When I was a foreign correspondent in Africa, it became clear to me that in the rest of the world, conspiracies are very real and do take place. They take place in America too, but I think that it's the wrong word to use for the type of thing we're talking about. I don't think there's a conspiracy against Black men. I think that there's a systematic historical structure in American politics that uses that historical role of Black men to achieve political goals. It is a political tool used to mobilize the rest of the society.
Every society has it.
In England, it's the Irish question. In the United States, it's the Black question. It doesn't mean that there aren't other problems in the United States, but historically, if you want to change something, if you want to move people in a certain direction, there are some very guaranteed methods that you can use to do that, unfortunately. Every politician knows that if you want to mobilize at least a section of White suburbia, that one of your best bets is to mobilize them against Black criminality. In the 30's and the 40's, it was Black rapists.