Watch this interview with him online - it's worth the investment in time, if you want to get behind the issues in non-political terms.
In a two part series, the laudable Bill Moyers "goes there", in a wonderful interview with the supposed "radical" at the center of the Hannity-Empire's seemingly righteous indignation over anyone who might call them to think differently about America; where it needs to go; and, most importantly, how to get there.
Video with transcript, from PBS (remind me to put 'defund PBS' on my Small Government Conservative Watch List, o.k.?).
Some of the snippets, just to show how the label "separatist" is so horribly bogus that ... well, you can fill in the expletives.
BILL MOYERS: What are we to do about all of these recent events with the nooses? How-- how should we respond?
JAMES CONE: It ought to encourage us to connect. Blacks and whites. It oughta encourage us that-- to remind us we don't have the community that we oughta have. And so, instead of it, you know, separating us from each other, it should bring us together. And generally speaking, there were whites in all of the marches in Jena, at Columbia. There are always whites there. That's hope. That's a sign of hope.
==========
BILL MOYERS: What would you like us to be talking about?
JAMES CONE: I'd like for us, first, to talk to each other. And I'd like to talk about what it would mean to be one community, one people. Really one people.
BILL MOYERS: What would it mean?
JAMES CONE: It would mean that we would talk about the lynching tree. We would talk about slavery. We would talk about the good and the bad all mixed up there. We would begin to see ourselves as a family. Martin King called it the beloved community. That's what he was struggling for.
===========
JAMES CONE: ... When you talk about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, well, you're talking about slaveholders. But you don't say that. But you are. And I--
BILL MOYERS: Why don't we say that?
JAMES CONE: Because America likes to be innocent. It likes to be the exception.
BILL MOYERS: But we're not.
JAMES CONE: We are not. That's why it's hard for Barack Obama or Condoleezza Rice to talk about blackness; 'cause it's-- if they talked about blackness in the real, true sense, it would be uncomfortable. But America can't be what America ought to be until-- America can look at itself, the good, the bad, so that we can work on making ourselves what we oughta be.
JAMES CONE: It ought to encourage us to connect. Blacks and whites. It oughta encourage us that-- to remind us we don't have the community that we oughta have. And so, instead of it, you know, separating us from each other, it should bring us together. And generally speaking, there were whites in all of the marches in Jena, at Columbia. There are always whites there. That's hope. That's a sign of hope.
==========
BILL MOYERS: What would you like us to be talking about?
JAMES CONE: I'd like for us, first, to talk to each other. And I'd like to talk about what it would mean to be one community, one people. Really one people.
BILL MOYERS: What would it mean?
JAMES CONE: It would mean that we would talk about the lynching tree. We would talk about slavery. We would talk about the good and the bad all mixed up there. We would begin to see ourselves as a family. Martin King called it the beloved community. That's what he was struggling for.
===========
JAMES CONE: ... When you talk about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, well, you're talking about slaveholders. But you don't say that. But you are. And I--
BILL MOYERS: Why don't we say that?
JAMES CONE: Because America likes to be innocent. It likes to be the exception.
BILL MOYERS: But we're not.
JAMES CONE: We are not. That's why it's hard for Barack Obama or Condoleezza Rice to talk about blackness; 'cause it's-- if they talked about blackness in the real, true sense, it would be uncomfortable. But America can't be what America ought to be until-- America can look at itself, the good, the bad, so that we can work on making ourselves what we oughta be.
