Hi, Brian Lairer here.

Up next, Brian Lairor Weekend,

three of our favorite segments from the week,

packaged together for you to listen to on the weekend.

So enjoy, and I'll see you back on the radio Monday at 10 a.m.

on WNYC and WNYC. Good morning again, everyone.

Howard University History Professor Ibram X. Kendi is back with us. Some of you know as

influential books, such as How to Be an Anti-Racist and Stamped from the Beginning, the Definitive

History of Racist racist ideas in America.

His new book is called Chain of Ideas, The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age, The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age.

We'll talk about that now, including how it relates to the current backlash against all things DEI,

and some of that backlash has been directed at him. Professor Kendi,

thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC. Of course. Thank you for having me. Let's start, as your book does, 30 years ago, 1996. A French novelist coins the term Great Replacement Theory,

which you say is now the most dominant political theory of our time.

Who was that French novelist? And what did he mean by Great Replacement Theory?

So the French novelist is named Renaud Camus. And he was actually, he's a pioneering French novelist. And when he was in

southern France in the late 1990s and frankly first in 1996, he perceived that people of

North African descent who were likely, were overrunning this town that he was in, that they were everywhere. And that ultimately, they were replacing white French people and their cultures.

And at the time though, North African immigrants and African migrants more broadly only made up about 4 to 6% of that actual area.

So of course he exaggerated the number that was coming as greatacement theorists typically do, but he essentially

framed these people as replacing white people and as taking over.

But also that there was a group of elites who was directing this, right?

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