Octavia Butler imagines a world without racism

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

During Black History month, Book of the Day is bringing you some interviews from the archives, including this one with author Octavia Butler. Butler wrote many sci-fi classics, like the Parable series and Kindred, so she's accustomed to imagining different worlds. NPR's Scott Simon asked her back in 2001 to imagine a world without racism. Butler believed that in racism's place we would have to have absolute empathy. But she told Simon that this would most certainly present its own challenges – and we would probably just find something else to fight about.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. All this week for Black History Month,
0:07.4	we've been bringing you old conversations from our archives. This time we've got Octavia Butler,
0:12.4	the author of multiple sci-fi classics. We've got Kindred, Fledg, Parable of the Sower,
0:17.6	and Parable of the Talons, and more. She's a master at speculative fiction
0:21.9	at imagining what a different world could look like. Which is why it makes sense that back in 2001,
0:28.4	NPR asked her to write an essay on a world without racism. So we're going to switch it up a bit today
0:34.3	and hear Butler talking to NPR Scott Simon about her essay. I should say it's
0:38.8	not a particularly happy or soothing essay. It goes, tolerance like any aspect of peace is forever,
0:46.0	a work in progress never completed. But as you hear when she reads the last line, it is kind of a
0:52.0	hopeful one. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:58.0	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
1:02.5	On our new show, Sources and Methods, NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of
1:07.0	real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:12.2	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:17.8	As it begins this weekend in Durban, South Africa, the UN Racism Conference got us thinking,
1:23.7	how would human beings know where they stood if racism just vanished?
1:28.0	In short, imagine a world without racism.
1:31.9	We took this notion to writer Octavia Butler.
1:34.9	She has spent her career speculating about the future of the human species
1:38.4	and our possible counterparts elsewhere in this universe.
1:41.8	She has won every major science fiction award, as well as
1:44.6	a MacArthur Fellowship, what they call the Genius Grant. We asked Octavia Butler to imagine
	...

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