the us is post slavery, post segregation, but definitely not post racism. my guest is ibram x kendi, an influential writer and academic who argues the only way to not be racist is to be actively anti racist a message he says children must hear. is his approach bound to intensify america s internal conflict? ibram x kendi, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me on. it s a pleasure to have you here. your focus right now seems to be on children, and your contention that children, very young children even, should be told about racism, even if it s not a daily reality that they are actually living with. why? because unfortunately, studies are showing that it is a daily reality that they re living with. one study found that kids as early as three years old have what one scholar called an adult like concept of race . they re already attaching skin colour to behaviours like who s smart, who s clean, and even who s honest. and so, if we re not teaching children to not connect
an influential writer and academic who argues the only way to not be racist is to be actively anti racist a message he says children must hear. is his approach bound to intensify america s internal conflict? ibram x kendi, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me on. it s a pleasure to have you here. your focus right now seems to be on children, and your contention that children, very young children even, should be told about racism, even if it s not a daily reality that they are actually living with. why? because unfortunately, studies are showing that it is a daily reality that they re living with. one study found that kids as early as three years old have what one scholar called an adult like concept of race . they re already attaching skin colour to behaviours like who s smart, who s clean, and even who s honest. and so, if we re not teaching children to not connect skin colour to behaviour, to recognise that, you know, someone s skin colour is not a reflection of
their intentions to run. those are the headlines. now on bbc news, it s hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i m stephen sackur. the fractures in american society are widening over guns, abortion, education, and more. but the deepest, most traumatic fracture is surely over race and it impacts all of the others. the us is post slavery, post segregation, but definitely not post racism. my guest is ibram x kendi, an influential writer and academic who argues the only way to not be racist is to be actively anti racist a message he says children must hear. is his approach bound to intensify america s internal conflict? ibram x kendi, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me on. it s a pleasure to have you here. your focus right now seems to be on children, and your contention that children, very young children even, should be told about racism, even if it s not a daily reality that they are actually living with. why? because unfortunately, studies are showing that it is a daily
i will end up rambling on, the let me give you the headline view. the first thing is to have a chief of staff in number ten who does the organisational, structural role. if you think about how precious every minute is of the prime minister s time, and we accept it is finite, how you organise that time authoritatively. ten times as many people want to see the prime minister or one that part of his or her time than is physically possible, and that is really important role. want that part of his or her under borisjohnson, i thought he was in there as a sort of eminence agrees, a wise pair of hands. in terms of dominic cummings, thatis hands. in terms of dominic cummings, that is not why he was there, whatever the title. eminence grise. he was there to drive forward delivery, and was certainly well disposed and well suited to this, trying amidst the daily hustle and bustle of events brought up by the media, whatever was the issue of the day, take a hard step back and try to
this properly, and in part, because of people this properly, and in part, because of people actually reading it, recording all the opinions, which you could recording all the opinions, which you could do under certain other circumstances, was not really a realistic circumstances, was not really a realistic or circumstances, was not really a realistic or sensible proposition. but we realistic or sensible proposition. but we did try, and this i think is really but we did try, and this i think is really critical, sir patrick and thou, really critical, sir patrick and thou, tried to reflect the range of views thou, tried to reflect the range of views when we were briefing ministers, to the best availability. we try ministers, to the best availability. we try to ministers, to the best availability. we try to capture the fact that there we try to capture the fact that there were outlier opinions, i don t mean there were outlier opinions, idon t mean that there