I don't want to make light at all of the depth, the intensity of racism in American life,

and we are seeing it.

But we also ought not underestimate countercurrents.

We have to take into account the abolitionist crusade.

We have to take into account the second reconstruction. We have to

ask ourselves, well, how have things changed in America? And, well, have things changed in America?

Yes, things have changed in America. I mean, in my life every day, I see change in America.

And now the Good Fight with Yasha Monk.

One of the things that I found really irritating in the debate about critical race theory a few years ago

was the claim made by many defenders of these ideas that this ideology really was not particularly controversial,

that all it entails was, as the name might suggest, thinking critically about the role that race plays in

American history and society. And the reasons why I found that frustrating is that it both seems to

me that CRT is actually quite radical and quite interesting, legal theory, and that even though I have some serious concerns about

that tradition, I do, of course, think, but we should think critically about the role that

plays in American history and society and the law. Well, my guest today is somebody who is the

living proof of that point. Randall Kennedy is one of the most

prominent law professors in the country. He serves as a Michael R. Klein professor of law at Harvard

University, and he is somebody who in many books over the course of decades has Treadvet

line, has interrogated interestingly and critically the role that race plays in American society

while being a prominent critic of critical race theory. He's somebody who understands the deeply skeptical view that many Americans,

like his own father, who grew up in the segregated South, have about the ability of America

to make progress on race. And yet he himself insists that we have, for all of our imperfections, made very significant

...