I'm Racist. You're Racist. The System Is Racist. Now What?

The Mother Jones Podcast

Mother Jones

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4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2019

⏱️ 23 minutes

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Summary

For most of his life, Ibram X. Kendi admits he was a racist. He’s a black man, raised predominantly in black neighborhoods, and received an undergraduate degree from Florida A&M University, a historically black college. His upbringing was solidly middle class and Christian. He was not particularly focused on showing the world that black people could be twice as good as their white counterparts. Even so, he calls himself a racist. In his new book, "How to Be An Antiracist," author and professor Kendi combines searing autobiography with pointed analysis to show just how deeply racism is woven into our national—and global—fabric. He argues that the opposite of a racist isn’t someone who’s not racist, but instead an antiracist—someone who acknowledges how race has been constructed, and works actively against it. This week’s episode of the Mother Jones podcast features Kendi’s thoughts on antiracism, his writing process, and why this conversation is especially important in Trump’s America. Later in the show, we talk to Elizabeth Warren supporters at a big New York City rally about how they would convince Trump fans to switch their votes and back the Senator from Massachusetts in 2020.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Mother Jones Podcast. I'm Jamila King in New York. On today's show, one man's life's work to redefine how we talk about racism in America.
0:19.7	Once we stop denying, then we can define terms.
0:23.2	So what is a racist, what is a racist idea,
0:25.4	what is a racist policy?
0:26.8	And some simple steps that everyone can take to do better.
0:31.4	Many Americans finally are recognizing just how pervasive and lethal
0:38.7	racism and even white supremacy is and really has always been. I consider bigotry one of the three lethal
0:46.3	weapons threatening human existence. Later in the show you'll be hearing from
0:50.8	Elizabeth Warren supporters and some Warren curious at a big New York
0:56.2	City rally about how they think the Massachusetts senator can beat Trump.
1:00.9	She's like an adult American Hermione. She's done the homework. That's all coming up. Stay tuned.
1:10.0	But first, you've heard this before.
1:15.0	You've heard this before.
1:19.0	It's basically become an American slogan at this point.
1:22.0	I am not a racist.
1:27.0	But Dr. Ibrahim X. Kendi is willing to admit that yes, for most of his life, he was a racist.
1:35.0	There were racist bones in his body, even though that body was black and grew up in Queens
1:41.0	and descended from enslaved Africans.
1:43.9	He was a racist because he had absorbed fine-tuned racist ideas that have been developed over
1:50.0	centuries by slave traders and abolitionists and yes even some of America's foremost
1:56.2	black intellectuals. Now for me this was probably the most compelling argument in the book I was riveted
2:08.0	my political education it taught me that black people didn't have enough power to be
	...

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