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Hello, I'm Nathan Robinson, editor of Current Affairs, and I am here today with one of my favorite writers and thinkers, Professor Adolf Reed, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of a stack of books, which I have here, including Sturings in the Jug, Black Politics in the Post-Segregation era,

the Jesse Jackson phenomenon, and my personal favorite class notes, which is an enduring classic, as you can see, from my endless, endless post-ets. And there's a lot that I want to talk

to you about, but I guess I want to start, because I was just rereading class notes, and I think, I was trying to think, you know, of what the common themes that I see running through your writing are.

And, I mean, this is, you call this book posing as politics and other thoughts on the American scene.

And one of the things that I think is central to what you write about is what

politics is and what it isn't and what a political movement does look like and what it doesn't

look like and how many things look like they are meaningful political action or are treated

as if they are meaningful political action, but really aren't and can kind of delude us into thinking

that we are making progress when we aren't.

And for 30 years through your writing,

from the Jesse Jackson phenomenon through the Million Man

...