'70s Icon Talks Race, Politics and Obama

Angela Davis has lived to see her own commodification

By Sam Gale Rosen, Newser Staff

Posted Nov 8, 2007 4:00 PM CST

(Newser) – Angela Davis, 1970s black power icon, talks to the Guardian about race, politics and Barack Obama, and muses about being remembered "as a hairdo." Davis on diversity in the Bush administration: "When the inclusion of black people into the machine of oppression is designed to make that machine work more efficiently, then it does not represent progress at all."

Davis, a radical intellectual who ran for vice president twice in the 1980s on the Communist Party ticket, also has doubts about Obama, who she faults for avoiding the whole subject of race: "He is being consumed as the embodiment of color blindness. It's the notion that we have moved beyond racism by not taking race into account."

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Angela Davis (Archive Photos)

USA. Atlanta, GA. 1995. "Black Atlanta" mural with Muhammad Ali and Angela Davis on Auburn Avenue. (Magnum Photos)

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'70s Icon Talks Race, Politics and Obama