in an interracial
family where some of my siblings
have two black parents and some
of my siblings have two white
parents.
And we grew up in the American
South in Virginia my parents
raised this family, and so... in
the context, also, of divorce.
So it was quite a challenge, and
yet what I'll tell you is that
the next generation of kids-- my
kids, my sister's kids-- they
all know each other and love
each other, and they are Latino
and they are white and they are
black, and we spend family
vacations together, and we have
each and every one of us learned
from the other.
So my white sister who marries a
Latino man and has Latino
children and raises them in
California is affected by having
had black siblings.
And my African-American siblings
are impacted by having had an
interracial little sister.
And those things are part of
what, you know, really is our
American story.
>> HINOJOSA: Well, so is there--
and this term is thrown around a
lot, "post racial" America-- so
is it ultimately going to happen
or take baby steps forward
because of the fact that we
elected a man who is both
African-American and white, but
as a black man?
Or is it going to happen because
of these kind of family
relationships, where it's like,
well, it's great that Obama's
there, but really what's going
to change is the fact that in so
much of the United States a
"traditional" notion of what a
family is-- whether it's, you
know, heterosexual or whether
it's a mixed couple-- it's all
changing?
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, I see the election of
Barack Obama as the culmination
of racial changes in America,
not the inauguration of racial
changes in America.
Our ability to elect him
President-- our ability to form
a multiracial coalition during
an economic downturn that brings
in an African-American
president-- is because of the
struggles and work and change
that had occurred over those
past 40 years.
It was in part because white
voters had African-American
grandchildren and Latino nieces.
And I mean, heck, the Bush
family is more complicated, I
think, than we like to tell,
right?
>> HINOJOSA: ( laughing )
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: So in part, it happens
because those family formations
had already occurred.
It's not that by being
President, Barack changes, you
know, where we are in America.
So part of it is... are those
kinds of, you know, long-term,
secular changes.
But the other part of it is
will.
It won't just happen because
time passes.
We have to decide that we
believe racism and racial
inequality to be incommensurate
with our self-identity as
Americans.
And see, for most of our
history, racism, imperialism, is
not only in line with, it is
constitutive of being an
American.
To be an American is to be a
conqueror-- to go West over
people who already exist.
What we have to do is say, "No,
no, no.
To be American is to shed that
sort of imperialist notion; to
shed our understanding of
ourselves as enslavers; to
embrace a new kind of American
conception."
And so that is about will, and
so it's not just time and the
making new, little, brown
babies.
>> HINOJOSA: It's a
consciousness.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: It's also about
consciousness.
>> HINOJOSA: So what happens in
terms of the consciousness of
African-Americans and Latinos as
we figure out now as the Latino
population becomes-- and I
really dislike this term-- the
"largest minority"...
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: ( laughing ) Yeah, right!
>> HINOJOSA: ...because that's a
term... I don't use that term
with my family-- "minority," out
the window.
What do you see
African-Americans and Latinos?
To me this is one of the crucial
next relationships that need to
be worked out.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Yeah.
>> HINOJOSA: What do you see?
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, so I see many
challenges.
You know, one of the challenges
that African-American
populations will have to realize
is that for all of the
disadvantages that
African-Americans have faced and
continue to face, we have, also,
certain privileges and
advantages relative to the
electoral political realm.
There simply are more black
mayors; there simply are more
black representatives in the
U.S. House; there... depending
on how you measure the Senate,
there have been more black
senators, and now there's been a
black president.
Which means that we will have to
not always think of ourselves as
the outsiders, but sometimes as
the insiders who are controlling
the access, and we'll have to
necessarily shed out own
privileges in ways that we have
often asked white Americans to
do.
>> HINOJOSA: Do you think that
there is that kind of conscious
understanding of "We have
privilege and we have to share"?
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: Oh, no, because I think at
this point, the focus group is
still always white Americans who
have just vastly more resources
and privileges, that it feels as
though what we're doing is
simply competing.
You know, that there's just one
piece of pie for all the blacks
and browns, and all the blacks
and browns must compete for that
piece of pie.
And what we have to recognize
is, one, that the pie, like
love, can grow.
It is expansive; we can...
>> HINOJOSA: Oh, I love that!
"The pie, like love, can grow."
( laughing )
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: ( laughing ) Well, it can
grow!
There's not some sort of limit
on what's possible, and so we
can... we can, in fact, I think,
set a new standard for how
political coalitions will form.
I think the other thing is to be
more relaxed.
You know, coalitions need not
form up to be perfectly and
always sustainable.
We can form momentary coalitions
around a particular candidate;
we can get together around some
political issues and not as
others.
It is okay to both be
competitors and in solidarity.
>> HINOJOSA: But you've got a
segment of the population right
now that is really, at least in
some cases, pointing a picture
towards the Latino immigrant as
the source of all of the
problems that we are all facing
in this country.
And especially if you are a
low-skilled African-American
worker, this person-- this
undocumented, usually Mexican or
other Latino immigrant-- is your
enemy.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: I mean, this is... again, my
beloved city of New Orleans-- in
the days following Katrina,
these questions of work and the
capacity particularly for manual
labor, for low skilled labor,
and for rebuilding the city
brought up exactly these
anxieties around undocumented
workers, and the easiness of
sort of resting on citizenship
to say, "Well, I'm an American
here, I'm black, I'm an
American, I've been here, I am a
citizen, you are not, and
therefore I deserve to be in
this public space, and you
don't."
But to do that is to miss that
black citizenship has always
been contingent and second class
and that precisely those sorts
of arguments have been used
against African-Americans.
So it is a two-way street, but
again, I'll say the point is to
recognize that as full sort of
participants in the public
sphere, that it is okay to both
disagree and to have solidarity.
That in a democracy, the point
is simply to not always be a
loser in a winner take all
society.
It is okay to lose sometimes and
to win sometimes; it's just that
it can't be that your identity
alone defines you as always a
loser in the political realm.
>> HINOJOSA: Thank you for
sharing all that.
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, thank
you so much.
>> HARRIS-LACEWELL: It was great to be here.
>> HINOJOSA: Thank you.
Continue the conversation at
wgbh.org/oneonone.
Captioned by
Media Access Group at WGBH
access.wgbh.org
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