My Grandfather Was Coloured, My

I Think That The Roots Of Racism Have Always Been Economic, And I Think People Are Desperate And Scared. And When You're Desperate And Scared You Scapegoat People. It Exacerbates Latent Tendencies Toward - Well, Toward Racism Or Homophobia Or Anti-semitism.

A More Humane Form Of Capitalism Is About The Best I Think We Can Get. Which Might Sound Very Reformist Or Conservative, But That's Basically Where I Am.

But You See, Our Society Is Still Trapped In This Binary, Black/white Logic And That Has Had Some Very Positive Implications For Our Generation. It's Had Some Very Negative Ones As Well And One Of The Negative Ones Is That It Creates Enormous Identity Problems For People Who Have One Black Ancestor And All White Ancestors For Example.

So When You Do Your Family Tree And Margaret Cho Does Hers, And... Wanda Sykes And John Legend... We're Adding To The Database That Scholars Can Then Draw From To Generalize About The Complexity Of The American Experience. And That's The Contribution That Family Trees Make To Broader Scholarship.

I Give A Speech To The Black Freshmen At Harvard Each Year, And I Say, "you Can Like Mozart And Ice Hockey..." - And Then I Used To Say "golf," But Tiger Took Over Golf! - "and Picasso And Still Be As Black As The Ace Of Spades."