The never ending cycle of racism
Think from KERA
KERA
4.7 • 911 Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2024
⏱️ 46 minutes
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Summary
Waves of Black progress have historically been accompanied by waves of significant backlash. Anthony Walton is a poet, professor and the writer-in-residence at Bowdoin College, and he joins host Krys Boyd to discuss why gains in Black life have so often come with periods of reckoning, why racial trauma in this country so often repeats itself, and why the country wasn’t prepared for its first Black president. His book is “The End of Respectability: Notes of a Black American Reckoning With His Life and His Nation.”
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Say you want to ascend from the basement of a tall building to the top floor. |
| 0:14.0 | There is an elevator in the building, but the people who have the keys to it are reluctant to let you ride along. |
| 0:20.0 | They point you instead to a spiral |
| 0:22.0 | ramp. So you essentially have to travel many yards going around in a circle for every inch |
| 0:27.4 | you rise. It takes a long time and it often feels like you are making no progress at all. |
| 0:33.5 | Meanwhile, the people who got those elevator keys step off fresh and rested at the top and then wonder why you are so exhausted. |
| 0:41.3 | From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. |
| 0:45.7 | That metaphor kept coming to mind as I was reading Anthony Walton's collection of essays on the perpetual struggles of black Americans in a society that often forces them to go the long |
| 0:55.9 | way around for even the tiniest gains. Walton is a poet and professor and writer in residence at |
| 1:01.8 | Bowden College who has been publishing observations about race in America since the 1980s. Now in his |
| 1:08.1 | 60s, Walton has collected some of his most insightful essays in a book called |
| 1:12.7 | The End of Respectability, Notes of a Black American reckoning with his life and his nation. |
| 1:18.3 | Anthony, welcome to think. |
| 1:19.8 | Hi, Chris, and thanks so much for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation. |
| 1:24.9 | I am as well. You introduce this collection with a paradox. |
| 1:29.3 | You say America is one of the best places in the world for people of African descent, |
| 1:34.3 | and at the same time, one of the worst. |
| 1:37.3 | The worst part I get, and we'll talk about this in the conversation. |
| 1:41.3 | How though is America one of the best places for black people? |
| 1:53.3 | If you look at what a certain cohort of African Americans have been able to accomplish, there are black billionaires, there are black people that run multinational corporations, there |
| 1:59.6 | are black folks that are professors at the most prestigious Ivy League universities. |
| 2:06.0 | There are black people throughout our society, whether it's in law enforcement or the school |
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