What will be the biggest challenge our country faces with race relations two decades from now?
Our inability to honestly face and address issues of race and class and gender. It’s class too. It’s how poor blacks are treated, not just by whites but by middle-class African-Americans. First, we don’t acknowledge race and racism exists. It’s not abnormal to possess bias. We all do it, including African-Americans. You can’t address a problem until you recognize it exists. In the future do you see our country being able, as Obama put it recently, to be able to “move beyond some of our old racial wounds”? Progress will continue to be made. I do not believe issues of race and racism will be totally eradicated. Are you optimistic about the future for minorities in this country? Of course. You’re talking to a guy who grew up on a sharecropper farm. Father couldn’t read or write. I come from four generations of sharecroppers. How could I not be optimistic? In one generation, we went from sharecropper to state constitutional officer. I have great faith. There’s tens of thousands of Michael
