this is bbc news, the headlines: six weeks after an airstrike in yemen that killed dozens of schoolchildren and adults — human rights campaigners have stepped up demands for a full explanation. the saudi—led coalition, which is backing yemen's government in its war with the rebel houthi movement, has promised to punish those responsible. president trump has sought to defend saudi arabia from what he said was a campaign to condemn it over the disappearance of a saudi journalist, jamal khashoggi, before all the facts were known. he said that it was a case of saudi leaders being found guilty until proven innocent. the eu is calling for concrete proposals from the uk to break the impasse in brexit negotiations. british prime minister theresa may will be at talks in brussels, trying to find a solution to the irish border issue. european council president, donald tusk has warned it's still a sticking point. now on bbc news — hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk,

i'm stephen sackur. the united states of america is a republic divided. the trump presidency has exposed fissures that run along lines of race, gender, education and culture. in next month's midterm elections, the fight for political power will be between the two traditional parties, republican and democrat, but perhaps a different sort of activism is needed to deliver real change. my guest is kimberle crenshaw, a professor of law, a social activist, and an influential advocate of the idea of intersectionality. is it the group, not the individual, that matters most in today's america? kimberle crenshaw in philadelphia,

welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me. let me ask you this. do you believe in the "united" in the united states of america? that is a country where all its citizens are equal under the law and share a sense of common purpose, shared values. do you believe in that? well, i believe — if you're asking me do i believe in the ideal of equality and shared values, equal citizenship, yes, of course. that is part of the current tradition of western liberalism. that's not really the issue we're facing now, however. it is a matter of whether the values that we profess actually have any reflection in what's happening

in the united states. one of the things that was so disturbing about the kavanaugh hearing is just watching the institution that is so important in maintaining those ideals basically being overwrought with politics, with impartiality being rejected as a measurement of qualification for a judge. so those of us who were really concerned about the distance between the ideals and the reality of american society are really distraught at this point over the direction that the country is going in. right, and it is interesting to me that you immediately point to the sort of toxic process around the appointment and the nomination process and appointment

ofjudge brett kavanaugh to become a justice of the supreme court, and we all, of course, around the world watched that play out in washington, dc. and there is therefore a temptation to see that the trump presidency, with the kavanaugh nomination and a whole host of other things too, has in a sense created divisions, has sort of opened up wounds that weren't there before. but that can't be true, can it? he has perhaps more brutally exposed them, but they are pretty pre—existing. well, of course. i mean the united states is a country that's built on some tremendous violations of some of the very values that it's representative of, so, you know, slavery, genocide, long—standing patterns of segregation. i mean this is very much part of american history. the question is, how the country takes up those issues in the current moment. does the fact that we are

a post—slave society, a post—genocidal society, a colonial society, does it have any bearing in the way that we think about equality, what needs to be done in order to create a more equitable society? or is that something that not only gets passed over to yesterday, but something that actually is part of the idea that president trump is trying to manage and create a lot of political energy around ? when he says "make america great again", many people hear the "again", as is this nostalgia for the past. for many people here in america, the past is the last place they want to go to. it is very disturbing to hear politics being framed

as we were better back when we segregated, we were better back when we did not allow a lot of immigrants into the country. so it's very much a part of notjust exacerbating those old wounds, but actually saying those are normatively acceptable in this particular period. well, what you raised there is a very interesting question about the direction of travel and ijust wonder, i'm very mindful of the fact that you, your younger self, was a lawyer who was offering legal counsel to anita hill in that very well—remembered hearing for clarence thomas to get through his nomination to get onto the supreme court. that was extraordinarily painful and contentious, and here were are, however many years, i guess 27 years later, watching another extraordinarily painful and contentious supreme court nomination process unfold. what is the direction of travel? with your experience then and your observation of what happened now, what do you feel?

well, it's interesting that you should ask that. i'm here in philadelphia because just last night i was on a panel with anita hill, and we were talking about precisely that. what do we make of, 27 years later, the fact that this issue is still being presented in many of the same ways, to the same end? and with all things, there is, one has to look at both what has gotten better and what has not. i think what has gotten better is the idea, or at least the recognition that these claims have to at least appear to be taken more seriously than they were taken 27 years ago.

so we were able to see that in the way, for example, that dr blasey ford was questioned not by an all—white male judiciary committee, but by rachel mitchell. i think there was a recognition that the optics were important, i think there was a recognition on the democratic side as well. one of the differences that i noticed between what happened with anita hill and dr blasey ford is that the democrats in this instance were very clear that they saw the allegations as credible, they saw her as credible, and they wanted to affirm her. that's not what happened with anita hill, even the democrats more or less, as i said, left her hanging out to dry. so there is a recognition that these are very important issues and they cannot be dismissed. on the other hand, the endgame is pretty much the same. and as i look at what we learned two weeks ago is that a woman still has to run the gauntlet of credibility, she still has to show an appropriate level of trauma, she has to be truthful, she can't be overly resentful or angry, and dr blasey ford was able to do that. so most of the commentators, even on fox tv — that leans

to supporting president trump — everybody was saying this is a very, very grave situation, it's very, very serious. so it was a testament to her credibility. you are a civil rights activist and you're also a feminist, as well, of course, as being a law professor. you've written a lot about intersectionality, the different forms of oppression, and how they work sometimes in concert, sometimes in different ways, and how people need to be aware and react to that. to put it bluntly, do you think america found it easier to relate to the issues raised by dr ford, who of course is a white woman, than they found it to relate to everything that anita hill said, where she was a black woman complaining about sexual harassment from a black man? i absolutely think that race has a lot to do with credibility.

i think that the fact that they were both white, both elite, that she was seen as more credible, more relatable. that's the part of the story that is a reflection about racial differences, both in the stereotypes that women carry with them and their ability to be believed. at the end of the day, however, we still live in a patriarchal society, and so even though she was found more credible, even though many people said that they could relate to her, at the end of the day, it's more or less that itjust didn't matter. so yes, she might be believed. i mean susan collins, who was — in cast, in many ways, the deciding vote, said that she believed her,

she believed that this trauma had happened. she didn't necessarily believe she was remembering correctly that it wasjudge kavanaugh who did it, and at the end of the day, whatever happened to her did not really matter injudging the qualifications ofjudge kavanaugh. so i think at the end of the day, what we see here is what i sometimes call discursive asymmetry. she had to do a lot to be credible and even when she did all that, the burden basically shifted to him, and there was virtually nothing he could do that would have destroyed his credibility. if that performance that we saw, including a loss of temper, threats to democrats, if all that wasn't enough to undermine his credibility, one wonders, short of coming in and throwing himself on the ground and saying "i did it,

i did it", whether anything would have allowed christine blasey ford to prevail. so it really is a recognition that there is a huge gap between what men can do and get away with, and what women can do to actually be taken seriously. yeah, i should just add, of course, that brett kavanaugh denies all of those allegations and that was seen throughout the hearings. but here's the basic question i have for you, because your analysis of the way society works and your work on this, what you call intersectionality, it's become extremely influential across america. but would it be fair to say that you see the key components in society, in america today, as being groups and group identities, rather than individuals? is that a fair reflection of how you see things? well, i see things in terms of structures that make your group identity subject to disempowerment or power,

so the entire conversation that we've been having over the last couple of weeks has been about men, it's been about women, it's been about republicans, it's been about democrats. everybody is engaging in this discourse... right, but i guess the point would be that men and women, within their genders, have a whole range of opinions on brett kavanaugh and a whole bunch of other stuff too. i suppose the charge... so are we talking about opinions or are we talking about experiences? so the question really comes down to, are there differences in the kind of experience that people have, and can those differences be mapped onto things like gender? can they be mapped onto things like race? i think one of the things that could be the silver lining, i don't know, from what happened in the hearings, it's fairly clear that men have a different range of expressive possibility without being penalised for it. if one could simply imagine

dr blasey ford coming in and spewing the venom and the rhetoric thatjudge kavanaugh did and still be seen as credible, if one can even imagine it, then we will be imagining a world in which patriarchy has significantly lost some of its constraint. but that's not the world we live in. dr christine blasey ford knew that, many of the women who have experienced sexual abuse know that, as well as many men know that. so this is not a matter of individual versus group, it's a matter of how our society shapes, how different groups of people are interpreted, who's seen as having the ability to get angry and still be taken seriously, and who's not given that same luxury. that's the politics of patriarchy playing out in american society today. and i get the sense, obviously notjust from this conversation but your writings, too, that you are angry.

you are angry about the way america works and your view of what is a patriarchal society, that oppresses groups including women and minorities, is something that makes you angry. but to change it, you have to reach out beyond your own groups, whether it be women or whether it be african americans. you know, to build a winning coalition, you've got to go national and you've obviously got to include men and you've got to include a range of ethnicities. so how do you go about building those coalitions? that cooperation? i guess i have to roll back for a moment and suggest that, as you mentioned, you are familiar with my writing, in my writing, the whole point of intersectionality is to talk about the kind of coalitions that are necessary in order to realise our stated values and objectives. there are many applications of intersectionality

across any number of differences, across any number of forms of discrimination. one of the points i made in the new york times article i wrote two weeks ago was to say that the failure of a coalition between anti—racists and feminists was one of the factors that led to the elevation of clarence thomas over and against the claims that were made by anita hill. that what i argued there was that there is a common history of anti—racism and feminism found in the fact that the very term sexual harassment and the very acknowledgement that sexual harassment is in fact discrimination was largely set forward by african american women plaintiffs who were experiencing discrimination when they were working. there is a long history of african american women bringing gender into anti—racism and bringing anti—racism into feminism. sure there is but some

african american activist women, feminists and civil rights campaigners, have looked at the history, have looked, as you say, at the failure at times of white feminists to make common cause with their black sisters and frankly, some of them have had enough. i'm quoting on here, tamela gordon who says, "i find myself at the end of my intersectional feminist road, it's time to hop back into survival mode, ditch this dumpster fire and live by a black feminist agenda". ...and? and the point is... i could quote plenty of people who actually say the opposite. i think the point is, and i find this very interesting, folks who are concerned about too much groupness respond to moments like these by showing there are a few individuals who think differently. of course we don't all think alike.

so having a quote from someone who is exasperated by the lack of allyship of white women is not surprising! i'm often frustrated by it as well. in fact, only 48% of white women actually believe dr blasey ford. there is a far greater racial gap in american society now than a gender gap. that doesn't mean that gender is insignificant, that doesn't mean that patriarchy isn't working... sure. ..and it doesn't mean we don't need intersectional politics to fight both of them at the same time. you described the problem. i get the intersectionality argument that you can bring different groups of oppressed people together to make common cause and that can make a very big difference, i get that. what i'm moving toward is how you reach out, if you can reach out at all, to those particular groups and particularly maybe white working class people, men and women interestingly, because let's not

forget, a majority, albeit a small one, a majority of white women voted for donald trump. is there any way that you can see that you can use your arguments and powers of persuasion to make inroads amongst those groups if we call them groups? many of us are. i think one of the challenges is to recognise when we're hearing the talking points from the other side, the idea that there haven't been efforts to reach out across groups. the idea that the civil rights legacy wasn't always a movement that was multiracial and in fact bipartisan. our challenge today is not only maintaining and building those ties but resisting the narratives that suggest that we are alljust separate groups

and we are not really engaging in efforts to reach across many of the differences. in fact, the last week opens up even more possibilities. everything we've been seeing suggests that many women, particularly those, that 53% that in fact voted for trump, may be rethinking that. but let's not see pie in the sky here. race has always been a determining factor in american politics so it's not surprising this is a challenge for us. the question now is, does that group sensibility over—determine everything else? including a president who many people call the predator in chief including someone who's on the supreme court who basically said what goes around, comes around. these are moments where

the divisions are making themselves so foundational that it might create more of a shift than we've seen in the past. have do you feel now there's a bit of time distance between his presidency and the present day, how do you feel about barack obama? with the midterms coming up, he's re—entered the political frame, making some more pointed political speeches in recent weeks. "this whole notion that has sprung up recently about democrats needing to choose between trying to appeal to the white working class or voters of colour and women and lgbt americans, that is all nonsense. i got votes from every demographic". do you see obama as somebody that democrats need to listen to and be mindful of because he had the right approach? or do you think, in retrospect, ba rack obama actually wasn't radical enough, he didn't do enough, to actually change the structures of american politics? i think it is tough for a president to actually change the structures

of american politics. i have my disagreements with barack obama on a range of issues, some of them having to do with the failure to actually even have a rhetoric that identifies some of the structures that continue to create inequalities. i took issue with him, for example, on my brother's keeper. it was a racialjustice programme but it excluded women and girls. but that was a minor difference within a broader reality that we are a country that shapes ourselves around certain values and i think he tried to perform that. and it is true, that he was able to win the support, the votes, of the white working class, he was able to win those districts in pennsylvania, in michigan, that were really important. it is true, it is possible to win

votes and create coalitions across race and class and he's a good reminder of the fact that this isn't an inevitable dimension of american politics. just a final thought on that, as we go into election season, the democrats are trying to create a winning progressive coalition. it is interesting, isn't it? ron brownstei n reflected on this with some figures from the pew foundation recently. he said that democratic voters are clearly divided. he said, "democrat must weigh the culturally—liberal instincts of their mostly secular wing of upscale whites with the often more traditional inclinations of their african american and latino voters." again, in this world of intersectionality and group—based politics, it is a very complex set of relationship and attitudes and values, isn't it? i'll make the complexity even greater.

the most mobilised piece of the democratic coalition is african american women. they're the ones that gave the victory to roy moore, the senator who the first democrat to be elected from alabama in a generation. there were black women all over the ballot so the real question and challenge is how can we not only use black women as the wheels on the bus, but how do we actually put them in the driver's seat? what are the agendas that actually speak to them? if we can figure that out, we'll probably be able to figure out how to speak across the working class because black women are disproportionately working class, and we'll probably be able to build those ties that at one point made the democratic coalition a winning political mobilised coalition. that's what we're looking for in this mid—term election. we'll see. we will indeed see. kimberle crenshaw, thank you very

much forjoining me on hardtalk. hello there. we saw a top temperature of 21 celsius across the south—east of england yesterday. today is looking a little bit cooler, and that's because we've lost that warm southerly wind off the near continent. we'll also have a few showers, as well. it's not going to be completely dry today. that's because we've got these weather fronts moving very slowly south—eastwards. now, this one is going to bring a band of cloud to portions of england and wales first thing this morning. some spots of rain, in fact, on its southern edge in towards the west country there, and it'll very slowly move south—eastwards as we reach the very

early hours of this morning. temperatures holding into double figures, though, where we have the cloud. but ahead of it, under clearer skies, it's going to be a pretty chilly start to the day. but we'll have plenty of sunshine across the north and the west. this band of cloud, this weather front, very slowly moving south—eastwards, bringing quite a grey day, i think, to much of east anglia and the south—east, although there could be some sunshine ahead of there towards kent. temperature—wise — 16, 17, maybe 18 celsius. cooler than yesterday, but temperatures across scotland and northern ireland will be pretty similar to how they were yesterday. now, on into thursday, and we start to see this ridge of high pressure toppling in off the atlantic. it's also going to bring some cooler air to most areas, particular central and northern parts, so could be quite a chilly start to thursday. temperatures down to freezing in some rural places. but not quite as cold further south — that's because we'll have a bit more cloud around. but thursday, apart from a bit of cloud across the south, any mist and fog patches will clear through the morning, and some cloud and some breeze

in the far north—west of scotland. it looks like a good—looking day, thanks to that area of high pressure, with some good spells of sunshine around. temperatures reaching 12—16 degrees, that is closer to the seasonal norm. as we head on in towards friday, looks like high pressure continues to dominate the scene for england and wales. this weather system will bring some wet and windy conditions to the northern half of the country. so friday — a stronger breeze, more cloud northern ireland and then into western scotland, with outbreaks of rain. showery bursts of rain pushing across scotland through the course of the day, but most of england and wales should have a fine one, with lighter winds, good sunny spells around, and maybe a degree or so warmer across the south than what we saw on thursday. a quick peek into the weekend. it does look like it's a north—south divide. high pressure holds onto the conditions across england and wales, whereas we'll have lower pressure further north. so for saturday, which will be pretty similar to sunday, it looks like it's going to be a fine and a dry day. england and wales, early mist and fog, clearing away,

lots of sunshine around. scotland, northern ireland and the far north of england will be breezier and cloudier, with outbreaks of rain. those temperatures range from 15 to 17 or 18 degrees across the south. this is the briefing — i'm sally bundock. our top story: a crunch summit on brexit. can theresa may win over eu leaders and get the negotiations back on track? america's top diplomat heads to turkey where saudi arabia is claimed to have killed a journalist at its consulate. and the new toast of the literary world. one author claims the biggest prize in publishing. netflix's subcriber success — the streaming service's billion—dollar bet on original content is paying off after nearly 7 million new users joined the site.