Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words Ibram Kendi How To Be An

The first is why this book now . Of course i am just excited to sit down and talk about this book. The reason is i feel like the people have asked for it. The last book i also chronicle the idea of antiracist ideas and the clash over time so when i would speak i would encourage people to be antiracist and move away from those ideas that were ingrained in them so then they said tell me more because people are taught to be not racist so that construct was new so the more as they ask the more i realized this was a book i felt i could potentially answer. That is interesting because its not as though you planned to write this book but im thinking it is an extraordinary book as a historian through and through but there is the risk associated with the implications because you felt called to do this so talk about that distinction because that was in the clear fashion so i notice that those that wrote concurrent books have written this extraordinary praise which is an indication of how important it is only feel that we need the book so what is that distinctio distinction . First and foremost, lets think about the term not racist is he merging currently. People typically say im not racist when they are charged by being racist and i dont think even wellmeaning people who are trying to be part of the move recognize really the history so to be classified as a racist when jim crow segregationist were charged with being racist they said im not racist and even today a White Nationalist no matter if they are in the white house or planning the next mass shooting. I dont think people realize that this is all i have been able to uncover is way to deny ones own racism with a clear philosophy and a clear history. But it gets the reader that is shaped by the book with guilt. So the point isnt whether or not you are racist but what are you doing how racism is every possible aspect of life . And many people say they are not racist because they think racist is like a tattoo. That they can put it on the four head they never escape it and it is a fixed category and fundamentally a bad person and a racist is a person is hooded like White Nationalist or segregationist. Im not any of those things. Im a good person. Im against the clan. I am not racist. But it is a descriptive term that describes what the person is doing in the moment so if they say that a particular racial group is inferior you are being racist. When there is nothing in the face of racial inequity you are racist. And they are literally supporting persons and policies that is creating and injustice they are racist. Thats important also because you get that category of that personal indictment that this is descriptive and im offering the account so stop being emotionally invested. Exactly. That emotional investment, and people feeling like they are being attacked, also people dont realize the origins of fact the idea that it is like the r word. It is the worst insults. And that it is a pejorative. And a nationalist in particular are parroting that idea because what they want to do in particular is to get white people to recognize their racism and if they dont recognize their ideas than the White Nationalist can organize them. So to give an example two years ago the rally that was in charleston that racist is not a descriptive term it is pejorative the equivalent of somebody to say i dont like you spirit that is an important thing to confront. So shifting gears and coming back to that question on that account to be antiracist but one thing that you do quite powerfully in this book, the title gives an indication of the instruction you are offering. So how do you discern how you operate in a world or if you participate in the structural logic or you are working to dismantle them . But at the same time talk about structural issues and gender and capitalism, thats an powerful and important. So in the midst of this deep account of the structure in history of thought and power that you decide to talk to people at that level. I didnt want to write this book because i did not want to speak to people through my own personal story. Because as a scholar this is not the way we are trained. We can communicate scholarship or ideas i was deeply hesitant to be personal and private. So to put the most shameful moments of my life on the page for all the world to see its very difficult for me to do but at the same time these ideas and structures and powers at its core are impacting individuals in these are part of the forces challenging racist power or have no way of supporting it. So fundamentally because of that impact in each of us are supporting or opposing racism, ultimately i want to show how that operates on a day to day basis and conceptually through the complexities within that. In my case for most of my life i was supporting inappropriate White Supremacy without knowing it. So the best way is my own personal story. I do want to talk more about that because its good to start your own personal journey but also most pushback which is important that black people can be racist and you talk about it in several different ways and the one way that black people can adopt the ideology through black people and other people of color and also to that relationship as a largescale phenomenon in the individual who might to be racist so talk about why you thought that was important to include and what it means. Obviously for a very long time i thought black people and i would have argued anybody who made that case and i believe that until i started researching and then i conceptualized to find a racist idea and defined it as any idea that is just a racial group inferior or superior to another in any way and then anti black. So ultimately what i try to do is take these ideas to figure out the intellectual genealogy. What is unavoidably the case is white intellectuals were part of that genealogy. I wanted to exclude them or go around them but i couldnt but if you take the case of one of the most dominant and harmful anti black racist ideas of the 20th century was the idea of the broken black family in the patriarchal black woman i should say matriarchal leading the black family and the black community. That idea was popularized by Daniel Patrick moynihan that in his report in 1955 he repeatedly cited a black scholar who wrote the famous book on the negro family in 1939 who also praised w eat a boy who said a similar thing in his black family studies. I could not wrap my head around that this idea of the broken black family was largely coined by a black scholar. Now everybody recognizes how harmful that idea is and to justify the assault on welfare, black women and the latter part of the 20th century. So i see that the first separation of that idea but what was critical is realizing those racist ideas and then i realize no matter the racial one the racial group when a person thought something was wrong with black people than they spent their time intellectually in terms of organizations to civilize or attack black people or attack everything but the real problem which was racism. That is how it literally functions from the ideological perspective. So coming to power and policie policies, it is absolutely the case that black people have limited amounts of power but to say that no black people have no power is not true. And to also say 100 years ago we did not have black elected officials are on the Supreme Court or we did not have others we still have the power for this typically those who did not have that power because they felt the problem was black people and working through all of that that ultimately caused me to realize that black people can be racist to black people and then to internalize with the black on black crime. You tell this story of the speech that you gave as an adolescent and you deconstructed for precisely that internalization and i think its so powerful in part because those devices are quite common in the black public sphere. So you call into question the practice that is a longstanding widespread practice but so why do you think there is such persistence . I think most of us black people think we are antiracist in some form of one way or another but we listen and we applied. I think it is a combination and the speech that i gave as a senior in high school and i was one of the final list so i won my School Competition i was a three finalist across the country in speaking before the black people and it was anti black ideas in particular about black youth that is the most feared in society. That they dont value education which is very prominent so that they complete keep climbing the high trees all these ideas about what was wrong if there was ever a decade in which everyone comes down on black youth it was the 19 nineties and thats the decade i came of age and consumed those ideas. That to your question it is a combination across the ideological board it is acceptable. I thought i was radical. But obviously black conservatives would say that but i also realize not only that ideological popularity but black people regularly see negativity in what we have been led to believe as we could generalize. s everything we say its because of what they are doing. We know you dont have an education. Because we know individuals like that and just assuming thats part of the problem without sometimes realizing there are white youth who are extremely violent and let me just say as i try to empathize but what makes black people to other racial groups is not the great black people or attributes but our imperfections. We are human. I think connected to what you are saying is also the key with respect to class that is important because all the things that you describe that we dont value education that your kids are violent that you cant give two poor workingclass black kids but also you are challenging as what is accepted as gospel from that liberal perspective because it is still tragic in these ideas. And i was trying to anchor the book by showing who i was largely raised in the new black middle class of the eighties so as a distinct racial group and my parents were taught to a certain extent and believe they were members of the black middle class because of their own hard work and ingenuity that meant people were still poor because they were working hard. So with those racial groups and Racial Disparities and distinctions those are interracial distinctions and we dont think about there is white trash that the white elite have created to substantiate their superiority. Because there must be another. So to think that class is critical to understand the way race operates it when we speak about being antiracist is not that black elites are equal to white but they recognize that all they need is resources and opportunities. And one of the most difficult things for people to realiz realize, and it took a while to accept this is the idea that oppressive conditions are literally not just dehumanizing but that poverty literally depresses the behavioral and cultural attributes of black people they are acting behaviorally deficient because they are poor. They are creating their own standard of how we should act and to say they are not reaching the standard because they are poor. And those behaviors that are deficient to be logical as a mechanism for survival that is necessary. So i love the way that you tell a story of your folks as a social movement because one of the things that we missed is what happens after civil rights and black power and how its so easy to fall back into the groove of that racist society even for people who came through the movement and i think that vulnerability is so refreshing turning the gaze on me in my world but also at the same time what is rare and elegant to talk to a series of ideas whether it is the nicest papers to move into that series of ideas to figure out what is this race thing . Human leave many aside but to say that wasnt right and i find that refreshing as intellectuals that we all have these ideas and we try to approximate the truth so those were youthful but ultimately thats not where you ended. And ultimately trying to figure out what was the problem . Initially when i graduated high school i thought the racial problem was black people i also thought it was racism and then a few weeks into my college life with the election of 2000 with Voter Suppression and through the election to george w. Bush of those first and second hand stories to turn away to flood those that were representing the entire state white racism in particular and to be undeniable i didnt see that as racism at the time but i saw that as white people because all those that were engaged were white so then i went from the problem is black people to the problem is black people and white people. So then what is wrong with white people . Thats what i went in search trying to figure out with these people why are they eating doing these racist acts . And when i started to engage through taking courses that i begin to see ultimately the problem and it took me a while. So i want to take dad up but there are some who think that you give space to white people not to be categorized as racist so what is it that you try to alert their potential in the vision of the Antiracist Society and also if you signal to black and other people of color how to navigate in the struggle. As it links to white people one of the anthems is im not racist so i wanted to confront that theres only two options theres no such thing as being not racist you can be racist and also to be associated as a racist it is not a fixed category but if you Say Something racist you are racist at that moment. And you have the capacity to change even though you were raised to be racist and i suspect the vast majority were raised either consciously or unconsciously to be racist , you still have the capacity to change your upbringing to confront what you are addicted to and to be different. And in a way to be different at antiracist is a constant struggle. That characteristic is not as if we wake up one day that im not that way anymore. Moment by moment day by day basis and then strive to be antiracist. So obviously thats what i want white people to do while simultaneously like many other writers it is critical to recognize the privilege in so many different ways, but then to recognize why so many people of color are angry. Not only about racism that even when they may have not said or done something that is racist. The person is truly antiracist that is recessed has empathetic to black anger when it is racialized. Because they dont understand how insidious is it is and its very difficult for a person of color to pick out the good antiracist person in a crowd. Antiracist person in a crowd. And my development and the path to becoming an antiracist. And one of my favorite parts of the book is when you talk about your time with two of our mutual friend. One, you bring the questions around sexuality and gender and talk about that being antiracist which is true and frequently brought to the conversation and also it is one of the multiple places where you talk about the individual encounter thats part of your personal develop it. You know the way that they are now they are pretty unapologetic about antiracism, feminism, and of course the same way then as graduate students at temple. I was coming from an experience which i really had never engaged in a burst of black feminism. I really had never even considered were deeply thought about theory and even enough chapter my parents didnt raise me to be homophobic, bu but they simply didnt raise me to recognize that was wrong with black queer people so i consumed many of the ideas about black queer people and certainly about black women. So when i arrived at temple pretty much as a homophobic sexist and didnt even realize it and they allowed me to realize it and created a community in which certain things were not going to be tolerated. Attacks on black women, attacks on all black queer people were not going to be tolerated. What was interesting is if somebody said something they wouldnt jump down their throats and scream at them. They would of course engage them, but i felt those attacks. I have to recognize why i felt those attacks even when they were not talking to me. What was beautiful that even though i had these homophobic ideas and came with this they opened themselves up to m to mem and brinme tomentoring me into e which i thought was critical in my own personal development. So, any sort of gender critique that i have a host you describe the cultivation of a community that im the one hand does tolerate bigotry but also didnt exp exp. Guest and that is very slippery. Host that is what you are suggesting in the book is how we do that, how to think about how to do that, to have space and transformation to work through the moment feeling defensive end under attack. That is precisely the process that is essential, and i think that its also important because you provide in that example the combination of the scholarly endeavor of the extraordinary scholars and the work of community and so often the academics said the park side of the interpersonal reactions that you are talking about bringing those pieces together and similarly did you talk about the personal encounters and a lot of difficult ones within this. Part of what he said that if you provide an accounting of the effects of racism including the physical one and then you write about your encounter with the serious illness. Guest one of the things that happened when i started speaking about it and people started realizing it, this book was so difficult for me to read demonizing black people in every way imaginable. Its difficult for people to care for people to sa say if ths has been that much harder to write. It goes in one ear and out the other because i didnt want to think about that. I was so focused when i was doing the research. I wasnt thinking about the impact that it was having literally and then combined with the fact that i was writing this history of antiracist ideas as a black person and you know, but ended up being 500 pages but i probably collected thousands and thousands of pages of ideas many of which i had to sort of sift through and i talk about these like trash bags that i had to consume to basically make it legible for the reader. And i was also caretaking my wife who had breast cancer. She was very young in her early 30s and when you contract a disease that is hard when you dont think that you should contract because of your age, its even more difficult so it was a very difficult process caret taking for her care taking for her and at the same time my wife had a serious illness. Then a few years later i was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. In some ways that was the effe effect. Certainly that could have been the case. Scholars are finding out rural health effects. Whether or not there is a direct correlation in the terms of science or a sor if sort of larr environmental phenomenon with a father and husband and the director you are serving the world and your family in a multiplicity of ways and even that has a sense of cost and calling. I want to talk about your work in developing the White Nationalist<\/a> no matter if they are in the white house or planning the next mass shooting. I dont think people realize that this is all i have been able to uncover is way to deny ones own racism with a clear philosophy and a clear history. But it gets the reader that is shaped by the book with guilt. So the point isnt whether or not you are racist but what are you doing how racism is every possible aspect of life . And many people say they are not racist because they think racist is like a tattoo. That they can put it on the four head they never escape it and it is a fixed category and fundamentally a bad person and a racist is a person is hooded like White Nationalist<\/a> or segregationist. Im not any of those things. Im a good person. Im against the clan. I am not racist. But it is a descriptive term that describes what the person is doing in the moment so if they say that a particular racial group is inferior you are being racist. When there is nothing in the face of racial inequity you are racist. And they are literally supporting persons and policies that is creating and injustice they are racist. Thats important also because you get that category of that personal indictment that this is descriptive and im offering the account so stop being emotionally invested. Exactly. That emotional investment, and people feeling like they are being attacked, also people dont realize the origins of fact the idea that it is like the r word. It is the worst insults. And that it is a pejorative. And a nationalist in particular are parroting that idea because what they want to do in particular is to get white people to recognize their racism and if they dont recognize their ideas than the White Nationalist<\/a> can organize them. So to give an example two years ago the rally that was in charleston that racist is not a descriptive term it is pejorative the equivalent of somebody to say i dont like you spirit that is an important thing to confront. So shifting gears and coming back to that question on that account to be antiracist but one thing that you do quite powerfully in this book, the title gives an indication of the instruction you are offering. So how do you discern how you operate in a world or if you participate in the structural logic or you are working to dismantle them . But at the same time talk about structural issues and gender and capitalism, thats an powerful and important. So in the midst of this deep account of the structure in history of thought and power that you decide to talk to people at that level. I didnt want to write this book because i did not want to speak to people through my own personal story. Because as a scholar this is not the way we are trained. We can communicate scholarship or ideas i was deeply hesitant to be personal and private. So to put the most shameful moments of my life on the page for all the world to see its very difficult for me to do but at the same time these ideas and structures and powers at its core are impacting individuals in these are part of the forces challenging racist power or have no way of supporting it. So fundamentally because of that impact in each of us are supporting or opposing racism, ultimately i want to show how that operates on a day to day basis and conceptually through the complexities within that. In my case for most of my life i was supporting inappropriate White Supremacy<\/a> without knowing it. So the best way is my own personal story. I do want to talk more about that because its good to start your own personal journey but also most pushback which is important that black people can be racist and you talk about it in several different ways and the one way that black people can adopt the ideology through black people and other people of color and also to that relationship as a largescale phenomenon in the individual who might to be racist so talk about why you thought that was important to include and what it means. Obviously for a very long time i thought black people and i would have argued anybody who made that case and i believe that until i started researching and then i conceptualized to find a racist idea and defined it as any idea that is just a racial group inferior or superior to another in any way and then anti black. So ultimately what i try to do is take these ideas to figure out the intellectual genealogy. What is unavoidably the case is white intellectuals were part of that genealogy. I wanted to exclude them or go around them but i couldnt but if you take the case of one of the most dominant and harmful anti black racist ideas of the 20th century was the idea of the broken black family in the patriarchal black woman i should say matriarchal leading the black family and the black community. That idea was popularized by Daniel Patrick<\/a> moynihan that in his report in 1955 he repeatedly cited a black scholar who wrote the famous book on the negro family in 1939 who also praised w eat a boy who said a similar thing in his black family studies. I could not wrap my head around that this idea of the broken black family was largely coined by a black scholar. Now everybody recognizes how harmful that idea is and to justify the assault on welfare, black women and the latter part of the 20th century. So i see that the first separation of that idea but what was critical is realizing those racist ideas and then i realize no matter the racial one the racial group when a person thought something was wrong with black people than they spent their time intellectually in terms of organizations to civilize or attack black people or attack everything but the real problem which was racism. That is how it literally functions from the ideological perspective. So coming to power and policie policies, it is absolutely the case that black people have limited amounts of power but to say that no black people have no power is not true. And to also say 100 years ago we did not have black elected officials are on the Supreme Court<\/a> or we did not have others we still have the power for this typically those who did not have that power because they felt the problem was black people and working through all of that that ultimately caused me to realize that black people can be racist to black people and then to internalize with the black on black crime. You tell this story of the speech that you gave as an adolescent and you deconstructed for precisely that internalization and i think its so powerful in part because those devices are quite common in the black public sphere. So you call into question the practice that is a longstanding widespread practice but so why do you think there is such persistence . I think most of us black people think we are antiracist in some form of one way or another but we listen and we applied. I think it is a combination and the speech that i gave as a senior in high school and i was one of the final list so i won my School Competition<\/a> i was a three finalist across the country in speaking before the black people and it was anti black ideas in particular about black youth that is the most feared in society. That they dont value education which is very prominent so that they complete keep climbing the high trees all these ideas about what was wrong if there was ever a decade in which everyone comes down on black youth it was the 19 nineties and thats the decade i came of age and consumed those ideas. That to your question it is a combination across the ideological board it is acceptable. I thought i was radical. But obviously black conservatives would say that but i also realize not only that ideological popularity but black people regularly see negativity in what we have been led to believe as we could generalize. s everything we say its because of what they are doing. We know you dont have an education. Because we know individuals like that and just assuming thats part of the problem without sometimes realizing there are white youth who are extremely violent and let me just say as i try to empathize but what makes black people to other racial groups is not the great black people or attributes but our imperfections. We are human. I think connected to what you are saying is also the key with respect to class that is important because all the things that you describe that we dont value education that your kids are violent that you cant give two poor workingclass black kids but also you are challenging as what is accepted as gospel from that liberal perspective because it is still tragic in these ideas. And i was trying to anchor the book by showing who i was largely raised in the new black middle class of the eighties so as a distinct racial group and my parents were taught to a certain extent and believe they were members of the black middle class because of their own hard work and ingenuity that meant people were still poor because they were working hard. So with those racial groups and Racial Disparities<\/a> and distinctions those are interracial distinctions and we dont think about there is white trash that the white elite have created to substantiate their superiority. Because there must be another. So to think that class is critical to understand the way race operates it when we speak about being antiracist is not that black elites are equal to white but they recognize that all they need is resources and opportunities. And one of the most difficult things for people to realiz realize, and it took a while to accept this is the idea that oppressive conditions are literally not just dehumanizing but that poverty literally depresses the behavioral and cultural attributes of black people they are acting behaviorally deficient because they are poor. They are creating their own standard of how we should act and to say they are not reaching the standard because they are poor. And those behaviors that are deficient to be logical as a mechanism for survival that is necessary. So i love the way that you tell a story of your folks as a social movement because one of the things that we missed is what happens after civil rights and black power and how its so easy to fall back into the groove of that racist society even for people who came through the movement and i think that vulnerability is so refreshing turning the gaze on me in my world but also at the same time what is rare and elegant to talk to a series of ideas whether it is the nicest papers to move into that series of ideas to figure out what is this race thing . Human leave many aside but to say that wasnt right and i find that refreshing as intellectuals that we all have these ideas and we try to approximate the truth so those were youthful but ultimately thats not where you ended. And ultimately trying to figure out what was the problem . Initially when i graduated high school i thought the racial problem was black people i also thought it was racism and then a few weeks into my college life with the election of 2000 with Voter Suppression<\/a> and through the election to george w. Bush of those first and second hand stories to turn away to flood those that were representing the entire state white racism in particular and to be undeniable i didnt see that as racism at the time but i saw that as white people because all those that were engaged were white so then i went from the problem is black people to the problem is black people and white people. So then what is wrong with white people . Thats what i went in search trying to figure out with these people why are they eating doing these racist acts . And when i started to engage through taking courses that i begin to see ultimately the problem and it took me a while. So i want to take dad up but there are some who think that you give space to white people not to be categorized as racist so what is it that you try to alert their potential in the vision of the Antiracist Society<\/a> and also if you signal to black and other people of color how to navigate in the struggle. As it links to white people one of the anthems is im not racist so i wanted to confront that theres only two options theres no such thing as being not racist you can be racist and also to be associated as a racist it is not a fixed category but if you Say Something<\/a> racist you are racist at that moment. And you have the capacity to change even though you were raised to be racist and i suspect the vast majority were raised either consciously or unconsciously to be racist , you still have the capacity to change your upbringing to confront what you are addicted to and to be different. And in a way to be different at antiracist is a constant struggle. That characteristic is not as if we wake up one day that im not that way anymore. Moment by moment day by day basis and then strive to be antiracist. So obviously thats what i want white people to do while simultaneously like many other writers it is critical to recognize the privilege in so many different ways, but then to recognize why so many people of color are angry. Not only about racism that even when they may have not said or done something that is racist. The person is truly antiracist that is recessed has empathetic to black anger when it is racialized. Because they dont understand how insidious is it is and its very difficult for a person of color to pick out the good antiracist person in a crowd. Antiracist person in a crowd. And my development and the path to becoming an antiracist. And one of my favorite parts of the book is when you talk about your time with two of our mutual friend. One, you bring the questions around sexuality and gender and talk about that being antiracist which is true and frequently brought to the conversation and also it is one of the multiple places where you talk about the individual encounter thats part of your personal develop it. You know the way that they are now they are pretty unapologetic about antiracism, feminism, and of course the same way then as graduate students at temple. I was coming from an experience which i really had never engaged in a burst of black feminism. I really had never even considered were deeply thought about theory and even enough chapter my parents didnt raise me to be homophobic, bu but they simply didnt raise me to recognize that was wrong with black queer people so i consumed many of the ideas about black queer people and certainly about black women. So when i arrived at temple pretty much as a homophobic sexist and didnt even realize it and they allowed me to realize it and created a community in which certain things were not going to be tolerated. Attacks on black women, attacks on all black queer people were not going to be tolerated. What was interesting is if somebody said something they wouldnt jump down their throats and scream at them. They would of course engage them, but i felt those attacks. I have to recognize why i felt those attacks even when they were not talking to me. What was beautiful that even though i had these homophobic ideas and came with this they opened themselves up to m to mem and brinme tomentoring me into e which i thought was critical in my own personal development. So, any sort of gender critique that i have a host you describe the cultivation of a community that im the one hand does tolerate bigotry but also didnt exp exp. Guest and that is very slippery. Host that is what you are suggesting in the book is how we do that, how to think about how to do that, to have space and transformation to work through the moment feeling defensive end under attack. That is precisely the process that is essential, and i think that its also important because you provide in that example the combination of the scholarly endeavor of the extraordinary scholars and the work of community and so often the academics said the park side of the interpersonal reactions that you are talking about bringing those pieces together and similarly did you talk about the personal encounters and a lot of difficult ones within this. Part of what he said that if you provide an accounting of the effects of racism including the physical one and then you write about your encounter with the serious illness. Guest one of the things that happened when i started speaking about it and people started realizing it, this book was so difficult for me to read demonizing black people in every way imaginable. Its difficult for people to care for people to sa say if ths has been that much harder to write. It goes in one ear and out the other because i didnt want to think about that. I was so focused when i was doing the research. I wasnt thinking about the impact that it was having literally and then combined with the fact that i was writing this history of antiracist ideas as a black person and you know, but ended up being 500 pages but i probably collected thousands and thousands of pages of ideas many of which i had to sort of sift through and i talk about these like trash bags that i had to consume to basically make it legible for the reader. And i was also caretaking my wife who had breast cancer. She was very young in her early 30s and when you contract a disease that is hard when you dont think that you should contract because of your age, its even more difficult so it was a very difficult process caret taking for her care taking for her and at the same time my wife had a serious illness. Then a few years later i was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. In some ways that was the effe effect. Certainly that could have been the case. Scholars are finding out rural health effects. Whether or not there is a direct correlation in the terms of science or a sor if sort of larr environmental phenomenon with a father and husband and the director you are serving the world and your family in a multiplicity of ways and even that has a sense of cost and calling. I want to talk about your work in developing the Antiracist Center<\/a> and at the book festival you organized which i think was one of the book festivals that are witnessed. He talked about the connection that you see on your work as a scholar and educator and someone that is cultivating a think tank of sorts. Guest sharing the incredible biography of elaine, wwe wanted and envisioned in the Research Policy<\/a> center there are so many Better Writing<\/a> on racism and are trying to get us out of the pit and of course we speak alone but its rare that we come together at a festival and share ideas so what if we convened the most impressive writers of the time each year i should say how we are examining in solving this problem in other words we should be convening people to ask and answer some of the most intractable racial questions of our time and often times as you know, we do this in isolation and we know part of the answer so what if we bring them together whether it i is at the festival were researching policy teams and ultimately designed campaigns to change policy or whether it is literally convening specialists. To view people as equals they literally have to be a part of this movement to change whether we are changing the narrative, whether we are changing policy or power. Host i think that is absolutely right and some important. Ibrings me back to this powerful point in the book where you talk about capitalism and racial capitalism in which economic order has been so profound in the united states, so profoundly and intimately tied to the structures of racism. You say if there is a way to be being capitalism is not in pla place. Basically what youre saying is, and im so inclined to talk about these and the communities because you provide such Data Analysis<\/a> one as weve got to stop doing all of this and act and i think the question that i always think that questioning fg because i loved the Statement People<\/a> must know before they can act so this work of producing knowledge, i actually am curious do you think about this in terms of stages and does the word has meaning that the level of individual school does it mean to be revolution, what do you do with questions of citizenship, like how do you imagine the scope for someone. One of my freshman who comes in and then realizing i might not be able to do this myself, what is the vision for them . Guest ever guest every individual is standing in a different place and space. Having these questions and being on the table the policies that govern the church the objection to racist ideas in that church you have people tha but its jut sort of local neighborhood and their local neighborhood is gentrified. Which part of that struggle are you on. They dont necessarily have time to join the organization because they are working 60 hours a week, but they do raise their children so they can be raising them to be antiracist and sending money to the antiracist organization. Thats possible. We shall think very clearly about where we are in the world what we have the capability to do and formulate our action plan around that. Host i find that powerful. Given that racism is a product of culture and policy and repetition of decisionmaking that disruption is important to them to imagine a different kind of future disruptions to take place. That could take place. Its not like you have a Structural Analysis<\/a> that you are not as structural as the sense of the endgame. Its about how do we move towards something and way of living. Guest i dont understand how the structures are changed if they are not changed by individuals. Guest absolutely. Guest into the mobilizing and organizing of individuals. We have to push at this level. Some people just want to look at the individual and just hide and say we need to take personal responsibility. Its smart in a different type of way. Host i think i personally noticed from reading your book but i am interested in asking if he were to account for your intellectual genealogy, who are the figures that most viewers will most directly in the tradition. Guest im seeking to challenge the policy and state apologetically critical to the state but also in his autobiography critical about themselves and black people. Obviously in terms of journalism as an essayist and writer i would say either b. Wells threw out the window i wrote today in the atlantic how i could almost feel her staring down a lynch mob and in many ways, she wrote that way. And her focus was to sort out right for the people. And really a willingness to say and do whatever to challenge the White Supremacy<\/a>. Host guest and not backtrack in any of it. As a sort of all of that together obviously the ability to simultaneously be involved in organizations and to be an essayist and scholar i think more than any other scholar the irony is even the personal narrative was something that was utilized particularly by black scholars and in many ways, weve moved away from that. And i think only now we are starting to move back to that. Host partially because malcolm and ida b. Wells make a great deal of sense, but if either b. Wells the process of discovering the truth going to the data, that groundwork, and they wonder and im thinking about this because you talked about malcolm, do you see this book as a guest i see it as a way of both professional and commercial story that i was confessing and converting to someone new estimate to be more antiracist. Host i think about that in the boys as well because when we teach these figures we teach them as a sort of singular but if anybody is an example of moving through a very long life trying through personal crisis and tragedy and trying to get closer and closer to the truth that his wife had so you pick up the practicthat practice which s sort of in the best of our intellectual traditions. Guest they are the most powerful things that he wrote and hes supposed to be critical. Host and fully human. It is interesting and you talk about this come in particular when you talk about the process of going to graduate school they see the studies merging from social movement into this desire it there is also this pressure to be dispassionate intellectu intellectual, and i think that you are a really important example of what we are in the thrall of this moment to say the absolute objectivity with all this affection and we are called to be rigorous in our understanding of history and analysis but also to be fully human in the midst of that which means that we have to be fallible and vulnerable. Guest i told the story who came as the dissertation adviser and her sort of lecturing on no such thing as objectivity. Host and i love that moment. Guest i was kind of a journalist and was still thinking that i was sort of turning towards being a scholar and of course a journalist scholar as almost on the throne. I asked her i dont understand. Like if we cant be objective, and she isnt a woman of many words. So she looked at me and said just tell the truth. Which is a matter of serious studies. Guest our job is to tell the truth even when it is critical and hard to face. If we cannot find the courage or the clarity to tell the truth then what are we doing here. Host i also want to ask a question about craft because one of the things about the impact you ha have is about the beauty. You tell stories and anecdotes in ways that are riveting. Watch for you, what part of this journey is to take a was part of your work is about the beauty of tradition and the writing and the craft . Guest for me i had begun to distinguish between a public scholar and public scholarship. So for me i view a public scholar as someone that is known by the public, but i dont want to be known, i dont want to just be known. I want to produce public scholarship which i view as it literally impacts the lives of the public. When we talk about impacting and changing how people see the world and the sort of racial narrative, you have to make that accessible. You have to sort of be able to speak to the people and present it in a way that people will consume it. Especially when you think about what we are at war against. The story is, the ideas that are so riveting but in a different type of way, the idea of this massive invasion of people sort of coming to destroy america and i am your savior, for people who think that theres something wrong, it actually did actualln extent is riveting. We are up against these fictional stories that are presented as nonfiction. And i think that is part of the difficulty that is often times racist stories have been fiction. I would love to write fiction. We are up against fictional stories. So when we have an alternative sort of view i would argue more accurately of the world, we have to produce it at that level. I feel like if i tell a story that doesnt grip people, if i share an idea people dont understand, i am to blame. So, while others would feel okay these people dont understand good storytelling or, you know, they dont understand this idea, no line always to blame. Host this clarity, truth and also beauty that are working simultaneously. Final question what are your hopes, its very clear that its not a selfish one and i appreciate that, because theres a lot of pressure to be selfishly motivated in this world that your hopes are about what yo we want to give to the world. So for the readers anywhere you wanand where youwant them to go. Guest some of the best responses people have said to me is when they said some lik to le this book is liberating and in the sense that it allows them to no longer be confined by places, ideas, this desire of a person to represent this belief that because of what they have said and done in the past he cant be antiracist tomorrow and that it sort of removed the shackles that allow people to understand themselves develop their complexities to strive to be antiracist and i hope that this book helps with the work of other scholars like yourself to really build a closeness social movement, a powerful movement and powerful people who are ultimately going to dismantle racism and White Supremacy<\/a>. Thank you. Guest thank you so much. Now we want to introduce you to joel. Heres the book of your successful","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia803006.us.archive.org\/23\/items\/CSPAN2_20190909_010000_After_Words_Ibram_Kendi_How_to_Be_an_Antiracist\/CSPAN2_20190909_010000_After_Words_Ibram_Kendi_How_to_Be_an_Antiracist.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20190909_010000_After_Words_Ibram_Kendi_How_to_Be_an_Antiracist_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240716T12:35:10+00:00"}