Ibram X. Kendi On Policy Over Platitudes: Building an Anti-Racist World

On one of our last seasons of this podcast, we focused entirely on the concept of equality. What it is, why we should strive for it, and how we could achieve it from an international perspective. But when it comes to domestic questions of equality or equity, they often focus on an important and specific topic, race. And one of the leading voices in that national conversation is Dr. Ibramex Kendi. I'm Ibramex Kendi. I am a professor at Boston University, also director, center for anti-racist research. And I'm glad to be talking to each of you. Kendi is most famous for his 2019 book "How to Be an Anti-Racist". Ibramex Kendi, who went from studying in Stonewall, Jackson High School in Northern Virginia to being one of America's preeminent scholars on race and anti-racism and the winner of a MacArthur genius grant. Kendi's 2019 book "How to Be an Anti-Racist" was a bestseller. The book argues that the opposite of racism isn't not racist, but anti-racist. Meaning, rather than just being neutrally against racism, you actively try to remove the inequality generated by racism in our society. And Kendi argues that the most important way to combat racist outcomes is through policy. Basically, any policy that leads to disproportionate outcomes for a particular racial group is a racist policy, while any policy that leads to more equal outcomes is an anti-racist one. And although we missed out on having Kendi on last season, we thought with last month's court decisions on affirmative action, a landmark decision from a bitterly divided Supreme Court rejecting the use of race as we know it in college admissions. This was the perfect time to talk with him about how his views intersect with human rights, international law, the concept of the university, and what his thoughts on the recent case are. I'm Claudia Flores, law professor at Yale Law School. I'm Tom Ginsburg, a professor of law at the University of Chicago. And this is entitled "A Podcast About Why Rights Matter and What's the Matter With Rights." I wanted to ask you a bit about your conception of equality that you're working with. You know, Tom and I work mostly in the international space. I was curious about whether or not you take any of your conceptions of what equality should look like from outside the U.S. Constitution or if you've looked at other norms in other countries. Well, actually, one probably most obvious example is in the United Kingdom, and to a larger extent, the UK Commonwealth, there is this delionation between what's called positive discrimination and negative discrimination. And in the U.S. context, discrimination is, quote, always negative. And, you know, I mentioned this because in how to be an anti-racist, I distinguished between racist and anti-racist discrimination based on the idea that anti-racist discrimination was similar to positive discrimination, which is to say policies that are effectively creating equity versus negative racist discrimination, which are sort of policies or forms of discrimination, I should say, that are sort of maintaining inequity. And obviously, that line in particular, and how to be an anti-racist, in the original edition, was probably one of the most controversial aspects of the book. It's a line that those who are seeking to conserve racism have typically sort of clipped to present me as someone who is a champion of discrimination and therefore the real racist and therefore anti-white. But outside of the U.S. context, it is read quite differently. And I just think it's important for us as U.S. scholars, obviously, to draw from thinkers around the world. I was listening recently to your interview with Ezra Klein and, you know, Ezra said that you've been called intensely consequentialist. And that's a really, I think there's been a lot of push back in the U.S. But in the international sphere, the idea of thinking about effect and impact and recognizing that there is societal inequality in every policy choice that we make, it's not a strange idea. I'm just curious about whether or not you see that as kind of like a American resistance or something else. I do. What's happened particularly since the 1960s, there has been an intense legal and conceptual focus on two ways of sort of how we determine whether, let's say, a policy is racist. The focus has been on whether the policy has racial language and whether the policymaker intends to, let's say, exclude or maintain inequity. And so those who have sought to conserve racism have been able to dupe Americans into believing that's how we should define whether a policy is racist or not. We should focus on whether it has racial language and whether it, quote, intends. And so what that allows a policymaker to do is to just deny their intent and then also to remove racial language. Indeed, many of the voter suppression policies during the Jim Crow era had no racial language in them. But we commonly recognize those policies as systematically disenfranchising black voters. So I do think Americans refuse to be consequent, like to refuse to recognize and focus on the outcome and impact the policies. That's by happen sense, like that was a design. That was an effort among those who were trying to deflect from their racist policies. So one of the, you know, if we're thinking about this notion of equality, which in the international sphere, we call substantive equality, right? And there's this obligation by the state and by society to take affirmative measures to address inequalities. And that includes impacts, it includes effects, it includes policies that were, you know, well-meaning or perhaps, you know, thought that they were neutral. But one of the tricky things in implementing that notion of equality is that you can put these policies in place. But if there isn't a real commitment, the implementation is a challenge. And I know you've said that you think that the policies need to come first and then hearts and minds will be changed later. I guess I want to hear you talk a little bit more about that because, you know, my background, for example, is an employment discrimination. And even though you might look at employment discrimination laws in the US and think, okay, there is some effort to create, you know, race and ethnic and immigration status equality and gender equality. The system and the framework is set up in such a way that really implementation is pretty, pretty pathetic, honestly. And I think that's because there isn't a real commitment to address these kinds of inequalities in the workplace. That kind of commitment would require additional resources and for plaintiffs not to be completely responsible for bringing up these kinds of issues. So I wanted to hear a little bit about what you think about that conundrum. In my work, I haven't written a lot about implementation. And I think that's largely because personally, I do not separate the actual policy from the implementation, which is to say, if a policymaker is serious about truly creating equity, they're going to be just as serious about how they write the law as they are about how they implemented. Obviously, there are policy makers who are who may be serious about how they write the law, but may be wistfully ignorant about the importance of implementation or their policy makers who are serious about or at least project a seriousness about writing the law when they know the really the game is in implementation. I do think implementation is critical and it's probably something I should personally write on more to really fleshed out. But I also would say in terms of the relationship between changing minds and policy change is that at least in the US context, it has been unbelievably difficult to get anti-racist policies passed because of the fear mongering about the effects of those policies that the opponents of those policies have been able to wage. And so what happens is when we pass the policies and it becomes much harder for the fear mongering to basically have a basis, right? It's hard to still claim that the Affordable Care Act is going to lead to these death panels after the act is passed and you don't see death panel. It's hard to make this case that if we desegregate the schools that all these black boys are going to engage in all these assaults of white girls, if after we desegregate the schools and obviously that's that's not existing. I think that's one of the reasons why people have been more likely to transform their perspectives about the policies is because those who are using propaganda to undermine them have a weaker basis to do so. So, Tom, I asked Kendi about what his perspectives were about the way that the global community thinks about racial inequality and what it actually means to have anti-racist policy. He brought up the theme of substantive equality that you and I have talked about a lot. So it's a much more robust conception of equality that you find in the treaty on racial discrimination and women's equality. And the idea there is that it's not just about treating the same people the same but actually taking affirmative steps to create actual conditions of equality in a society. And I actually look at what Kendi is saying and see a lot of parallels between the version of equality and anti-racism that he wants and what we already find in international treaties. So I'm curious if you see distinctions or if you're also seeing some parallels there. Yeah, I mean, I want to make a first threshold point which is that we have our particular approach to race, we have our particular racial structure, but there are as many different approaches societally as there are societies. You know, that just in my own part of the world, like the difference between how race is dealt with in Thailand versus neighboring Malaysia versus Myanmar, totally different. You know, let's first acknowledge the diversity of approaches, but what the international law allows states to do is to engage in what I guess we'd call positive discrimination to take remedial measures when there's a group that's been subordinated in order to bring them to an equal level. And that I think is consistent with what you're saying. It's like there's a substantive equality dimension which is not only legal but probably encouraged by the racial discrimination treaty. And I think Kendi conceded this when we were speaking to him and I think he has more generally, you know, racial inequality has a million manifestations and a million versions, right? But, you know, one thing that I was thinking we were talking to him and I guess what I see as his view that is very focused on the actual experience or the impact or the consequences of policy. We've talked before about the Gonzalez versus Castle Rock decision, which is the Supreme Court case in which the Supreme Court found that domestic violence victim who had called the police repeatedly in Colorado and had tried to get them to enforce her or protection because her children had been kidnapped by her husband or her husband or so she thought the police didn't respond. And so she brought a claim based on discrimination and essentially the Supreme Court found that there was no obligation of the state to enforce this order of protection. The case then went up to the Inter-American Commission and if you look at the opinion of the Inter-American Commission which was very much about gender discrimination, they looked at like all of these basically our culture in our society and the way that it discriminates against women. And it was a much more profound analysis of what would lead a police department to ignore a woman's call to enforce an order of protection when she was pretty confident that her husband had kidnapped her children. And I think that is kind of where I see Kendi trying to push us, which is like not just on its face is what's happening problematic from a discrimination perspective. But if you really look at the context and the history and who we are, is there something there that we need to be looking at more closely. And I think the difficulty, the complication, the concerns that you've expressed and I think the concerns that others have expressed is where are these lines and boundaries, right? You and I could probably pick some completely random topic and look at it from a race or a gendered perspective and like literally never stop talking. Because you can just keep digging and digging and digging and digging right and there's so many connections. And so I think that needs to be balanced against the practicality of institutional functioning. What are realistic questions and connections for policymakers to make and to inquire, right? What are realistic questions for university administrations to be asking that are responsible and thoughtful to the anti-racist agenda, but also possible and allowing other work to continue? I mean, that's kind of like where I see the hard part. You know, the term consequentialism came up. I think by that, when he's talking about his like outcomes, we just want to know, you know, our outcomes good for a subordinated community, do policies actually help to improve things. And here, I just have to say, as a scholar of law and society and, you know, an empiricist, it's really complicated. It's hard to evaluate policies. We are not sure which interventions work. Sometimes they're conditional in some cases and not others. It's a very crude instrument. And to me, then the implication is we ought to really study what works. And we have to be really open to unintended consequences. Policies that might look anti-racist and sound anti-racist could perversely end up, you know, reinforcing racism or, you know, policies that are designed to state it more generically to induce more equity or more economic equality. Might end up exacerbating it. And so I think that there's a big implication of what he's saying, but it involves a much more extensive program that should be incorporated into the policies that we're advocating for or into identifying the policies that we're advocating for. Yeah, no, I completely agree. But I think that's wise guidance in many different areas of law and social change, right? I mean, the similar arguments, you know, I've done work in other countries on gender mainstreaming in the Constitution. It's like similar arguments are used in that context. Like, how can we tell if this is actually mattering? How do we measure it? This is complicated. Like, all of these things, it's just difficult. I think it's just difficult and it's a constant challenge. And we make mistakes all the time. But I don't see that as unique to the anti-racist project. I see it as true about, yeah, any time we're using legal principles to push society forward in any way, which is a lot. That's the preamble to every Constitution. It's, you know, this idea that we as a society are expressing what our values are. And we do that through statutes. We do that through regulations. And sometimes it takes a while to get to good implementation. Sometimes it takes a while to get to perfect implementation. But it is an expression for future generations and the current citizens of a country about, you know, what matters and what's wrong and what's right. And I kind of think, you know, where candy is trying to sort of move people and, you know, you can decide whether or not it's successful is just the desire to do so. You know, I think we've talked about this conception of inclusive equality that you see in the convention to bring it back to the international stuff on the rights of the disabled and differently able to, we did an episode on that. And what has been sort of celebrated about that convention is this idea of equality that is even more welcoming than substantive equality, which is this inclusive equality idea, which is that we actually would want to create a world where someone with a disability or with a different ability can function and thrive. Right, that's something that we would take on as a group of people in a community. And I think the idea of doing that in the in the context of racial discrimination is exciting, you know, if it's done carefully and thoughtfully and understanding that things can go in a lot of different directions, but not the institutions will do it begrudgingly because they have to, but because they're actually trying to create an institution that that actually is, you know, is going to be racially just. Yeah, I think that's a good way of saying it, it's anti-racism, even though it's framed as an anti is actually a positive program of constructing policies and environments in which racism is absent. So I do think it takes work, I agree. It's very parallel with how I think about the free speech context, free speech is framed as an absence of constraint. But in a university setting, it actually requires cultivating actively an environment in which people feel free to express themselves. And so there's a lot of parallels there. I don't know if you had a chance to look at the recent opinion or if you have reactions to that opinion, but it'd be great to hear, you know, what your reactions were and whether there are any even opportunities in it, as well as obviously the challenges that come from the end of, you know, race consideration and admissions. Well, I mean, I think in my reading of the opinions, particularly the two Roberts opinions on affirmative action, what became clear, Roberts, like the opponents of affirmative action, have framed affirmative action as, quote, race-based. And they have called for obviously race neutral admissions factors, which is to say that they believe the other admissions factors are race neutral, which, which means, again, going back to, we just talked about, they're not looking at all about the effects of those other admissions factors. They're not looking about as to the effect that if you have an admissions factor like a legacy in a state like North Carolina, where black people were barred from going to that university for the first century of its existence, that that is going to give preferential treatment to white students, as it even does it at Harvard, or if you have an admissions factor that gives admissions boost to the children of employees or the children of donors and black brown and indigenous people are underrepresented on the faculties and staff, then that's going to hinder them, or if there's a massive racial wealth gap, which allows white people to give more money to their colleges, they're more likely to be donors, which is going to allow their kids to be more likely to be boosted. It just completely, his formulation completely rejects the inequitable impact of these other admissions factors, which again goes to show that this framing, you know, is fundamentally flawed, and that's why I've personally even pushed back not only against the term race neutral, but even the term race conscious, which, of course, many of the defenders of her in an action, you know, and other policies have used, because I push back against the framing of race neutral versus race conscious. And I've argued that a better framing is racist and anti-racist, when we're focused on the actual impact, are they inequitable or equitable of those policies? So, let me ask you about this term diversity, which, of course, has been, you know, what was it issue in the, in the North Carolina case and the Harvard case. And, you know, of course, the term in popular use comes from this decision, legal decision in 1976 by, you know, decision of a Southern judge, that we couldn't do remedial affirmative action, but we could take diversity into account. And so, how would you distinguish sort of the concept of anti-racism from the concept of diversity, quad diversity? So, the irony is that there are legal rationales that are anti-racist because they lead to more equity, in this case in college admissions, but the focus of that legal rationale is seeking to provide benefits to white people. And I'm mentioning that because the diversity rationale was largely irrational that basically stated it was beneficial for white students to have access to diverse classrooms. It was beneficial for corporations to have diverse teams because they're more profitable and efficient. It wasn't a rationale that stated that the other admissions factors benefit white and wealthy students, so why not have an admissions factor that benefits that sort of compensates or overcomes for that, or there's this legacy of racism in higher education, or there's this legacy of racism in K through 12. So, therefore, affirmative action is responsive to that. No, I think the diversity, and that was the irony, right, that the diversity rationale was primarily put forth to ultimately benefit white students. And that's one of the reasons why even you had racial justice activists who have long not only challenge affirmative action as this sort of band-aid policy, but even this legal rationale that allowed it to live for another two decades. I ask you to just, I guess, be very explicit about what you think should be the goal of affirmative measures in education when we're talking about race and ethnicity. Like, what should be the goal? Is diversity the right goal, or is there some other goal that you think is the better, more equally oriented goal? I would say the goal should be, at least as it relates to race, should be racial equity as opposed to diversity, because I think diversity can be framed in a number of different ways. I remember in my first professorship in upstate New York, in this overwhelmingly right institution, there were defenders of that space claiming that there's a tremendous amount of diversity here. There are people from Germany, there are people from the South, there are people from the East, so diversity, we would have to say racial diversity, but then when we say racial diversity, are we speaking about, like, you know, you have regional colleges, you have local colleges, you have national colleges, you have international. And so, which, you know, are we speaking about in terms of racial diversity, but I think equity, you know, allows us to be much more focused, and so that's why I would more so focus on an admissions set of criteria that creates more equity. And I think part of what happens when we're talking about equity is there's an accounting for existing inequity. So to give an example, like an equitable tax policy is not one that asked a billionaire to provide the same amount of money to the state, you know, as someone who's, who's low income. But I also in writing about anti-racism, I've also tried to emphasize that even though my critics claim that I think everything is about race, I actually don't think everything is about race when, when, you know, a, women are underrepresented in the administrative body of a university that doesn't have to do with race, that has to do with, you know, gender. So I think we have to develop an anti-racist politic that is also seeking to recognize how racism intersects, you know, with other forms of bigotry and other structures. I have just one last question about universities because sometimes when we talk in the university about becoming an anti-racist university, I guess my, my concern is does it mean that the entire research focus of the university becomes about subordination, or is it simply about the administrative structures in the university and ensuring equity in that. I, you know, I worry that we're going to, you know, in our efforts to decolonize physics, which is an idea, you know, that's out there, that we actually do throw out the, the baby with the bath water, but I don't know if you, how you think about that, what would an anti-racist university be focused on. So I mean if we think of a university as an institution that produces scholarship, we think of an institution that teaches students, we think of an institution that employs people, and we think of an institution that sort of relate to the community that surrounds it in a particular way. If we think about it, and I suspect there are other iterations of the university, but if we think of of those four, it is possible for those who are engaging in research, when specifically they're thinking about injustices and inequities to not problematize people of color. I think it's possible for researchers, when they're not focusing on inequity and justice, but they're seeking to understand a problem, and they're assembling, you know, a cohort of people to be studied to ensure that that cohort is actually representative of humanity. I think it is possible for researchers whether how they're thinking about humanity or how they're thinking about sort of structural problems to think about it from an anti-racist perspective, even if the research project is not necessarily focused on racism. I think as it relates to students, we certainly can be teaching students through different disciplines that the problem is policy and power and structures as opposed to people. I think it's possible that we can, as a university, create spaces that allow our students and faculty to address some of the racial inequities and injustices in the community that's surrounding it. I think it's possible for the university to not only employ a diverse and equitable group of people, but also to ensure everyone feels as if their experience, their culture is valued in that place and space. I think all of that is, you know, as possible, which to me would make a university one that's striving to be anti-racist. It's an interesting thing, too, because it ends up really impacting metrics, right? Like you were saying before, you know, that the goal of affirmative measures and education should be equity, which I take to mean fairness. But then there's still this question of how would we know when we got there? Like in the context of gender, you see this a lot where the absence of women is justified by their preferences, right? Well, women don't want to be here because they want to be at home or they don't want to prioritize their careers. You know, it's impossible to make that determination when culture and society are informing us about our preferences so much, right? But how do you, how do we know we've gotten there? So in the context of higher education, which Tom was asking you about, how would you know when there is equity in the context of racial discrimination? And would you accept an argument based on preferences? I could potentially entertain an argument based on preferences that is based on research and evidence. And that evidence and research can't just be, oh, let's do a study of women of their preferences, right? You have to also do a study of men, right, of their preferences. You have to basically create controlled conditions to actually see, right, whether in similar conditions, men and women have different preferences. And typically researchers aren't controlling for conditions, right? They're just blatantly asking people, like, what's your preference? That's pretty an easy one. I think the first one, I think for the most part, I would look for the data and what people are saying about their experience, right? And so if we're seeking to diversify the faculty, to me, we have to look no further than data, right? Is the faculty representative inequitable? And what are the faculty saying about how they're experiencing the campus? Like to me, those are the two things, like how people are living those new policies and the sort of empirical effects of them. One of the, I guess, dilemmas here is that, you know, I'm from California, which is like a very mystizo society. People, you know, mix quite a bit, but there's no majority, right? And it hasn't been for a couple of decades. And yet, you know, diversity-based policies are not popular. A firm, you know, race was removed from the state constitution. They just lost an effort to reinstate the idea that you could have preferences and college admissions. And so I think that, to me, has to do with the multiracial society in some sense, and maybe the fact that, you know, our concerns are, I don't know, to me, it seems like we ought to sound these things more injustice and historic reparation than some view about representation. That's my reaction to it, but I don't know, what do you think of that? To be honest, this is an extremely difficult one for me, because on the one hand, it is the case that certain racial groups have historically been underrepresented, you know, particularly at highly selective college universities. And those places and spaces are the sort of pathway towards graduate school, towards being, quote, represented in professional sort of jobs and on and on, right? And then could potentially close the racial wealth gap and on and on. On the other hand, you can have people of color who hold racist ideas, just as you can have white people who hold anti-racist ideas. So, and I think that to me has been the biggest problem, the assumption that representation in positions of power means it's going to lead to anti-racist policymaking. It's a learning that as they witness Clarence Thomas, I think we should seek representation as it relates to people, but I think we should seek people who are anti-racist as it relates to power. If you're getting a lot out of this podcast, there's another University of Chicago podcast network show you should check out. It's called Big Brains. Big Brains brings you the engaging stories behind pioneering research and pivotal breakthroughs reshaping our world. Change how you see the world and keep up with the latest academic thinking with Big Brains, part of the University of Chicago podcast network. So, let's talk a little bit about the affirmative action context. So, what was your sort of takeaway or your thoughts in having that discussion with him given the recent Supreme Court decision? So, first of all, I just want to say I don't think that this decision is going to lead to significant change actually. I know that's a contrary opinion, but you have this massive loophole in the Robert's opinion. That will allow students to identify their race and their essay. They will be encouraged to do so. I think the only difference is that we'll, the admissions offices and other bureaucracies that are engaged here are going to hide even more deeply what they're doing. And I don't think we'll be much different than the experience of California, which banned the use of race in the late 1990s and now has roughly proportionate racial distribution in the University of California as a whole to the population. You and I obviously are around law students a lot and even know some people that are applying to law school right now. And it does seem like law schools at least have really changed the structure of the application. My understanding is that some law schools have eliminated their diversity statements and replaced them with statements that invite applicants to talk about their particular perspectives, different elements of their identity, a focus on values. Obviously the application process for a lot of these programs is just a very subjective process intended to like elicit a sense of who the person is. So I think there still will be quite a bit of wiggle room. So I don't know. I don't know if we're going to be able to tell. I think we're going to have to wait a few years and see if it actually does make a difference or if institutions are able to kind of get the same general information they were looking for before. Yeah, to me, this is an improvement. It sounds like an improvement. You know, hey, we're looking at the whole person. That's what they all said they were doing and they weren't. But again, the processes are very invisible even to you and I. Yeah, we don't know. We have no idea what the criteria are. And you know, we'll see back to Kendi, you know, we'll see the outcomes. I predict the racial distribution is going to be roughly comparable to what it was before. And that either says, hey, you know, this system you were using was unnecessary or it was necessary. Now we're hiding our deeper compliance with it. As you know, I don't trust bureaucracies very much. And so, you know, the reason that the Harvard case, the reason the Harvard lost its case is they were discriminating against Asian Americans. They were sort of, you know, they had this soft rating about personality, which Asian systematically did not, you know, rise to the level of people of other races. So that's discrimination. That's a building buying into a stereotype, which is demeaning, you know, violates broader principles of dignity and equality. So they should have lost that case. Now the question is what they do about it, but we're trusting exactly the same office that implemented that strategy to do better. I do think we should do an episode on how one protects human rights while distrusting bureaucracy, because I think there's a lot to think about there. I may be internally inconsistent, because I also think redistribution, which I'm in favor of, you do need a strong state and you need a good bureaucracy. For democracy, you need bureaucracy. But I just in this particular very sensitive area, I'm a little more suspicious, and that's because, you know, I think there's some empirical evidence that bureaucracy actually causes harm. I think you can be an anarchist on Monday, and then on Tuesday, you can, you know, want the government. Welcome to the inside of my brain, not always. But I do want to say that this is always the thing which always, when we talk about Kendi and his publicly stated views, I mean, one of his proposals, which he didn't talk about with us, but it's a very interesting one, which is that you have an evaluation of policies as being anti-racist or racist. And that strikes me as, you know, a good evaluation to do. We need a lot of social science. We need a lot of understanding of the racial impact of different policies. Super important. What I wonder about is, does that translate into a decision-making structure or a veto over certain policies? And that always worries me about who's going to be in that office, particularly in a university setting where, you know, we have lots of different competing views, and we have to have very open and broad, you know, inquiry. That's the essence of what a university is. So I just worry that, you know, if we empowered some board to say, no, you can't do this research because we think that it's insufficiently anti-racist. That does trouble me a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I think the only thing I would say to that, and this is, you know, I think this is a broader question about how institutions work. I think those decisions are being made already. You know what I mean? Like, there is a group of people deciding that, you know, certain things should go forward and shouldn't go forward. And they're basing those decisions on a lot of factors that you and I may or may not understand. So the way that I see this really is just adding a consideration into a decision-making structure that already exists. Because I think, you know, where you seem to be most nervous is by the creation of additional bureaucracy that is going to then do something else that isn't already happening. I guess, you know, my response to that is, I think some of that is already happening. I just don't know that it's transparent. And yeah, maybe it's not with a separate decision-making structure. But there are all sorts of ways that, yeah, I think there are probably ways to not add bureaucracy, but actually just to alter the existing bureaucracy, which maybe something you're more comfortable with. We're really interested to hear about your new book that's out. One of the things that you've been able to do, maybe more than any other scholar I can think of today, is to communicate these really serious ideas and historical facts about the United States to a broad general public. So how do you think about that? Do you think about that as a, I assume it's a conscious strategy, but how do you think about the role of, like, scholarship versus public communication? Well, actually, I see the clarification of scholarship for everyday people for the general public as a scholarly activity. So I, it was seven years ago, I published a narrative history of anti-black racist ideas, which was titled "Stamp from the Beginning." And recently I partnered with Professor Joe Christian Gill to create a graphic history of, you know, the original "Stamp from the Beginning." It was, I believe, in 2016, the night that, that "Stamp from the Beginning" won the National Book Award, John Lewis also won a National Book Award for his graphic novel, March Part Three. And I think learning about and ultimately reading that graphic novel and then learning about the, just really the explosion of, of more and more graphic novels that are sort of sharing our nation's histories or even sharing about complex topics or even sharing about bigotry. So sort of seeing that audience, but then also recognizing that the medium of graphic novel actually lends itself to this intellectual history, because in many ways I was writing not just the history of racist ideas, but the history of this debate between racist and anti-racist ideas. And the graphic novel form with sort of multiple bubbles and multiple people speaking to each other in a way lended itself to really portraying that debate, not only certainly for adults, but even, you know, for young people who are also, of course, gravitating to graphic novels. It is not easy to think about the terminology that everyday people are using and to clarify the complexities of history or even, you know, current phenomena in ways that people can understand it's a sort of a process. Obviously, if I was using terms that scholars utilize and can understand, it's a little bit easier because you don't have to explain or clarify as much. So I see it as a scholarly process and I see it as an important process. And I think that there was a time in this country's history where scholars were encouraged to write for and speak for the general public. There's in many different ways, there's less institutional or even collective incentive to do that now, but I think it's important particularly for a topic like racism that's affecting us all. Entitled is a part of the University of Chicago podcast network and is produced with the support of Yale and University of Chicago Law Schools. Our show is produced by Matt Hodepp and Leah Sissreen. Thanks for listening.