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• About American Vertigo
• Commentary by Mr. Levy
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Tavis: Bernard-Henri Levy is an accomplished philosopher, journalist, and author, who co-founded the French anti-racist group 'S.O.S. Racism.' His most recent book follows the path forged by another fellow Frenchman, Alexis De Tocqueville. The bestselling book, of course, is called "American Vertigo, Traveling America In The footsteps Of Tocqueville.' Bernard-Henri Levy, nice to have you in our studio, sir.

Bernard-Henri Levy: Nice to meet you, Tavis.

Tavis: Nice to meet you, glad to have you here. I love your country.

Levy: Thank you.

Tavis: And I love Paris.

Levy: I like yours.

Tavis: Thank you very much. We have something in common, we like each other's country.

Levy: Absolutely. It's a good beginning.

Tavis: It's a very good beginning. Both of our countries are in a bit of turmoil. We'll talk about what you found on your journey here, as a Frenchman retracing De Tocqueville's steps. But let me start, if I might, by asking what you make of what's happening in your country. Because we're reading every day about the unrest. Maybe I should come to France, travel for a year, and write a book about France.

Levy: Let's speak about your country, Tavis. I think it will be better. My country is a great country, but going through such a deep crisis. People are afraid. There is a sort of panic which is widespread. And these riot of students were so strange, so different from the riots from my youth, when there was a sort of romanticism, a real radicalism, a dream.

What was the dream of these boys and girls last week? Maybe to get old as soon as possible. Which is not the best dream for youth. Either, it's a bad moment for France. But we will overcome that. We will go further, I'm sure of that.

Tavis: Does France have a race problem, an ethnic problem, class problem? If you talk to people who are protesting, they think that their legitimate reasons for protest, wrapped around those kinds of issues. Racism, classism.

Levy: This is two different problems. The demonstrations of last week had nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It does not mean that we don't have a problem of race and ethnicity, but you have, too, in America. We have the same. The thing I would say that you had in America a huge problem in the, till the sixties or seventies.

And that you found some solutions I the last 20 or 30 years since the dream of Martin Luther King. I comment on that in "American Vertigo.' You did find some solutions. We have the same problems, and we are a little late compared to America. This is what I could say. The pattern of citizenship in our two countries, France and America, maybe works better in America than in France today. It did work better in my country 50 years ago. It does work better in your country nowadays.

Tavis: That's the fascinating part of this, when you speak specifically of African Americans like Dr. King, who helped make this American democracy move more toward being a nation as good as its promise. I think of all the African Americans who felt so out of place and out of space here, who came to your country for refuge. So many of them. James Baldwin, and the list goes on and on and on of people who sought refuge in that country.

Levy: I was friends with James Baldwin. We met in (speaksinFrench). We had houses very close. I loved him. He was a great friend. And yes, you are true, but the reality, this was one of the great surprises of my journey, especially when I traveled in the south of America, where I expected to see, to discover the old cliché of the deep old south, racist, Ku Klux Klan, and so on. My surprise, my discovery was to see to which extent the country changed.

I don't say that there is no longer a racist in Alabama. Of course. But today, the difference with before is that they are ashamed of being racist. Their racism is expressed in a sort of defensive or repressed way. They don't dare. This is a great change. In France sometimes, they dare again. In America today, they dare less and less. This is the achievement of Dr. King, and of all the revolution of the Civil Rights, which began a few decades ago, and which is achieving itself now.

Tavis: As we talk now about specifically what's in "American Vertigo,' and what you found by traveling America in the footsteps of Tocqueville, tell me what got you to wanna do this project? Why did you wanna come trace these footsteps?

Levy: First of all, because Tocqueville is a great philosopher, a great thinker. So it was a tremendous experience to try to do that. But more than Tocqueville, I wanted to do this work about America. I knew that America was facing a deep crisis of identity. Who you are, where do you go, what happens with the so-called manifest destiny of America? I wanted to go thoroughly in those questions with as candid eyes as possible, with my foreign ear and gaze, and just to see what I, to tell what I saw.

Tavis: Tell me what your - I like that phraseology - tell me what your foreign ear and foreign gaze allows you to see or to hear that we do not see and hear?

Levy: So, I answer to you very precisely, it allows to see and to hear things which are literally in front of you, under your nose. And which are so familiar that you no longer see them. It is a story of Edgar Allen Poe, the short story called 'The Stolen Letter.' 'The Stolen Letter,' which is exactly here, above the chimney, or the cupboard. It is there, but it is so much there that you don't see it.

Tavis: So what are we not seeing and hearing that moved you?

Levy: So many things. For example, the poverty in Los Angeles. I'm sure that a lot of people who live in Beverly Hills don't see and don't really know about these areas of huge and shameful poverty, which are at their doors. It is at their doors. A few miles, sometimes less, and they don't see it. Being a foreigner, having this as a task, of course I went there.

It is not a virtue. I don't ask credit for that. It was my job. I went in Skidmore Street; I went in these areas where you have people belonging generally to minorities, nearly without clothes, without anything to eat, without home, without any shelter. This is a thing which is at your doors, and which you don't see.

As we do in France, same. It is not specific to American. It is specific to any country. The jails. One of the targets of Alexis De Tocqueville was to enquire, to investigate, about the penitentiary system of America of this time. I did the same for the jails of America of today, from the Guantanamo Bay jail penitentiary establishment, to Riker's Island in New York, to the Jail of Women of (word?), and so on. Again, the dark face of America, which is here, under your eyes, under your feet, and which, of course, you don't see it.

Tavis: Have you figured out, I'd like to hear your response to this. Have you figured out, to your point about jails and penitentiaries, and brothers and sisters on lockdown, have you figured out why it is that America has the most people of any nation in the world behind bars? Why do we have that dubious distinction? You figure that out?

Levy: I tell you. You have, you have. I mean administration has a tendency give a penal treatment to the social question. There are some social topics, social issues, which are treated in a penal way.

Tavis: I hear you.

Levy: I'm sorry to tell you that. But I spent a real bit of time in American jails, and there are a lot of people there who maybe should not be there. Or at least who could be treated in another way. So it's so easy, when you are a political power who wants the less politics as possible, which is sometimes a tendency in America. It's so easy to say, okay, problem, jail. Okay, thief, jail. Okay, little drug dealer, jail. Maybe some of those guys or girls should not be there.

Tavis: You've raised a couple of issues, and let me put it in this particular framework, you've raised at least two issues that we are challenged by in this country, to oversimplify what you've said, race and class. Talk to me about what you learned about how those issues intersect in this American empire. Race and class.

Levy: One example, Tavis, Katrina. New Orleans. New Orleans, Katrina in New Orleans was an anti-September 11. Why anti-September 11? September 11, death did hit indistinctly. Every races, every classes, everybody was hit. No difference. In New Orleans, death knocked at the door, making lists. Not anybody was hit.

The poor more than the rich. The Black more than the White. The bad areas of the city more than the best. So you have this problem again. America is not that, and you ask me this question, so I have to say that. I love this country. There are so many bright sides of it, of course. But there is also this dark side.

Tavis: Let me ask you in about 30 seconds, given our dark side, whether or not you had any reason to believe that we are on the right track in making America a nation as good as its promise.

Levy: I believe that you are on this path. Of course, because on the other side, the vibrancy of the American democracy is still great. The real democracy at the grassroot levels, the real people, is still very youthful, very young. About Katrina, the other thing which impressed me so much was in the neighbor state, in Texas, which is not the most progressive stage in America, as you know, the way in which the people of Texas welcomed their brothers of New Orleans.

The way in which they opened their schools, their hospitals, their houses, and sometimes their own wallets in order to rescue them was just unimaginable. Was just great. Big proof, big sign of a great, living, vivid democracy.

Tavis: Nice to have you on the program.

Levy: Thanks.

Tavis: The new book by Bernard-Henri Levy is "American Vertigo, Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville.' Up next on this program, hip-hop star LL Cool J. Stay with us.