New York
January 29, 2002

Fathom: What is the significance of this year's Black History Month theme: "The Color Line Revisited: Is Racism Dead?"

Marable: In August 1900, during his opening address to the world's first Pan-African Conference, American civil rights leader and author W.E.B. DuBois made an observation that would echo throughout the next century when he said, "The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line." He predicted that there would be a division between the people of African descent, Hispanics, the Caribbean, and Asians, who at that time found themselves locked beneath the structures of European and American colonialism and racial segregation. And he predicted that the battle for democracy and for freedom and self-determination of non-white peoples would constitute a central theme for the 20th century.

DuBois' prediction still resonates within our own time. In many respects, the 21st century began with two related events: the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, and three days later, on September 11, the attack on the World Trade Center. Both events are linked and connected with DuBois' observation of the global color line. In the first instance the Third World was attempting to renegotiate its relationship through diplomacy. The World Trade Center was an act of terror and indiscriminate violence. But both events reflect a division within civilizations and cultures in the international community. This division must be bridged in order for us to navigate the tensions between our cultural diversity, and the ideals and promise of global democracy.

Fathom: If W.E.B. DuBois were with us today, how might he observe our progress in breaking the color line?

Marable: These are in many ways both the best and worst of times for black America. The vision of W.E.B. DuBois was a world without a color line. It is expressed by Martin Luther King Jr. in his "I Have a Dream" speech in August 1963, as he voiced the hope that one day Americans would be judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. But personally I prefer the quote from Bob Marley, who said, "Until the color of a man's skin is of no greater consequence than the color of his eyes, there'll be war." The central dilemma in American life is how do we get there. That we haven't yet solved.

I grew up in Dayton, Ohio and spent the summers with my grandmother in Tuskegee, Alabama, where there were stores I could not shop in. I could not try on a cap or a pair of pants. I couldn't drink from water fountains. And I'm 51. This is not long ago. The first time the majority of people of African descent voted in a presidential election was in 1964. Things changed only through a tremendous effort of people dying, and fighting through the use of non-violence and civil disobedience to make America live up to its own democratic creed.

There has been a tremendous victory, though limited and truncated to be sure. In 1964, there were 100 black elected officials in the entire country; today there are probably 13,000. In 1964, there were five black members of the US Congress. Today there are 43. Colin Powell is arguably one of the most popular public figures in the US. The CEOs of American Express and Time Warner are African Americans. In this sense, the black middle class has successfully achieved tremendous cultural and political influence within the mainstream of American life. Unfortunately, that's not the whole story.

There isn't really one black America; there are three. There is a black upper middle class that's doing remarkably well, but there is a black working class that's losing ground due to globalization, de-industrialization, and the decline of trade unions. And there's the black truly disadvantaged who are experiencing a social and economic nightmare of marginalization. A kind of stigmatization and demonization of young people who lack skills to be competitive in the new world order defined by technology. All of these communities dwell within the same "racialized" American social body.

Fathom: How can education and the tools of new media technology diminish the color line and impact racism?

Marable: Racism is like a social cancer in American life, but it is not inevitable. That intolerance is a product of how society is organized and how people are taught to think. If we create educational tools which allow people to confirm those differences that make them special, without negating or undermining the humanity of other people who are different, then we create a healthier society, a more inclusive democracy--a civil society.

History is not simply a discourse of what has occurred, it frames the possibilities of the future. History, therefore, has a certain kind of power. The power of the imagination that informs how we see ourselves and the future. The technology of the new multimedia is an extraordinary revolution both in education and imagination. It is in every way as significant as the invention of the printing press. What this tool does, simply put, is to revolutionize how people think about the construction of new knowledge.

For example, at Columbia University we are working on a multimedia study environment of Malcolm X. We are constructing a living virtual archive--developing a biography of one of the central figures of the 20th century. We are collecting his speeches, his diary, letters, film, interviews, and thousands of pages of newly released illegal FBI surveillance, so as to construct not just a story of the past, but to build a world that Malcolm X was a product of, and a world he created. We are creating unique educational tools that will empower an entire generation of black young people who see Malcolm as a heroic figure. It allows us to reach them and equip them for personal and community growth in the 21st century. My hope is that through this new technology, as we reconstruct the past, we can re-imagine the future.

Manning Marable is Professor of History and Political Science and Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University.