our top story: global warming is posing a greater threat to humanity than ever before, that's according to the un. their climate chief said that mankind was "in danger of disappearing" if temperatures continued to rise. patricia espinosa was speaking at the start of a climate conference in katowice in poland. delegates will try to agree rules for how countries will meet commitments on cutting emissions. donald trump and xijinping have agreed to put their trade war on hold. at the 620 summit, the two leaders said they'll postpone new us tariffs for 90 days. and this story is trending on bbc.com. a british couple have come forward to claim an engagement ring they dropped down a grate in times square after a marriage proposal. the new york police department appealed for help to locate them after retrieving the ring. that's all from me. bye— bye. now on bbc news, it's time for hardtalk. speak to welcome to hardtalk, i am

stephen sackur. what gives each of us a sense of who we are? at the most personal level, we all have our own family background. in the most general sense, we are, all of us, part of the human species. but it's the stuff in between that puts us in groups or tribes and often motivates behaviour. gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality — these are the persistent fault lines that seem to separate us from them. my guest today is kwame antony appiah, an academic and public intellectual, who says we need to rethink identity to escape the myths of the past. but how? kwame antony appiah, welcome to

hardtalk. good to be here. you have spent a great deal of your recent professional life thinking about identity and how each and every one of us labels ourselves. let's start with a simple question, how do you label yourself? it with a simple question, how do you labelyourself? it depends with a simple question, how do you label yourself? it depends a little bit and who i am talking to, taxi drivers, it usually i explain that i am half 9am and half british by origin and that i live in the united states. that gives me three countries to talk about in terms of sort of national origin. —— that i m ghanaian. to you, when you describe where you are from and the sort of

mixtures of your identity, those signifiers? are you thinking that you are sending signals to your interlocutor about who you are? yes, i think interlocutor about who you are? yes, ithinki interlocutor about who you are? yes, i think i am sending signals, weak signals from the faraway planet or something, because they do not tell you as much as i think many people assume they will. so i grew up in ghana, my father is ghanaian, but thatis ghana, my father is ghanaian, but that is not tell you very much about how interested i am in ghana, it does not tell you how much i know about ghana, and so on. i think, and many people it would be more informative to know what their nationality is. pretty quickly in a conversation, i think you move beyond the stereotypes into more detail and then it does not matter so detail and then it does not matter so much that it is not all that helpful. would be too simplistic to say that in all of your work on race, religion or creed, as you put it, and gender and all of the different ways that we can identify

ourselves and to identify ourselves and others, your conclusion is that frankly also complex and so unique that almost any label we apply is in some way or other misleading?” think that is right because if you ta ke think that is right because if you take the big labels, race, religion, nationality, class, in all of those, there is so much diversity within them. men are not all the same, men are very different from one another, women are very different from one another, people in britain are very different from one another, people in london are. it does not necessarily give you a huge and anything important about them, which does not mean they are moments where being a londoner is not hugely important people. there are elections, it is important to be a londoner wendy mayor is being elected. if there were to be a big terrorist attack in london, that would bring londoners together in

that sense it ok, we're all face in this together. but it would not tell you very much about food, language, politics, it would tell you about lots of things. let's unpick it in a sense sort of strand by strand let's start if i may with race, because you have already made clear you are the product of a mixed marriage, ghanaian dad, english mother, an aristocratic mother. yes. i have chosen the race because in a way, your writings on race had been some of your most controversial because going quite a long way back, pretty much 30 years, you did write this, you said the truth is that there are no races, you sort of indicated that the whole idea we have a brazen racial distinction is a sort of false construct, that is more than anything else a product of men in power in the 19th century sort of trying to divide up the world in a way that suited them.”

trying to divide up the world in a way that suited them. i think that's right. what people believe about the species and its subdivisions, i think that most of what people believe about how you can divide people up in terms of the they have and the parents and the skulls and the genetics, i think most of that is sort of mildly off. is no useful racial distinctions and differentiations can be made? not, no, i don't think so, not for biological reasons. you think we are all such a mishmash? we are a mishmash and human beings... so, let's say it this way. i think many people think this. they that as it we re people think this. they that as it were in 1192 when the christopher columbus set off, there were these four or five columbus set off, there were these four orfive major columbus set off, there were these four or five major populations, columbus set off, there were these four orfive major populations, the east asian, south asian, european, african and other indian populations, and that they had been

there for a very long time, not mixing with anybody. quote unquote, quite pure. and that they were subcutaneous and separated and bounded from one another, and then it with the aged expiration and suddenly all these things are mixed up. that is just not what happened. it has always been gene flow, people and the genes had been travelling all the time. we know this because we know that alexander the great took 30,000 people across a great swathe of asia. we know that genghis khan and great swathes of people across asia. it has happened many more times than we realise. and they understand that, but i guess in that sense, it is difficult for me to see where the world research, public intellectual that is you connects with the ordinary, lets a black person living in southern mississippi, is like experience tells them that there is such a thing as race and he is a victim of racist attitudes and a systemically

racist attitudes and a systemically racist society. —— let's say. what meaning there's your message that raises false construct that for him orfor her? raises false construct that for him or for her? well, i would not start with that person in that situation, that if they wanted to talk to me more, i would that if they wanted to talk to me more, iwould point that if they wanted to talk to me more, i would point out that the way they are treated there because of they are treated there because of the way they look does not predict what, how they would be treated in large other parts of the world. so that where you are in a particular place, race can have a very specific meaning, which is why i would now say they are not any races there are racial identities and those racial identities are shaped by the way people think, not everywhere, but in particular places. so in mississippi right now, the distinction between black and white people is extremely clear and it remains the case that there is significant differential treatment by the government, by other people and so on in that place, although there are going to be people even in mississippi who are hard to place. there are going

to be people who have said one african—american ancestor four generations ago, but the rest of european, you might be thought by some people to belong to the backside in mississippi, and by others to the white side. so the boundaries are not going to be clear evenin boundaries are not going to be clear even ina boundaries are not going to be clear even in a place that mississippi, but the consequences of being one side or the other, those are as clear as anything. and that is why you can't draw from the fact that there are not any races, you can't draw from that the conclusion that racial identities do not matter, they matter enormously but insisting that they are not real, i am pointing out that they are created by these forms of behaviour, i these police, many of which are false. but what is created by those... and you would apply the same approach to religion or creed, as you call it, visually to sort of gender and politics. yes, again... and the class politics. yes. ifi may politics. yes, again... and the class politics. yes. if i may say so, ido class politics. yes. if i may say so, i do not mount mean to sound rude, that you are saying that

people in power in the 19th century, which was very important sentry for all of us, or white men, basically constructed a whole series of different frameworks in which they could explain and perpetuate their own power. yes. i mean i do not think they were clear that that is what they were doing. if they had been clear about what they were doing, it would not have been so easy to do. it is much easier to do these things while not accepting that that is what you're doing, but ido that that is what you're doing, but i do think we are living with the legacy of these forms of classification and i do think that of them had the serious mistakes built into them which are worth disentangling. at the end of the disentangling, there will still be men and women and a few people in the world were hard to classify as either. they will still be people who in mississippi are black or practical purposes, they will still be people who are protestant and catholic in northern ireland, but i think we can, it is important in trying to respond to the problems associated with these identities and to the good things that are associated with identities, it is better to be clear about how they

are actually made. but do you find it disappointing that a couple of yea rs it disappointing that a couple of years ago, you delivered the rather influential lectures here in the uk all about in influential lectures here in the uk allabout ina influential lectures here in the uk all about in a sense the myths and false construct is that are part of much of what we think about race and religion. you have since written this book, the lies that bind, and you're doing your best to explain to all of us your position as a public intellectual that a lot of what we think about identities is based upon false premises and yet, here we sit today, in the early 21st century, with a world that seems more driven by group identity and tribalism and groupthink than ever before. yes, well, at least adds, if not... certainly, the things i am reporting in my book, it is not as if i discovered all these things by myself. these are, much of what i say is pretty commonsensical in the world and the sociologist and philosophers who think about these things. by point is, it is a

pejorative term again i am being a little bit suspect will, but there you sit in your sort of academic ivory tower and picking all this stuff and it makes not a blind indifference to the way societies work, power is wielded and the way people think. so, i'm going to say something, i have gotten used to that. i have gotten used to that. maybe it is worth saying that i think thejob of maybe it is worth saying that i think the job of someone like inies. my think the job of someone like inies. myjob is to provide tools to people to think about these things that are better than the tools they have currently got. my job better than the tools they have currently got. myjob is not to tell people what to do, it is not even to tell them how to solve their problems. i do not think that is what i'm doing, and just trained to do the thing that i'm best at, which is thinking these things through carefully a nd is thinking these things through carefully and giving people in what i hope is a manageable form, a hope i tell stories as well as make arguments, the tools for thinking about it better. but i do not expected to have a huge impact and if you really, by itself, and the other hand, i think these are useful for those who are trying to make the

world better, the activist ‘s, the social movement people, those people, i think it is helpful for them to be clear about their situation and about the possibilities. i will give you just a simple example. if races were really will reel and if they were really will reel and if they were really important objective differences between them, some of the differences in the world might persist to the end of time because of that. —— really real. i'm pretty confident that that will not happen once recognise that the way we treat people is generating a lot of the racial inequality in the world. people is generating a lot of the racial inequality in the worldm is an important caveat, isn't it, once recognise? because one might hope that the trajectory of human cognition might be forever upward but frankly, any of donald trump, i am not editorialising about the trump administration but the fact is that a lot of the messages that come from the president of united are clearly killing two tribe, group,

are divisive and polarising rather than seeking other universality. yes. -- in the era of. how do you interpret what is happening in america today? well, i think that the important thing to see is that the important thing to see is that the temptation to use simplified pictures of the way the world is divided up, to generate support for political campaigns and for political campaigns and for political agendas, that is just a feature of the world, and one of the things one tries to do as a political person, i mean in one's life as a citizen trying to think about politics, is to try and undermine and reduce the support for the people who take advantage of this is the mechanism, this mechanism of dividing us into us and then, to create a kind of solidarity based on false beliefs about what we are like and false beliefs about what they are like. i think those people are dangerous, the world is full of them. see you, this is not just about donald trump, one could

look at the populism and natives in europe, with matteo salvini, who are interviewed and hardtalk recently in italy. you can look at viktor 0rban and a whole host of people, frankly beyond the shores of europe as well. to india, where the current government uses polarising cultural messages. so, the point you alluded to earlier is that you ultimately an optimist and you believe that the trajectory of the human condition is, in that positive sense, toward a more universalist and more humane that understanding, compassionate humanity? yes. will play how can you square that with what you see? i'm looking at it over a longer horizon. think about how things improve, over the last century. think about the massive improvement in the condition of

working class people in many countries. the massive reduction in racial discrimination in the law in the united states over the last 100 yea rs. the united states over the last 100 years. look at the increasing coming together of europe in the same moments of nationalism and putting brexit to one side one has to do. europe is way more unified and united than it was in the 19th century. 0r united than it was in the 19th century. or even in the mid— 20th—century. if you look over a long enough horizon, you can see the general tendency is in the direction i would regard as up. one area that ican i would regard as up. one area that i can see where you would find solace is certainly in the western world, societies and cultures view gender issues, and in particular, sexuality. i have known you for a long time, you are an out gay man who took advantage of america's

change of laws so you could marry your long—term partner. how far can we go with the notion that human beings are now free to choose their identities in ways we never even thought of before, notjust in terms of sexuality but even in terms of basic gender where now there is a very powerful movement change the way, the binary way we see men and women, a lot of people who define themselves as a non— binary, others who are chan step —— transgender and society appears to be slowly moving to a cce pt society appears to be slowly moving to accept them in different ways. when does this end? i don't think it ends. there are two things in the report where it doesn't end. it doesn't end with the disappearance of identity. we are reforming our gender system but not getting rid of gender system but not getting rid of gender altogether. i believe over the long haul into the remote future, we still have, it will be more complicated than a simple binary system but there will be men

and women and some people in between. where does self-identity end? interestingly, i'm lurching between different spheres but i'm michael, not so long ago, we spoke toa michael, not so long ago, we spoke to a woman called rachel dolezaal, who was a white woman that became an activist of the black community and spoke as a black woman but when people realised eventually that she had to white parents, it became a fascinating and difficult debate about about what being black is. she said, i never identified as white, i feel myself as black, so to that extent, i am feel myself as black, so to that extent, iam black. feel myself as black, so to that extent, i am black. she is a good case to think about. you ask what is the relationship between self and others? you have to think of these asa others? you have to think of these as a matter of negotiation. you can't simply declare the meaning of

race on your own. if you don't like grits put you, you need to persuade the world to change. that is what trans people have done. trans people did what rachel dolezal didn't do which is create a movement which allows them to be what they want to be in the system. i am happy to respond affirmatively to that request to change the system and it does no harm to me to adapt the system in that way. even if it did a bit of harm to masculinity i would be happy because it's important to them. if rachel dolezal could have made these arguments and persuaded people and done it in a way which was a bit more straightforward, what she was actually doing, she knew, involved concealing something that other people thought was important. she didn't think it was important and that's an interesting fact but u nfortu nately, and that's an interesting fact but unfortunately, black in america doesn't belong to her so the only

way it can be changed in the direction that she wants, and i'm willing to listen to her arguments. is it she makes the arguments, she needs do it with others —— other people. in this interview and in some of your other writings, if inconsistent saying its not yourjob to fix the society, it is simple to understand and explain how societies work to fellow citizens. i get that, but do you have ideas which you can share with me as to how to overcome the lies that currently underpinned our identity? the most important thing for us to overcome, to the extent that getting rid of the lies helps, i'm in favour of that, the moment when identities lead to hostility and hatred and division. that is what we are looking. for that i think some things can be said

but these are things known to social psychologists. don't close yourself off. people who live with diverse identities tend to be less bigoted than those who don't so don't allow yourself to be channelled off into a world in which you are only among white people or catholics, only among straight people and so on, open your social experience to people of all the major kinds and do things with them that are not about race or religion or sexuality but are about soccer for going to the movies or about building something in your community together. work together people books have working together people books have working together with people of diverse identities makes the identity is less dangerous and frankly, if your false ideas about them, as long as the ideas aren't leading you to behave badly, i'm not so worried. people have false ideas about everything. we have false ideas about cooking. it doesn't do too much harm, i'm not worried about it.

we have a thinker and writer in the united kingdom called david goodhart who says, these days, the most important distinction and identity that one can use when looking at people in western societies is between those he calls anywheres and mercy call somewhere. the anywheres are usually educated, highly mobile people comfortable in their intellectual environment living anywhere in the world. that would be you. the somewheres are deeply rooted people who are not so mobile, his thought processes are more localised and not so open and today, according to david goodhart, are much less interested in the kind of ideals that you've just been painting with me. i am happy to live in the world with the somewheres, i just don't want them shaping the world for the rest of us in a way

that makes it very difficult for us to do what we want to do. my favourite example is the american amish of pennsylvania, they've closed themselves off, they don't like talking to strangers, they don't like money or motorcars or lots of things that i think are inevitable parts of the modern world and they've made a world for themselves. they are entitled to that, their freedom is themselves. they are entitled to that, theirfreedom is as important as anybody else's freedom and they don't do any harm to the rest of us, they don't go out into the world campaigning against the others, they live separately. i don't mind that. if you want to be a somewhere like that but if you want to be the kind of somewhere that takes over the united states or britain and turn it into a country of somewheres, i am on the other side from you. i'm a live and let live person, i understand the attractions of locality, i remember the pleasures of my grandmother's english village in gloucestershire, is a lovely place and a perfectly decent life living there all the time, mostly hanging out with people from the

village. it is not the life i have chosen and for those who do, that's fine but i don't think they should shape the world in which what i want to do is impossible. and we have to end there. it's been a pleasure having your hardtalk. very nice to talk to you. thank you very much indeed. more rain for parts of england and wales in the day ahead. tuesday, quieterforall, but then the weather gets pretty busy again from wednesday, as we will see. a chilly start the further north you are as monday begins and in scotland, the risk of ice on untreated services because we had wet weather overnight clearing away, allowing temperatures to dip away. as we go on through the day, this is the area of cloud. showers and outbreaks of rain moving through england and wales,

producing heavy bursts, squally winds, south wales and south—west england too. northernmost counties of northern england and northern ireland and much of scotland will stay dry and sunny. 0n the northerly breeze, quite chilly and further showers running into northern scotland. wintry in nature to relatively low ground as we go through the late afternoon evening, but a big range of temperatures, very mild across south wales and southern england, with temperatures approaching the mid—teens. very mild across south wales and southern england, with temperatures approaching the mid—teens. 0n the northerly flow, that colder air filters southwards across all parts into monday night and tuesday morning. we noticed showers around scotland, wintry in nature and a dusting of snow possible and icy patches again, as tuesday begins. but it does look like a widespread frost is going to be the most noticeable part of tuesday morning and there could be a few fog patches around as well. we know it is going to be cold as tuesday begins, but there will be plenty of sunshine around.

temperatures will be held down into single figures, despite the sunshine, after that cold, frosty start and this looks to be the coldest day of the week, more widely speaking. then the weather is about to change once more. notice an area of cloud or rain pushing into the far south—west, while many stay dry during daylight hours, it seems rain approaching in cornwall and devon. this next weather system, the busy part of the week starts to take its wet weather northwards across part of england and wales into northern ireland through tuesday night into wednesday morning. it hasn't finished there either. still some uncertainty about the northern extent, but it could wish into parts of scotland, we know there is a cold air in place, we could see snow on the hills out of that and still big a range of temperatures north to south across the uk, northern scotland more likely to stay dry and avoid this weather system. there will be another one coming in from the atlantic as we go through thursday, the rain does not look perfectly happy and by the end of the week, a deepening area of low pressure system weather but also stronger wind, gales or severe gales in places as we go into friday.

yes, looking pretty busy from wednesday onwards, but it is particularly on friday that there is a risk of seeing some disruptive winds. still chilly in the north, mild in the south. bye bye. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. the headlines: a stark warning about climate change, as a key un summit opens experts say the threat posed by rising temperatures has never been worse. a ceasefire in the trade war between the us and china. donald trump and xijinping put punishing tariffs on hold, for now. i'm kasia madera in london. also in the programme: after some of the worst riots in paris for decades, president macron's government promises tough action against anyone who resorted to violence.