To friday, and the text is attached with this picture of him with pen and paper at his desk. Lets discuss and paper at his desk. Lets discuss a little bit more now and talk about Foreign Policy, the potential legacy of president obama. Good to see you, thanks for being with us, you sat through the whole of that commie did talk about russia, israel, the middle east, but i think, overriding his references to Foreign Policy was the idea that america has an overarching role to play in the world, and it needs to use its influence, its power, its prestige for good. And i think, in a way, that was a response to some of the comments that trump made over the weekend, criticising the european union, criticising the leadership of angela merkel, arguing that the eu was a fundamental competitor to the us and he was ambivalent about its fate. I think trump is a break not only from the democratic presidency of barack obama, but the bipartisan tradition in terms of seeing the United States as a pause of stability in the global order. Now, trump may end up reinforcing that anyway, he may be constrained by congress and bureaucracy, he may reverse some of his statements. Certainly, he has made different state m e nts certainly, he has made different statements about various issues before, so i dont think he sees himself as having a particular Foreign Policy philosophy, he is willing to be transactional and transform his view from time to time, he comes in with the view that he will be refocusing american ideas ona he will be refocusing american ideas on a more narrow idea of what is in the american interest. And that might not include nato, although president obama did not mention those four letters today but that is clearly in the back of his mind, that perhaps nato is at risk . He didnt mention nato, and i think you will see an interesting dynamic in the first few months of the trump administration, because his secretary of state designate, rex tillerson, his secretary of defence designate, they have both spoken about the ongoing need for the us to participate in nato Honour Treaties with long standing allies, so the extent to which he overrides them the extent to which he comes to their Point Of View will, i think, ina lot their Point Of View will, i think, in a lot of ways be the story of the first few months of Foreign Policy in the administration. How would you sum up the legacy of barack obama in Foreign Policy . I think the major achievements of obama on Foreign Policy are primarily the opening of cuba and the iran nuclear deal. Less ofa cuba and the iran nuclear deal. Less of a headline but more responsible management of american obligations abroad, of rebuilding the public views of the United States, which have slipped towards the end of the bush administration, and most parts of the world recovered, over the course of that administration, generally trying, and obviously there are caveats, exceptions, there have been failures and mistakes, but on the old, trying to be a responsible steward of american Foreign Policy and americas role in the world. Jacob, many thanks. Stay with us and bbc news, much more coming up at the top of the hour, but now it is time for hardtalk. Welcome to hardtalk, im stephen sackur. The more things change, the more things stay the same. An adage that seems tailor made for Race Relations in america. After eight years of a black president , amid a swirl of demographic and social change, black Americans Still feel the bite of discrimination and prejudice. How best to respond . My guest today is paul beatty, whose prize winning Novel Sellout is a devised satire to unpick the Black American experience. It is funny and provocative but is it also fundamentally bleak . Paul beatty, welcome to hardtalk. Let me start with a broad question. It seems to be optimism has always been seen as the default mood setting of american history. Are you an optimist . Iam not i am not a pessimist either. Reading the book, the sellout which has caused a storm and won the booker prize, some would read it and think, gosh, this man has a very bleak world view. I dont think it is that bleak, really, in a weird way. I think hopefully within the energy, there is a kind of something that belies the bleakness in a way. The energy contained vicious humour, and it is very funny, but fundamentally, you have a book that is pretty much about Race Relations and the experience of being black in america today, and it is not that different from the way it has ever been, including the era of outright slavery and segregation and deep prejudice. I cant say that i am 5a, i am not 254. So i cannot speak for how it is different. Im sure it is. My life is different within 5a years. Better different . Would you use the word progress . Barack obama, when he talks as the head of the nation about race issues, he says, change has come and things are different and we are making progress. Good for him, he is the president , and he should say that. He wouldnt say that if it wasnt true. President s do that all the time. We went through huge wars over stuff that wasnt true. Explain why you would not say that. I only speak for myself, not for everybody else. I just speak for myself, or i try to. So it is a word i dont use very often. Just from my perspective, i am not trying to send this message from the body politic black, it is just my perspective, those are my words. It is obamasjob in a weird way, and someone said earlier. The book is kind of about what is progress, and what it feels like and how you measure it. You were talking about american optimism. I think there is some truth to that. It is kind of an optimism that is sort of spreading to world politics. Everyone is doing things the way americans do. You have to be optimistic, i dont know if that is new. There has been all of these Police Shootings in the news in the states. This is, for me, old hat. I cant remember a time when there werent Police Shootings. You are someone who grew up in southern california, and i guess a defining moment for you was probably the rodney king shooting and the riots in la. I dont know if it was a defining moment, these things happen, and it was one of those things where it was. That was when the match finely ignites, it was that last straw. It was on tape, and there was this thing. Let me say what i was going to say. Obama was in the new Smithsonian Museum of African American history, standing in this room. He is flanked in the background by all this iconic stuff of the Civil Rights Movement, photos. There is a black woman asking him, she has a weird passion in her voice, wanted him to respond to these shootings. She asked him about a specific shooting, where a guy has his hands up, and it is all on tape, and the cop just shoots the guy in the back. I think it is that equivocation that doesnt read as optimism. It also reads. There is a sense of people wanting to hear an opinion, a passion, something beyond diplomacy in these things. They want to know what you really think, and it is hard to read, and it is one of those things where i remember when i saw it, i was not angry with him or anything but i was just like, that is the true power of the position. He is the commander in chief, not the police chief. It gets to really deep stuff. On hardtalk a while ago, we interviewed professor cornell west, one of the great intellectual thinkers of black america today. Hopefully, he is just a great thinker. Exactly. When he thinks about race and obama, i am not sure he has ever used the specific word sell out that you titled your book with, he basically says barack obama has sold out Black Americans. I have a hard time. It is weird, it is not an impulse behind that book but i wish. I dont think there was an author to this book, it was a funny book, like a Phone Directory of uncle toms sell outs and race traders. I cant think of the title. You go through that book and it is every Black American of note has an entry in there. It is this interesting thing. Some people will call cornel west a sell out for their own reasons. It is not like i am a huge fan of obama, i think he has his faults. There is that thing of. It is a hard thing to say, because somebody is of a certain race or gender or something that they owe that demographic something specifically it doesnt work like that. It is that notion of people should know better. That often works in the adverse. Ruthless or insensitive. I am not calling obama ruthless. I think if i was suffering drones, i would think he was ruthless but i am not saying i think he is an insensitive person. You picked me up when i described cornel west as a leading black thinker and you said, look, he is a thinker, which was a good point. I think a lot of your writing is about identity and when it comes to being a Black American, the degree to which your blackness defines your identity. What is the answer for you . I dont have an answer. The identity is shifting, it changes. I have a slight background and one of the identity things that was always interesting was there was this kind of self actualisation, when you reach this nirvana of consciousness, and some of the book is based on a guy, a psychologist called William Cross who came up with a scale of. I think it was from negro to black consciousness. There was this ideal kind of black identity. It was fascinating and done with such care. The central character in your book seems to reflect a bit of that at the beginning. The central character goes on to do absurd things he is a black man, and he gets his own slave and launches an initiative to segregate the local school in southern california. In many ways, a very likeable character. In his own relationship with his father, he was used as a sort of social experiment. His father was trying to condition him to become the right thinking black person. Did you have that in your life . My mother is beautiful, a super genius, i ask her everything, and she knows the answer. Did she discuss with you how to live as a black person . My mom never talked about race. She didnt. Me and my sisters are all left handed. No one in my family is left handed other than us. We asked our mother about it, and she said i tied your right hand behind your back and so whatever left handed is supposed to give you. It was that weird kind of experiment, and she also raised us japanese for a long period of time. You dont want to get into this, believe me she was trying to broaden our scope. We had to bow in the house. My mom loves asia. It is interesting. I might be misinterpreting this, but the message of the book seems to be, you lacerate many of the tropes and stereotypes of black culture and black thinking and in a really funny and vicious way. In a way that frankly only probably a black person could. Nah, i dont think so, i dont think that is true. Hopefully it is the only way that i can. Lets talk about language, you spray cuss words through the book because it is street talk. That is not street talk, i cant let you get away with that i dont know if you read it or not, but it is not street talk, for me, the language is the whole thing for me. The book is about everything, and we are talking about blackness and i am always thinking about what that is for myself and what that means, from your perception. For me, my blackness is all cultural appropriation, from where i grew up, from my Latino American friends, my Filipino American friends. The degrees to whatever blackness is, it is all me, ijust happen to be black, thank goodness, and i am not ashamed or embarrassed. It is notjust about the skin or things that are going to be on the black shelf in the library, it is everything. For me, it is everything and so the language is how i try to render that, and so for me, the language is, what you quote as street talk, is the way i might talk to my friends, which is not necessarily street talk, but it is how we talk to each other because we have known each other our whole lives. I have an academic background, so it is some of that. I am picking one specific, because it is so emotive to so many different audiences in the United States and around the world, and that is the n word. For me, it is a difficult proposition, because we do not use it on the bbc for a start. But everyone watching this will know what word i am talking about. The point is, when i said there are certain ways in which you write in which ways a white person couldnt write is that word an example . This is hardtalk, but you cant talk so hard, i guess it is about offence as much as anything else, some people get offended. Absolutely, there is no reason that they shouldnt. The word comes up in that book, because mark twain uses it 200 something times in. That word has been used forever. Mark twain was writing in a different period. If white people use it today, they get hammered. Why would they want to use it . It is a word. But it is redolent of slavery, disrespect, total discrimination and prejudice. Absolutely, thank you for that. Of course. What are you asking me . Just this point, for example, i read in the new york times, the praise for the book was consistent, and the critics loved it. I read about a reading you did in new york city, where the writer who was present said it was interesting because the audience was predominantly white, and the author said it seemed to them that some of the audience didnt know whether to laugh or not. They were a little unsure of this territory. I dont think that necessarily has to do with race, it is what room you are in. I have read for black audiences, some laugh and some dont. It is notjust about race. I have won the man booker, a huge honour. The First American to win it. Im trying to pay my. Something. I did a thing at the man group in the states, and a woman who was interviewing me was like, as a white person i wasnt sure how to come to the book. A colleague told me, well, why dont you start with maybe the book is funny, and that opened up some stuff. And i said, well, the person who told you that is also white. So everybodys bringing their own things and insecurities to everything we read. Weve become a very uptight culture. Some of us have, some of us havent. I think i agree with you on some level. I think we have a hard time talking about grey areas. You know, were really good with pontification, prognostication, but its that grey stuff that for me is the most interesting stuff, the stuff where im lost and dont necessarily know what i think about something. Its a book, its not a memoir, its fiction and some of the stuff i believe some of the time and some of the stuff i dont believe, im just trying to tell a story. In one way, just in terms of plot, its a story that doesnt have the ending you might wish to have. Theres this wonderful premise that the main character in the book is actually being taken to the Supreme Court for violating the constitution. You want to know at the end whether hes going to be found guilty or not, there is no resolution. Is that because you dont believe in resolution in your books . Its a huge, psychological. I used to be a. Ill get my doctorate in psychology at some point, so theres a huge undertone in the book. So the book ends with a discussion of what closure is. Ive been talking for a while about the book in person, do you ever see it Getting Better . I dont know what that is, i dont know what people want from closure, because people want different things, and i dont know if i believe in the construct. We were talking about president obama earlier, and when he won the first go round, i had a friend of mine who ive known for a long time and he had an American Flag in his car, and i was, like, dude, whats up with the flag . Im not knowing you to be a flag waver. He was, like, yeah, i kinda feel like americas paid its debt. And i was, like, its debt to who . And he said, to us, to Black Americans. I was like, man, thats a huge debt its more than just us. Im not trying to put everything on equalfooting, but theres native americans, theres the environment, theres a huge thing. But its interesting when someone feels like that debt has been paid so for me the scope is bigger. I want to come back to that big canvas. Its notjust about race, theres so much going on in todays america, and i want to know what youre thinking about and writing next but before that, theres one other thing about your writing that fascinates me. People have called you a satirist, i think you prefer the word absurdist. Yeah, absurdist is better. Whatever the right word is, you find ways to make really difficult stuff funny. Is there anything that for you is off limits, in terms of getting entertainment, a laugh, comedic value . I dont think about it being off limits. I think, whats this narrative im trying to tell . Language is so important, and i think there are things that can be read on the surface as, like, ive violated some sacred trust, i dont think that. I dont think anythings off limits. Everybody has the right to use whatever language they want to use. Its always been the case. If somebody feels like they dont have that, thats on them, im not trying to say its equal and a level playing field, im not saying that either. So, yeah, why do it if somethings off limits . Thats for me. For you, the Civil Rights Movement isnt off limits, some of the great heroes of black freedom movements. Where would you end . Could you imagine writing a funny novel about, i dont know, a genocide . My first book is about a genocide so, yeah, of course i can so, yeah, my first book is about that. So, yeah, i dont think about that stuff very much. Its not like im that sensitive that other people might think about that, but as much as i can, i try to be considerate about what im talking about and how im saying it, the language is so important to me. These things, im not mocking. Im sort of mocking them, but these are things i care very deeply about and are things that i respect. You can do both . Absolutely. Both mock and show respect . I think in the same sentence, in the same joke, i think that can be done. And i start by ridiculing myself, whether its apparent or not, thats the person im picking on because im really trying to test myself and where are my boundaries and stuff like that. Thats where i start with, myself. Bringing it back to the United States today, obamas leaving office, the next president is going to be donald] trump. Yeah. You didnt know that when you wrote the book. Its a fascinating take on modern america but americas sort of had another shift and another lurch since you wrote it. Yeah. How are you feeling about the United States of today . I think i feel the way. Some people are pleased as punch, im not one of those people. I feel in a weird way similar to how i always feel, which is very cautious and very pessimistic. It was like that when obama won. I wonder whether you. I take your point, your writing isnt all about race, your perception of the world isnt all about race, but nonetheless in the switch from obama to trump, there are some people in the Civil Rights Movement and politics saying this is a disaster for minorities. And it is or it might be. I dont know what will happen. This is a guy who ran a whole identity based campaign. Theres a thing for me, theres kind of a white self hatred in a weird way. And trump kind of fed into that. Yeah, its really scary. It always feels like its 1913 to me. I know a lot of people are trying to compare it to feeling like the late 1920s and 30s with all the nationalism, but im going earlier somehow, that weird. Archduke ferdinand match hasnt been struck thats going to send the world into a weird kind of chaos. I dont know what trump means. This guy was chosen for a reason, people feel a certain way. You know, theres an image that they want to project, theres something in how they see themselves and how the country sees them, they want him to be that figure and that face of something that they feel that theyre losing. Yeah, its really scary. I mean, a guy. Yeah, preaching this retroactive, out and out antipathy for what he sees. Its very scary. Scary, does it make you feel alienated from your own country . I cant say. Im not a person whos ever felt like this is my place, i live there, its my home, but im not a person, like. I kind of know that its not this place that was designed for me. You know . But its my home, so i have to make it work. Its job supposedly is to make it also work for me, so these things are happening in concert. Different sort of voices from the Black American community. Weve had al sharpton on not so long ago and representatives from black lives matter, there are different approaches to protest. Absolutely. Whats your take on how best to achieve change in the United States . I dont have a take on it, its something i always am imagining in these books but for me my take is just to write, thats what i do, thats what gives me pleasure. I dont write to provide answers. I get nervous when people tell me how to think, its one of the things about this election thats made me nervous. People are so comfortable being told how to think, because in a weird way someones telling you not to think. These things make me nervous, im always nervous. Ive learned that i write from a point of being uncomfortable, from being apprehensive, but sometimes when i write there is a sense that im unfettered and much more bold on the page than i am in real life. Thats interesting you say that because on the page youre fizzing with energy and you go to places a lot of people wouldnt go, so where are you going next . Im a kind of boring, inert person here. Im intrigued to know where youre going to take the spirit thats in this book. I just write. I have stories that come to me over over time, i have a couple of ideas, i dont know exactly what they are yet. Are they going to be about contemporary america . One of them actually is, and the other one might not be. My timelines are fuzzy. You opened up with this thing of the more things change, the more things feel the same. One of the nice things is, you know, my first novels 20 years old, and some guy recently wrote a review of that first novel about how still applicable it is. I think good art does that, hopefully. A final thing, and i can relate to this, you once said that writing is hard, in a way you hate writing, but you cant stop doing it. I do. Theres nothing that gives me the kind of satisfaction of writing. So i dont want to throw it away just yet. So youre going to keep doing it . I hope so. I hope so too. Thank you, man. Paul beatty, thanks so much for being on hardtalk. Thanks, stephen, man. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Youre welcome. Really enjoyed it. Thanks, man. Hello, im ros atkins. This is outside source. Well begin in washington where barack obama well begin in washington where ba rack obama has just well begin in washington where barack obama has just finished his final Press Conference as president. Inevitably, he was asked about his successor. I dont expect there is going to be you know, enormous overla p. Going to be you know, enormous overlap. The British Foreign secretary Boris Johnson overlap. The British Foreign secretary borisjohnson warns eu leaders not to give the uk Punishment Beatings over brexit like a world war ii movie. Weve had a response from the top of the eu, theresa mays announcement that the uk will leave the single market. Thousands of tourists are leaving the gambia because of an ever worsening political crisis. In theory the new president will be inaugurated tomorrow. Its not
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