We can't talk about the black community. It's no longer a homogeneous community; it was never a homogeneous community.

I guess I would say first of all that we tend to go back to the 60s and we tend to see these struggles and these goals in a relatively static way.

Actually we've had a black bourgeoisie or the makings of a black bourgeoisie for many more decades.In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the US has always been a quest for economic liberation which means to a certain extent that the rise of black middle class would be inevitable. What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before.

I think in black communities today we need to encourage a lot more cross racial organizing.

There is an unbroken line of police violence in the United States that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery, the aftermath of slavery, the development of the Ku Klux Klan. There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice.

Kids these days are kind of going back to Tupac and Snoop Doggy Dogg as examples of people that stand for something.

Obviously there are some organizations that go out on the street and say we want an end to the capitalist system. But obviously that is not going to happen as a result of just assuming that stance.