Director of Antiracism Research and Policy Center US - Ibram Kendi
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2019
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For many Americans, Donald Trump’s incendiary tweets aimed at immigrants show him to be a racist and white nationalist. But maybe we exaggerate the importance of Donald Trump’s contribution to America’s problem with race? Stephen Sackur interviews prize-winning writer on race and founder of the Anti-Racist Research Centre in Washington, Ibram Kendi. He says the roots of racism run deep and an honest assessment of their strength has barely begun. Can the US ever fix a problem so intimately bound up with its past?
(Photo: Ibram X Kendi. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker. |
| 0:06.6 | Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:11.2 | Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today has become one of America's most influential writers and thinkers on the vexed issue of racism. |
| 0:22.9 | As a teenager, Ibrahim Kendi found it difficult to figure out how he fitted in, a young black |
| 0:29.1 | man in a society where young black men are often viewed with suspicion and fear. |
| 0:34.7 | He found his vocation in writing and research. His books on the Black Campus |
| 0:39.8 | movement and then a sprawling history of racism in America won plaudits and prizes. He was invited |
| 0:47.3 | to set up the anti-racist research and policy center at the American University in Washington, D.C. |
| 0:53.4 | His central idea is deeply challenging. |
| 0:57.1 | There is no neutrality, he says, in the fight against racism. If you're not a proactive |
| 1:02.8 | anti-racist, you are, in effect, a racist, even if you insist you're not. Well, Ibrahim Kendi |
| 1:10.1 | joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. |
| 1:12.8 | Thank you for having me on the show. I think we have to start with Donald Trump, |
| 1:17.8 | and the role he is playing today in the United States in seemingly inflaming race tensions |
| 1:25.7 | across the country with his tweets aimed at immigrants, aimed at some of his |
| 1:30.7 | political critics, women of color. Should we see him as something very different, an outlier, |
| 1:37.1 | an aberration? Or do you think that actually Donald Trump is part of something systemic? |
| 1:43.6 | Well, I think he's something systemic. |
| 1:46.0 | I think that Donald Trump, when you look at his rhetoric, when you look at his campaign, |
| 1:51.0 | you're looking at someone who's saying that we should be fearing Muslims because they're terrorizing us. |
| 1:58.0 | You're talking about, you know, a candidate, a president who's saying that black communities are infested with danger and they're terrorizing us. You're talking about, you know, a candidate, a president who's saying that |
| 2:01.6 | that black communities are infested with danger and they're so dangerous and people are living |
... |
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