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i'm grateful to your guest for informing the public that blacks are so much socioeconomically better off in Africa than in America because Africa in the main has so far avoided evil of capitalism.

A brief addendum, in response to Ed from Manhattan, re: racism: I really do recommend reading the Closest of Strangers and/or listening again to my interview with Brian.

There you'll find me saying, again and again, that in many ways racism remains ubiquitous, grinding, and routine. But little is accomplished by saying so -- and then by shouting it, and dramatizing it or acting it out, especially in the kind of street theater that paralyzed and further polarized the city during many the years I was writing about. Such tactics never accomplished anything much in New York, and for reasons I illustrate in the book. But there have been other, deeper, better strategies. And those are in the book, too. There wasn't enough time to discuss them on the air, but a call by Eric from Fort Greene emphasized that the book really does discuss them. That's all I can say here, and believe me, I'm long past trying to sell copies of the book!

If I had to try to summarize the biggest lesson I've learned in the 20 years since publishing The Closest of Strangers, I'd say this:

There's a big difference, a somewhat tragic difference, between how history unfolds and how individual lives of the people who make history unfold.

Historically, as I showed in the book (and in Liberal Racism), racism was a pillar of American capitalism, and we are still living with its casualties and legacies. A lot of white American optimism (including white-immigrant optimism) about opportunity and justice rode on racism and, to a great extent, still does.

But history moves on, and the battlefield is changing: Corporate consumer marketing and finance capital have proved quite willing to shuffle our decks of racist and masculine privilege and find other ways of screwing people.

Individual lives don't always move on, however, People whose formative years were spent making sacrifices, some of them heroic, for racial justice tend to see everything through that prism. They keep reenacting those old struggles. They want the coordinates of racism to remain firmly in place, because resisting it was what defined their identities, their politics. White or black, they feel almost more comfortable resisting it, railing against it, than they would without it. It defines them.

My years of near-total immersion in inner-city Brooklyn, an epicenter of racism's deformation of American civil society, showed me -- as it showed Obama on Chicago's South Side -- that there is little to be gained by,continuing to bang the drum of racial grievance and reparation.

For all its wrong turns and dead ends, the black quest for American acknowledgment and belonging is the most powerful epic of unrequited love in the history of the world. Even if every broken heart could be mended and every theft of opportunity redressed, there would remain a black community of memory, loss, and endurance. And so there should. But ultimately there can be only transcendance, in the ways I tried to sketch in The Closest of Strangers.

To watch nonwhite Americans running municipalities, military units, media, manufacturing, money markets, and, now, the White House, is to watch the angels of blackness withdraw, along with the demons. It is to surrender whites' unwitting condescension along with contempt. For all of us, it is to acknowledge that this country's redemption has not and will not come through making race the organizing principle of our polity and civic culture. Liberals must continue to lead struggles against discrimination and abuse. But for those struggles to succeed, liberals must let go of some of the color-coding and racial romanticizing that defined their good intentions.

Apropos Chicago, which came up in the interview, here's a short review I did of a terrific book about that city's racial politics:

http://www.jimsleeper.com/articles/signature-pieces/Harold%20Washington,%20Rivlin%20review,%20Washington%20Post.pdf

When I moved to New York from Chicago nearly 20 years ago, I was shocked by the racial violence here. The NYPD regularly slaughters black men on the street and gets off free by having their trials in the white suburbs. Nooses are hung in the halls of Columbia, and one pundit on NPR actually blames it on attitudes imported from elsewhere. At least one problem is, that here in NYC racial incidents are described as being “isolated incidents” and not reflective of regional attitudes. These same incidents anywhere else in the country are considered to be a portrait of the region. NYC can get away with this because as a city it owns and operates the national media and can define itself anyway it chooses. It chooses to define itself as progressive and liberal, even when conversations on the street give the lie to that definition. There is, after all, a mythology here that everyone has a stake in upholding, stop and frisk tactics not withstanding. I was in a bar in midtown the day after Obama was elected and had to listen to some guy with a regional accent give a tirade that America was doomed. Must have been an isolated incident because everyone knows New Yorkers aren’t racist and they are the first ones to tell you so. Sure, people in Chicago, as everywhere in America, have problems with race; at least in Chicago they acknowledge it. In NYC they believe they are beyond it. But the worst racism may be the one that cannot speak its name. And by the way, I’ve traveled in NJ and heard attitudes expressed that many people would associate with the worst of the South, but often disguised with the words “You know what I mean.” Some do, some don’t.

Racism is not the exclusive domain of one group.

I have seen members of groups that have
been traditionally excluded because of skin
color, facial features, hair texture, taunt,
inflict their venom on others from different
ethnic backgrounds.

No one has the corner on racism.

Yesterday's victims can and are today's
perpertrators,when they are on a top.

In work situations I have witnessed
blacks be very nasty to hispanics, Asians,
even blacks from other countries.

I have seen racism between blacks themselves.
When one black person attacks another
for being darker in skin tone or "High yellow"
like they call it.

Racism is complicated and doesn't fit
neatly into any pigeonhole.

You have Askenazi Jews that will not
send their daughters to schools with
Sephardic Jews, even under court order.

Racism can come in all colors and affect
a lot of different groups.

Jim Sleeper and many white people on the both on the left AND the right are seriously delusional in their idiotic claims of Black advancement! I find it highly offensive that white people DARE to claim that racism has really changed in New York City in the past 40 years. IT HAS NOT! White supremacy racism ruled this city, this state and this country then as well as now!

Blacks have been systematically eliminated from meaningful political, social and economic advancement! Affirmative action was never tried as anything more than surface tokenism. A few token Black appointments is NOT real change!

Look at the vast mountain of documented employment race discrimination charges filed at EEOC, NY State Human Rights Division and NYC Human Rights Commission. How many of these claims got nothing more than racist rubber stamp dismissals! Over the years, how many Blacks have been beaten, abused or murdered by the police? Change must be more than a rumor!

And a lot of filthy, racist white people in positions of power richly deserve to be MURDERED for the evil they have done!!!

I am a Chicago transplant to NYC, 20 years now, but as an African-American, Chicago has always been and will always be, the most racist and segregated city in the country.

One only needs to look back at MLK Jr.'s march in Marquette Park in 66', and his comment on the situation. Such biting and deep racial hatred exhibited then and again, when Harold Washington ran for Mayor, clearly highlights the deep divide between Blacks & Whites in this city.

Much of it is due in part to Daley machine, (Father & Son), but a lot of it has to do with the City's history. Its a City of ethnic neighborhoods, who seldom like to interact with each other.

NYC on the other hand, has had its racial issues over its history, but there has always been some common ground reached amongst the races. Maybe due it part to the reason, all of us a so closely packed together in this city, we need to work together.

Its what makes NYC the greatest City in the world and relegates Chicago to a second or third tier city. I love my former home, but I don't see things changing ever.

Its no wonder the President was elected, coming out of an environment like the City of Chicago, you can achieve anything

the problem with crime in bad 'hoods in brooklyn is not the lack of policing and attention/funding from the city as some self-apologists would like you to think- the problem is the homes that the criminals are coming from. it all starts with these predominant dysfunctional families where kids are having kids and no one is their to guide the children along to become responsible adults. there are plenty of poor 'hoods in this city but not all are crime ridden like others....it's the family- that's it.

I was going to write in to say that as Sleeper is telling it now, the problem of race in NY centered on WHITE LEFTISTS... (Brian raised the matter of Sharpton et al.,) yes, his book was derided at the time, tho I don't recall precisely why—perhaps for that reason. But then you played F.F Piven's very cogent rejoinder. Yes, she's right about Sleeper and about his portrayal of her & Cloward's ideas: imagine that! People should demand what they are entitled to!
And with al due respect,
J from Manhattan's remarks above suggests the continued power of racism and denial even here and now.

gentrification is complicated and Jim Sleeper's commentary is interesting. But one of the things I found problematic was his framing of the protests against police shooting and killing of Blacks and also, the Whites beating and killing of several Black men in the 1980s. Black people were well aware of criminal behavior in the Black community and were demanding improvements in policing, etc. But our tax dollars did not bring services to communities under stress. Racism has not left the building, but things have improved.

This author has seen the light.

Problem is that white liberals are afraid to confront Black ignorance. Brian is a prime example.

"African-Americans" in Chicago will be or have been displaced by Hispanics, not just in terms of numbers but in terms of relevance. Black "leaders" in Chicago are mainly poverty pimp ministers who keep their flock isolated from and ignorant of other communities. Witness how the ministers backed the black flunky Todd Stroger in the recent county board election. They insisted that race should be the primary factor in choosing Stroger. Meanwhile there were two other black candidates. But Stroger was the machine candidate. Stroger came in dead last.

But ultimately, the utter failure of this "leadership" may actually lead to the liberation of blacks, as they, hopefully, will begin to act and vote in their own enlightened self interest, regardless of race.

Are we forgetting Mayor Daley and his use of the Fed highways to segregate Chicago. This was pointed out to be by one of Jesse Jackson's workers in Operation Breadbasket..

i still have no idea why al sharpton did not do prison time for his involvement in the tawana brawley case. it still amazes me that people take that guy seriously....he ruined that guys life and never took resposibility for what he did. he is a disgrace and it's too bad everyone tierh igonored that fact or forgot about it.

I think it is incorrect to state that racism is ubiquitous anywhere in this nation. it is wrong to stigmatize whites as being racist ... we are not. And to ask that whites somehow open there arms and accept the black culture as it stands today without asking blacks to change the way they act, behave, and live is to unfair. We do not want to have an open dialog on race in this country because the liberals and blacks cannot accept the white critique of them at this moment. Black youth on the subways are normally louder and more disruptive than others. I have seen men urinating in the streets of harlem but nowhere else. The neighborhoods are more dangerous and unsafe. These are visible realities not racism.

When did Jesse Jackson say that? I never heard him say that.

How does Mr. Sleeper get along with Mr. Sharpton now? I remember you got into a bug argument with him on the Charlie Rose show many years ago. I think it was about Farrakan or the guy who use to work for him.

I remember my first trip to Chicago must have been 11 years ago. The difference in interactions with black people was palpable from not just NY but anywhere else in the US. When I spoke to black people I didn't get that unspoken undercurrent that is part of most such conversations elsewhere. I was just a person not a white guy and they were just people not black people. When I came back I spoke to people back here about it with a mix of awe and amazement. I wasn't surprised when Barack Obama came out of there or Oprah Winfrey. Chicago just did it no overthinking.

The "Black Left" this is stupid.

It's pronounced "Shy-town" not "Chai-town."