Well, you know, that chapter, as you know, Brian, was -- the centerpiece of it is my first wife, Leanita McClean, who was the first woman -- I'm sorry...

Leanita [pronounced LEE-AH-NEE-TA]

Right. Or, as she used to say, "Just call me Lea."

Her parents did, yeah. Yeah, her two older sisters, Leatrice and Anita, their names were combined to form Leanita. And she was born in -- what? -- 1952...

I met her in the Tribune newsroom. And we were called the "golden couple," in fact, by a number of our friends, because I was only -- what? -- the second...

Well, I grew up in Middletown, Ohio -- born in Dayton and grew up in Middletown. And in the early '60s when I was in high school, I was really emboldened...

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, a white female who had been a reporter on my high school newspaper staff. This was just after I graduated from high school with an award already...

Mm-hmm.

Not quite. As I say, in '69 when I came along, I was the second black male. There had been a black female who had been hired the year before who had...

Not at that time. We had been divorced for a couple of years. And it was obvious over time -- I mean, after the fact and all -- it was obvious that...

How much of her depression, do you think, came from her blackness?

Where'd you get the title?

How old is he?

Montgomery County.

I think the most often quoted person in your book is -- see if you can guess. Who do you think you quote the most?

Yeah. Yeah.

I ask that a lot and people don't remember, you know? But why?

When did he die?

Have you read everything he's written?

"Showing My Color," this book is a book about race. When did you decide that you wanted to write only about that subject?

When you sat at your typewriter, who did you have in your mind that you were writing for? White? Black?

You have ...

You have an interesting paragraph where you talk about labels.

And you say that the black folks have gotten all the way from being colored people to being people of color.

Going through ...

... Negro, African -- I mean, black, African-American. What are you comfortable being referred to and what are you ...

I mean, I know you can't say that for all of the community, but what do you tell white folks -- what -- when you're -- what grates?

You tell us early on that "stuttering and uncooperative motor skills left me severely challenged in dancing, basket shooting and various social applications."

How have you dealt with stuttering in your life?

You write about your dating a white woman.

When was that and what was the impact on you?

What's the one-drop rule?

"White men are not accustomed to feeling racially vulnerable." These are your words. "Affirmative action has given them a taste -- a tiny taste of it....

What does it mean? Let's stop and define it. What does it mean, in your opinion?

What's the ...

What's an affinity impulse?

Where did you find your second wife?

Lisa black or white?

I want to ask you one quick question, and then I want to ask you about people that you talk about in here and have you briefly define them, because...

You know, there's a difference, a nuance of difference there, isn't there? There's a difference between a person who views racism as just simple prejudice...

Yeah. I'll do my best. I'm sorry about that.

Yeah.

I think Shelby Steele -- interesting, he's biracial, too. My wife has another point of view, she thinks that when he made the decision who he was going...

Not anymore. He's at the Hoover Institute now. He wrote this marvelous book -- I say marvelous; I don't agree with some of it, but for the most part,...

Oh, yes, he is now. I mean, by modern parlance -- initially, he would have been called a liberal, but times have changed now. I mean, I would have been...

Henry Louis Gates is one of the most brilliant people writing about race today.

At Harvard. And he -- Skip Gates -- I quote him extensively in my chapter "The Signifying Muslim" about Louis Farrakhan, because I find so much of Louis...

You know, Skip Gates, I do know supports affirmative action. He's big on it. I think it's similar to my own centerist -- he opposes quotas, but believes...

Stanley Crouch, he's a great grouch. If you want to see some impolite essays, read Stanley Crouch. And that's OK. You know, he was marvelously generous...

Billy B. Du Bois is a classic figure in terms of one side of the dichotomy of black ideas that we see throughout African-American history. In other...

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

In other words, we are American, aren't we? You know, America is a country where everybody wants to have some Indian in their background and nobody...

It's the baggage we carry from history and the lessons we've learned growing up -- racism is like sexism. You know, I'm a sexist. I grew up in a society...

There were different Malcolm X's, weren't there? You know, there was the early Malcolm, who was searching. There was the defiant Malcolm, who was the...

Oh, Ken Hamlin, yes, the black avenger. He is an example of the new black conservatives who I distinguish in my book from conservative blacks.

Denver talk show host and a black Rush Limbaugh, tries hard to be outrageous. I love him for that. But his audience is mostly white -- it matches Limbaugh's...

Yes.

Right.

Especially nowadays. You know, if you step on somebody's shoes on the subways or the metro, you might get a fight on your hands. It is a defensiveness...

Yes.

At Leisure World, the retirement village. And he's -- I don't know if you've heard about Leisure World, but it's a lovely little bit of heaven. I don't...

He was a janitor for over 34 years at a paper mill back in Middletown, Ohio, where I grew up. But he also saved his pennies and bought a couple of apartment...

Yeah. Well, yeah, you know, at Leisure World, they do have -- out of several thousand people live there, about 200 are black. And it's new for Dad to...

Well, Grady is my son. And Mom, as I mentioned earlier, died in '84, didn't live long enough to see either this book or Grady, which is very sad, because...

I'm sure he will. He already does. But he's not going to have a life free of concerns about race. That's obvious already. Like I say, he's already concerned,...

Thank you.