Welcome to pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. At the funeral for Congress member John Lewis,

former President Bill Clinton took a strange detour when he disparaged the veteran civil rights

leader Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Tore.

And I say there were two or three years there where the movement went a little bit too

far towards Stokely, but in the end, John Lewis prevailed.

Well, joining me to discuss is Paneal Joseph. He is Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics

and Political Values at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin,

author of several books, including Stokely A Life and his latest, The Sword and the Shield,

The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Welcome, Professor Joseph to pushback.

What was your reaction to hearing Bill Clinton talk about Stokely Carmichael at John Lewis's funeral?

Thanks, you.

Thank you for having me, Aaron.

I was surprised, disappointed because Bill Clinton was a terrible president for black people, something that those of us who are active in social justice, racial justice, civil rights, black power movements, even before the black lives matter movement told to

everyone who was willing to listen. So the disparaging of Kwame Torei Stokely Carmichael is really

just another example of this kind of racism and this kind of patronizing attitude that is coming from the forces of political

reaction that people like Bill Clinton represent.

So we shouldn't be surprised because Bill Clinton is a neoliberal.

He was a pro-death penalty, really an unbelievably racist president when we think about the

crime bill, when we think about welfare

reform, we think about Sister Soldier, attacking Sister Soldier at Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push Coalition

event. We had a rap singer here last night named Sister Soldier. I defend her right to express

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