Welcome to Karen Hunter is awesome.

And in this space, we have conversations that very few people have.

I love nuance, but more than nuance.

I really like to think deeply about the conditions that we find ourselves in every day.

And this is what this space is all about. So come on in. Leave your judgment and your closed

mindedness at the door. Open your heart. Open your mind and come on in and challenge yourself

to think more broadly. Hope you enjoy. He is an author of many books. He's a writer. He has been

exploring this thing called True for quite some time his whole career. Let me welcome to the show.

His latest book is called Born in Blackness. Let me welcome the great Howard French. Hi.

Great to be with you, Karen. Good to see you. I've been impressed with your work for quite some time.

And this book in particular centers blackness in a way that I think is super important.

It is born in blackness, Africa, Africans, and the making of the modern world, 1471 to the Second World War.

What inspired you to do this book? A bunch of things

came together to push me in this direction. And first of all, thank you for having me.

Thank you for the interest in the book. Thank you for your energy. But the sort of most

important ones I would cite are ancestry. So I'm African-American

on both sides of my family. I have a complex family history. On my mother's side, it comes down

via a story very familiar or similar to the story of Thomas Jefferson and his fathering of

children by a woman he owned, a peer of Thomas Jefferson and his fathering of children by a woman he owned,

a peer of Thomas Jefferson's, a political ally of Thomas Jefferson named James Barber,

is an ancestor of mine who had children by a woman who he owned, who is my grandmother's grandmother.

And this story comes down to me through my family

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