Editor's note: Jarvis Tyner is national executive vice chair of the Communist Party USA.

PA: In his concession speech in November 2008, John McCain basically said "Okay, we've elected an African American President. Now I want everybody who is discontented with things in America to just shut up. We did what you wanted, so now it's time to shut up and move forward." That's probably an attitude that's shared by a lot of people. What do you make of that kind of thinking?

JARVIS TYNER: Well, we elected an African American president, which is a wonderful thing. It is more than a wonderful thing. It was an historic turning point for this country, given its history, but that doesn't mean that structural, systemic racism has disappeared. It still is in every workplace. It is still in every public institution. It is still a part of education. It is still part of safety on the street. It still has half the prisons full of Black men and women. Therefore, to say that racism has gone away is an act of racism in itself, because it's a total rejection of the suffering, exploitation and oppression that people are still going through.

So John McCain doesn't know what he is talking about. On top of that there is a trend that says now that we have Obama in there everything will be fine, and all that. Nobody should believe that, certainly not anybody who understands what this country is all about. Certainly people of color shouldn't believe it. It is just another way to lead people down a path where they won't resist racism anymore. Then there are some right-wing pundits have been criticizing civil rights leaders and calling them a bunch of opportunists. But it is they themselves who are the biggest opportunists. These people consider the whole issue of civil rights to be passé. You're day is over, they say. Reagan started that stuff when he told Jesse Jackson and the movement that your time is not now - your time has passed and it is not coming back. He made that point very directly.

In the meantime, these right wing opportunists have gone out and organized one of the most racist movements we have seen in this country in 40 years. These are the Tea Party people and the astro-turfers who sprang up around the health care issue like they were some kind of spontaneous movement. We know that they were well financed and linked to extreme right wing think tanks and the insurance companies. This movement, the way they treat the President, is racist. I think people understand that. It is an intolerant movement. Look at the signs they carry, putting a white face on the President like a minstrel. And saying that President Obama is some kind of Hitler and things like that. Then there's the notion that he is going to introduce white slavery, as some of them are saying.

They also use red-baiting, which is something they have always done to the civil rights movement and fighters against racism - linking them to socialism and communism and red-baiting them. They can then claim that their actions against him aren't racist and that they are acting against him to save the Republic from socialism and that kind of thing. The linking of the two has been a long-term pattern of the ultra-right and their racist attempts to defend racism and protect Jim Crow, all the things that we have suffered through over the years. The reality is that we cannot be passive about what is going on. I think we have to make a real effort now to expose what this Tea Party Movement is about, and all the other similar groups that helped to elect Scott Brown in Massachusetts. If we do so, hopefully by November they will be more isolated and unable to achieve similar successes.

PA: The Obama election campaign and victory was probably the biggest national show of interracial working-class solidarity in decades. Now you have the Tea Party people and Pat Buchanan and some of these other right-wing talking heads trying to force a wedge between whites and blacks and other people of color who strongly supported that grassroots campaign. What is it going to take for the labor-led people's movement that elected him to maintain its unity?

TYNER: One of the great things about the last election was the role of the AFL-CIO. Richard Trumka made that fantastic speech calling on working people, particularly white working people, to get involved in the fight against racism and to elect Obama. And a lot of that happened. Even though a majority of whites who went to the polls voted for McCain, or other than for Obama, the fact is that 43 percent of the white voters did vote for Obama, which is higher than what Kerry got in the previous election. Now we're not satisfied with that, but we are happy that there was progress in that regard and that his campaign saw a lot of breakthroughs.

Secondly, the AFL-CIO is continuing to adopt an anti-racist posture by participating with Black churches, the NAACP, and other organizations around the fight for jobs and health care, and around all the issues that are vital to advancing things in this country, including being against racism. That is very very important.

Pat Buchanan really shouldn't be on the air, if you ask me. But who am I to decide that? Every chance he gets, if he can get away with it, he tries to drive a wedge between black and white. He says that white people are never going to accept this. He said that during the whole campaign when Obama was running. He said you just wait and see, white people will not vote for him. But the truth is that although a majority of white voters who went to the polls didn't, a larger minority of white voters voted Democratic and for Obama than in the previous election. The fact is this country is a multiracial country, and the majority of people who went to the polls voted for Obama-Biden.

We have to work with those who lag behind in their understanding. Martin Luther King said we have to work with of our less conscious sisters and brethren who do not realize how evil racism is. We have to work with them, especially those who are working people, in order to move them toward a more rational understanding of why racism is holding them back too. It seems to me that we really need an anti-racist upsurge against these new right-wing groups. To do that we need to emphasize the issues of jobs, health care, a cleaner environment, and schools - all the things that we as a people need, all the things that we can't achieve because of racism and disunity. I don't think we have fallen back from the election, in the feeling in the country and in the desire for change. But I do think there is a lot of confusion out there. The right has pushed very hard to foster racial division and it's had an impact, but I think it can be reversed and we can go forward.

PA: Let's talk a little about Black History Month. Do you think that a lot of whites today see Black History Month as something that only African Americans need to celebrate? Don't white Americans also have a reason to celebrate Black history too?

TYNER: I think that a lot of whites do understand this, but there is a constant struggle to elevate the anti-racist consciousness out there. I am not with those who want to abandon Black History Month, those who say white people can't be convinced, or you can't build unity. The last election shows you can build broad, multiracial unity based on democratic values and expanding democracy, on the question of jobs and peace, and all the other issues. I think the possibility of bringing more people into the movement is very important, especially when you have an African American President.

And, keep in mind, with an African American President you see the opposition against him taking on an inherently racist form, both in the nature of their rhetoric and the symbols they use. They are appealing especially to a certain racist, visceral feeling among many whites. To me the fact that Obama and the first family are African American requires an even higher level of struggle against racism than we had before. Remember when the right wing said that he couldn't speak to the school children because he would introduce them to socialist ideas? Now that wasn't about socialism (I'll say something about the socialist part in a minute), it was about the fact he was a Black president and that he would be fostering unity. It was about their fear that the younger generation would have an image of the President of the United States, the most important elected official in the country, as an African American, and that they would hear from him about the importance of staying in school. He would assume a hero status for them - which he already is with a lot of them. That is what they are fearful of, that black, white and brown, Native American and Asian, will all get together and fight for justice, peace and economic equality.

The fight against racism has to be part of every struggle for jobs, for health care, for the environment, all those things. You have to link it to them, because it is linked, and because the attack of the enemy is a racist attack against an African American President whom they deeply resent. In their mind this a "white country" and the president should be white. That is the kind of ignorance we are dealing with, and it is time that we take it on and advance everyone's thinking.

Now about the charge of socialism and the red-baiting of Obama. Obama is certainly no socialist, and socialism does not emerge out of some conspiracy. I keep saying that when I speak in various places. It is not a conspiracy. It grows out of human need. For instance, we cannot solve the health care crisis without some element of public ownership. You can't do it. In fact, I think that once we start going down the road of health care reform, people will see that it is necessary to have a single payer system that is accessible to everybody. Frankly, to me getting quality health care should come with your birth.

I think that when people see the economic problems we are facing - what happened on Wall Street and in the housing market, and the resulting massive loss of jobs, they do begin to question capitalism - and they have a right to question capitalism. I heard a reporter on television this morning saying he was in Europe and everybody there is questioning capitalism. He was with a number of CEOs at some conference, business executives from India, France, Germany and other places, and they were saying that they were all following the American path to prosperity, and now that it has collapsed they don't think that model is workable anymore. Has capitalism lost its viability? Yes, it definitely has, and as a consequence the right wing is stubbornly trying to block people from thinking in a healthy and natural direction. If capitalism isn't working, why not go in a socialist direction? Isn't socialism an alternative that at least ought to be examined?

Of course, in our view, there is no question we ought to be heading that way. But we Communists have to be very sophisticated in this period on how we respond to things. The main thing we have to do is build unity with the broad mass of people, those who are now going through a radical transformation in their way of thinking, those who want to see this country become a better country and want to see a more peaceful world. People are tired of 30 years of right-wing misdirection. They are fed up with that. They are looking for something better. According to a recent Pew Research poll a considerable percentage of people even have a preference for socialism - and they have the right to do that. To me this is healthy and natural, and it isn't any conspiracy - it's just people trying to live a better life.

PA: Could you give us your top moments in Black American history?

TYNER: Well, the first one would obviously be the overthrow of slavery, the beginning of Reconstruction, and the establishment of the new democracy. That was very very important. It was a turning point for the nation as a whole.

Next comes the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement, which did not just begin in the 1960s. It actually started happening in the 30s and 40s. I was at a book party the other night for a new book called Red Activists and Black Freedom by James and Esther Jackson. It talks about a period in the struggle for civil rights that, due to the McCarthy period, has been really erased from the history books. That struggle was based on the great efforts of the Left and the Communist Party, black, brown and white, who went into the Deep South to register voters and organize against Jim Crow. That was really the beginning. It laid the foundation for the great things that happened in the 60s. There are so many things.

I think that the defeat of Goldwater in 1964 was very important. Otherwise we would not have had a Civil Rights Bill and all the other social programs that Lyndon Johnson was won to support.

I also would include how our country renewed its anti-racism during the period of anti-apartheid. When 1991 happened and the socialist countries collapsed, all was gloom and doom for those of us who thought socialism was the best next step for humanity. All of a sudden, though, racist apartheid, really fascist apartheid, collapsed, and then came this new democracy in South Africa. That was a tremendous movement on a world scale. There are so many other things, the collapse of the colonial world, etc, etc. To me these things mean a lot.

I also think the freeing of Angela Davis was very important, because when Angela Davis, who was the target of racism and anti-communism, was freed it really established a great precedent that allowed us to move forward. Then there was Dr. Du Bois becoming a Communist in 1968. Martin Luther King said that he was a brilliant man and that was his choice. All these moments, in every period of our country's history, have helped to strengthen the ideological and political struggle against racism. I am just happy to have lived through a lot of it.

PA: In other words, collective movements and struggles are more important in your view than individual achievements?

TYNER: We as a people have never made any great change solely on the basis of individual effort. It has always been made by movements and collective action, and that is why we now need to go forward, more than ever maybe. That's our history.

(Photo credit: Phil Freedman, courtesy AFL-CIO/Flickr, cc by 2.0)