BI: You live in Florida, which is a very diverse state. How do you read the ability of Blacks and Latinos to build meaningful and progressive coalitions?
JF: The issue of coalitions among people of color in the United States is probably the chief political issue facing progressives and people of color over the next 20 to 50 years in this country. And yet it is one where there has been no major national conference that I know of calling Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans together to talk about how we build better coalitions. When I give talks on this demographic issue that you raised earlier, I suggest that one way to improve the country is to have some multiracial coalitions against racism and discrimination since it is in the interests of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans to work together against White racism. People always ask me tough questions about that. Well, Blacks and Latinos fight each other in the cities we know about. They don't build coalitions. And Asians fight, they don't want to build coalitions. So why are you optimistic about coalitions? And I'd say well, I'm not especially optimistic about coalitions, but I suspect that some of them are coming because of shared interests among these groups. The big issue is: Can Blacks and Latinos, since they're the largest groups, can they build effective political coalitions to improve the terrible conditions that many in both communities face, both in terms of economic conditions and in terms of racial discrimination?
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