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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axfiles with

your host David Axelrod.

If the events of the past two weeks have caused you to think more deeply about America's

legacy of racism and discrimination, you should really take the time to read between the

world and me by Tana Hassee Coates, whose searing book written as a letter to his son speaks

bluntly about the enduring impact of that history and white supremacy.

I sat down with him in the 2017 to talk about this, the meaning of the elections of Barack

Obama and then Donald Trump, and whether we can ever fully escape the shackles of our

past.

Here's my conversation with Tana Hassee Coates.

Tana Hassee Coates, so good to be with you and have you here at the University of Chicago.

You've written a lot about the guy that I worked for Barack Obama.

And I remember the day that Obama got a call in 2004 when he was asked to give that speech

at the Democratic Convention in Boston that made him a prominent national figure overnight.

And when he hung up the phone after getting the offer, he said, I know what I want to

write.

He said, I want to talk about my story as part of the larger American story.

And I was thinking about that as I read your essay, your latest essay on him, because you've

spent much of your life as a writer writing about your story as part of the larger American

story.

And it seems like a different story in many ways.

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