Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain on the 400-year story of Black people in America

Capehart

The Washington Post

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

Kendi and Blain edited “Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019,” which tells the story of Black people in America from the perspectives of 90 writers who reflect the community's diversity and lived experience.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Jonathan K. Parton. This is K-Pop. 400 years, 90 writers, two editors, one book, 400
0:10.5	souls. A community history of African America, 1619 to 2019, is a remarkable volume that
0:17.9	tells the story of black people in the United States from the perspectives of 90 writers
0:23.2	who reflect the community's diversity of perspective and lived experience. And by doing
0:28.8	so, 400 souls fills in more of and adds to the complexity of the American portrait. The two
0:36.4	editors I mentioned are professors Ibrahim X. Kendi and Kisha and Blaine. Professor Kendi is
0:42.4	the founding director of the Boston University Center for Anti-Rasis Research and author of How to
0:48.4	Be an Anti-Rasis. Professor Blaine teaches history at the University of Pittsburgh and is an
0:54.5	editor for the posts made by History Section. Hear more about their book and learn some of the
1:00.8	forgotten history in this conversation recorded on February 12th right now. Professor Blaine,
1:11.7	since you've got the top box, I'm going to start with you. This is a different kind of history
1:16.2	book, right? It's a history book where some of the 90 writers aren't even historians,
1:23.2	collectively. Who are the writers and why are their voices so important?
1:29.8	So we asked an array of writers to contribute to the volume. And as you point out, so many of them
1:36.8	are not professional historians. We asked journalists to contribute. We asked philosophers to
1:41.6	contribute. We asked creative writers to contribute as well as poets. And what we wanted to do was
1:49.2	really grapple with 400 years of history. And we really didn't want it to feel like a typical
1:56.2	history book. And of course, asking 90 historians would have, I think, taken away from the
2:04.2	sort of tone that we were trying to set, which was bringing together a diverse community, which meant
2:10.0	people coming to the history, writing about the history, from their own experiences, but also
2:16.4	from their unique trainings, whether in the field of journalism or in the field of law. And so
2:21.8	it was important for us to create something new, something special, something original,
	...

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