I'm Jonathan Capehart and welcome to Capehart.

As the director of the Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Research and author of

the famed book How to Be an Anti-Racist, Dr. Ibrahim X. Kendi is used to being a target

of a program and book bans.

His newest book is certain to run afoul of the numerous state laws seeking to squelch

necessarily uncomfortable conversations involving race in classrooms.

He's a children's book called Magnolia Flower, the first of six books that will adapt the

writing of author Zora Neal Hurston, a star of the Harlem Renaissance and African American

folklore.

In this conversation first recorded on September 14th for Washington Post Live, Dr. Kendi

talks in depth about what motivated this project and why the latest push to ban books isn't

new.

As someone who has studied really the history of what we now call book banning, as someone

who has studied all sorts of efforts to indoctrinate children into thinking that a particular

race is superior or inferior and simultaneously calling those forms of indoctrination as

education.

I think what's happening now for me is both normal and tragic.

Magnolia Flower marks the first of six books you'll adapt from the writings of Zora Neal

Hurston in partnership with her descendants.

For our viewers who might be unfamiliar, who was Zora Neal Hurston and what drew you to

her work?

So Zora Neal Hurston was a legendary, really leading life of the Harlem Renaissance.

...