Welcome to Life Kit, I'm Eric Degins.

When I began work on this episode, I couldn't help remembering this picture of a billboard

I use and talks I give about the nature of racism.

This billboard was erected in the small town of Harris and Arkansas back in 2014 to promote

a white supremacist radio station called White Pride Radio.

The message below the picture of a cute looking white girl with a cute looking dog read,

it's not racist to love your people.

It might take away.

Society is so effectively demonized the word that even white supremacists don't want to

be called racist.

Which might explain why for people dedicated to fighting racism, simply saying you're not

racist, it doesn't feel like quite enough.

To effectively defeat systemic racism, that is, racism embedded as normal practice in a

society, you've got to be continually working to undo racism in your mind, your

personal environment, and the wider world.

In other words, you've got to be an anti-racist.

You may know me as MPR's TV critic, but I've also spent years exploring how systemic racism

affects media and society.

I've written a book about it called Race Bader and built a TEDx talk around how to talk

about race across racial lines.

As a black man who speaks often on these subjects, I find race and racism is something people

think they know, but often don't.

...