this is bbc news, the headlines: in hong kong, clearing up is underway after the tenth weekend of pro—democracy marches. according to local media, pro—democracy activists have accused the police of using undercover officers disguised as protestors to make arrests. there were violent scenes in several places. two petrol bombs were thrown and police baton—charged protestors. a political row has broken out in the united states over the death of the disgraced financier and sex offenderjeffrey epstein. democrats have criticised president trump for promoting unfounded conspiracy theories about epstein‘s apparent suicide. he was found dead in his jail cell in new york on saturday. russia's communications regulator has accused google of "hostile interference" by using its youtube website to publicise recent anti—government protests. it's warned google to stop, saying that it will react accordingly if the internet giant does not comply with its wishes.

there was another large authorised rally in moscow on saturday. coming up at five o'clock is sally bundock with the briefing, but right now and bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. for many americans, donald trump's incendiary tweets aimed at immigrants and citizens of colour show him to be a racist and white nationalist. but maybe we exaggerate the importance of donald trump's contribution to america's problem with race. the roots of racism run deep, and an honest assessment of their strength has barely begun. so says my guest, ibram kendi, prize—winning writer on race and founder of the antiracist research and policy center in washington, dc. can the us ever fix a problem so intimately bound up with its past?

ibram kendi, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me on the show. i think we have to start with donald trump, and the role he's playing today in the united states, seemingly inflaming race tensions across the country with his tweets aimed at immigrants, aimed at some of his political critics, women of colour. should we see him as something very different, an outlier, an aberration? or do you think that actually, donald trump is part of something systemic?

i think he's something systemic. i think donald trump, when you look at his rhetoric, when you look at his campaign, you're looking at someone who's saying that latinx immigrants are the problem. and many americans have been believing for decades, supposedly, that latinx immigration is a problem. you are talking about somebody in trump who is saying that we should be fearing muslims because they are terrorising us. you are talking about, you know, a candidate, a president, who is saying that black communities are infested with danger, they are so dangerous, and people are living in hell. these ideas are widespread and they were widespread before his emergence. trump of course just seeped into that well and formulated a political project around those ideas. is there a part of you, because your expertise and your academic devotion is to studying antiracism and the degrees to which you can improve race relations in the united states, is part of you thinking to yourself, maybe there is something positive about the trump presidency? because he's lifting a veil, being more honest about feelings which are deeply entrenched in some

parts of the nation. i think that certainly, as someone who studies racism, as somebody who is encouraging americans to be antiracist, many americans now — they're not able to really deny how powerful and how pervasive racism still lives in america. so they are opening up, therefore, to more serious conversations about the history and presence of racism. they are becoming more serious about the need to be antiracist. some of them are recognising that they don't want to be like trump and identify as not racist, and the way white nationalists and trump do, and they see the word antiracism, so that's a good thing. you raise a lot of things there. we'll get to watch nationalism as a phenomenon a bit later. it seems to me you want americans to take sides. it seems to me you are suggesting they have a duty to take sides and become very engaged in all of this. you say there is no in between safe

space of defining yourself as "not racist." you are either racist, you say, or you are antiracist. "not racism," as a phenomenon, neutrality maybe, that is simply a mask to hide racism. it is. most americans strive to be, to identify themselves as "not racist." but what i think most americans... see, i would naturally say, if somebody discussed it with me, or accused me of it, i would say, "i am not racist." yes. but i guess, what we don't realise, though, is so too with segregationists, so too with slaveholders, so too with slave traders. so white nationalists

self—identify as "not racist." when we ask them, what does it mean to be "not racist?" they can't really answer that question. because "not racist" really has no meaning. it's essentially saying, "no, no, no — no matter what i say or what i do, i am not racist." and so it's a term that doesn't have any meaning. see, i instinctively think it does have meaning. it means i don't have instinctive or inbuilt prejudice, as far as i'm aware. in the sense that i know myself, i can say "i don't have racist feelings." and you are delegitimising that as a feeling i can have. so then my response would be, what feelings do you have? in other words, an antiracist believes that the racial groups are equals. a racist believes that certain racial groups are better and worse than others. and so oftentimes, people are in denial about the ways in which they may actually think that certain racial groups are better or worse than others. is it unconscious, to a certain extent? the racism that might be in me? i think in many ways,

we are not conscious. the way, for instance, i would ask a person to figure out whether they have ideas they are unconscious about, i would ask them, why does this racial disparity exist? to give an example, in the united states, black people are twice as likely to be unemployed. so i would ask an american, why is that the case? and some americans don't consciously realise that they believe that this disparity exists because there is something wrong with black workers. or they don't realise that that idea is a racist idea. and so they say they're not racist, even though they have these racist ideas. but let me flip it around. if you tell me just defining yourself as "not racist" has no real meaning, what is the real meaning, then, of being antiracist? sure, so, to me, the meaning of being antiracist, first and foremost, is recognising the way in which we have been

trained, we have been nurtured in many ways, to look out at our racially unequal society and think the cause of that is something wrong with people of colour. it causes us to identify, confess, admit, the way in which we have been trained to see racial hierarchy. and then it causes us to say, you know what? i'm going to be different. i'm going to see the racial groups as equals. i'm going to challenge racist policies and i'm going to be very active in eliminating racial disparity in my nation. and you have to be active. you have to be active. can you imagine if you do nothing in the face of racial disparities? what's going to happen? they're going to remain. doing nothing is literally allowing those disparities to persist. is there something in your own background that led you to this understanding of racism? essentially, i want you to tell me what, growing up as a kid in new york, drew you to these ideas. well, i mean, how to be

an antiracist is largely a confessional. it's a confessional of myjourney, myjourney being raised to believe that there was something wrong with black people. you mean you were raised to be a racist? i was raised to be a racist. and i think it's common in america to be raised to believe there's something wrong with a particular racial group. and yet in your book, how to be an antiracist, you emphasise that your parents were very active and caring parents, they wanted the best for you, they were also very conscious of politics, of the liberation struggle, all sorts of stuff. you would think that would be an environment where you would be encouraged and raised to absolutely not be racist. and i think it really shows the complexities, right? it's notjust good people. i should say bad people. it's notjust people who are white nationalists who think there's something wrong with a particular racial group. and in the 1980s and 1990s,

there were dominant ideas even among people who were liberal, even among people who had come out of the civil rights movement, the reason why so many black people were so poor, the reason why so many black people were being mass incarcerated, was because of their behaviour or a cultural deficiency, that black people needed to take personal responsibility. and these were the ideas that were dominant in the ‘90s, so much so that i consumed them wholesale. so you're sort of blaming your parents for your racism as a youth. i just wonder how your parents feel about that, given that they're classical liberal civil rights oriented black parents? my parents, i think, like me, we have commonly moved away from these ideas, as i think many americans have in general. i think many americans, for instance, look back at the 1994 crime bill and see that as a problem. so in many ways many americans have moved to be more antiracist. and so i think many americans are recognising that those ideas they believed in the 1990s

were indeed racist. you talk of shame. shame about some of the things you used to believe as a teenager. i think there was one famous — well, i know there was from the book — there was this famous moment where you were in an oratory competition at your school. you gave this incredibly impressive speech, in a sense, sort of blaming black youth for some of their own problems. and now you say you're ashamed. i'm completely ashamed. it's hard for me to even watch that speech. i have it on an old vhs tape. because i was led to believe the problems of black youth, what black youth were struggling with, what was causing them to have problems, was not racist policies or racial profiling or them being mass incarcerated, so it wasn't them being four times more likely to be unemployed than they were two generations ago. it was because of their behavioural problems. so this speech that i gave, at this martin luther king oratorical contest in 2000, when i was a senior in high school, i basically said that. i said, what's wrong with the black youth is they don't value education.

what's wrong with black youth is that they're too often times getting pregnant. what's wrong with black youth is that their parents aren't raising them right. and anytime we say that there's something wrong with a racial group, we are expressing a racist idea. you clearly have been brave in the sense that you have said, look, black people can be racist just as easily as white people can, if i'm paraphrasing you correctly. but what you seem to be doing is going through us history, because, you know, in the books you have written, you basically, in one of them, which you rather arrogantly declare a definitive history of racism in the united states, you catalogue racism and you include in the racist camp people like frederick douglass, for example. and even, at times, you suggest barack 0bama had very significant elements of racism in his political approach and thinking. so frankly, who isn't racist?

well, the book i think you're referencing, stamped from the beginning, which was a long history of racist ideas, what i did was very simple. i defined a racist idea, which was any idea that suggested a group is superior or inferior to another racial group in any way. understand that book specifically chronicled racist ideas. the idea that there was something wrong with black people. and so over the course of history, you have had people who have either said there is something genetically wrong with black people, culturally wrong with black people

as a group, or behaviourally wrong with black people. and when i came to that definition, i then went in search of history. and i wasn't going to exclude someone because i appreciated them like frederick douglass, who was one of my heroes. i wasn't going to exclude someone. if somebody said there was something wrong with black people, and if somebody said there is something wrong with people today, someone is expressing a racist idea. and to bring it more up to date, a giant of contemporary us politics, barack 0bama, whose presidency, his two—term presidency, we're all so familiar with, are you suggesting that there were ways in which 0bama was a racist in his approach to race issues, and his messages to black people in america? so i think one of his most brilliant speeches was the race speech he gave in philadelphia during his campaign in 2008. known as "the race speech." the race speech. i think we should very critically and closely read that speech, yet again. it was a brilliant speech, and in many ways he spoke about the racial discrimination, or as i say, the racist policies that were prevailing in america. but at times he talked about this idea that there was something that black people were not doing. and to give an example,

he would speak about black people in a way, being defeatist. in other words, because of these generations of discrimination, some black people had stopped trying. and that was the reason why some of these disparities existed. and so i'm going to critique that. he also, at a time, said that there were some truths to white anxieties. these are ideas that suggested that part of the reason these disparities existed was because of what black people were not doing, or that there was some truth in what racist ideas. do you not believe at all in this sort of, this notion of uplift? of inspiration, of aspiration? that there are individuals like 0bama, who can have enormous positive impact through the arc of a career like his? 0h, without question. 0bviously barack 0bama has inspired millions of people around the world in many ways, brought all sorts

of great things to the world. but would it be wrong to say he has particularly inspired black americans? 0h, without question. yeah. he's inspired black americans and he's still beloved among black americans. and i think what i'm really trying to get at, you know, with my work is... we, i think, we too often want to exclude or include people, typically ourselves, from whether they are ever expressing racist ideas or whether they're ever supporting policies that actually create more racial inequity. and i think what we need to do as humanity, talking about these racial issues, is define terms. define what a racist idea is and whoever says that idea, call it racist. define what a racist is, and whoever acts that way,

call them racist. that's essentially what i'm seeking to do and it doesn't really matter who the person is, nor does it matter how much i admire them. if they say something that suggests there's something wrong with a racial group, not an individual, but a racial group, then that is a problem. how do you reach out to white america with your message about anti—racism and the need to be proactively engaged with it? well, i think first and foremost, i think many white americans, one of the reasons why they resist acknowledging their racism is because they have been taught, like people worldwide, that ‘racist‘ is a term is a label, it's a tattoo, it's a fixed identity, it is a bad person. it's deeply pejorative, it's an insult. it's an insult, but you know who also said it was an insult? richard spencer. richard spencer, who once... the white nationalist? the white nationalist once wrote that racist isn't a descriptive term, it's a pejorative term.

but i would argue with richard spencer, that no, racist is a descriptive term. it describes when a person is saying there's something wrong with a particular racial group. it describes when someone is doing nothing in the face of racial inequity. it describes when someone is supporting a policy that's creating more racial inequity. and what's interesting about that term, like anti—racist, is one minute i can say something that is racist. i can say, "you know what, this is what's wrong with black people," and then in the next minute i can say in which the ways that racial groups are equals. i'm just wondering, with your sort of fascinating but nonetheless quite abstract theorising about some of this, whether you are failing to, sort of, reach out to the hearts and minds of ordinary folk. because, in essence, what you're saying to many ordinary americans, and let's focus on white americans right now,

is that they are racist. their instinctive reaction to that is going to be one of absolute indignation. "we are not racist", they'll say. and if you say, "but, hang on a minute, what are you doing to fight the presidency of donald trump," a man who, as we discussed at the beginning of this interview, has used all sorts of epithets and words about immigrants and people of colour that many regard as unacceptable. what are you doing to fight it? they might say, "well, we're going to vote against him." is that enough? for me, no. what i would also say to white americans is — has racism benefited you more than in a more egalitarian society? i think one of the things i think we've been misled to believe is that i think people recognise, and it's true, racism benefits white people in the united states more than people of colour. but the question is,

if we had a truly egalitarian society where bigotry and no form dominated. if people were not able to be manipulated into voting because in many ways racism informs other forms of cookery. if people were not able to be manipulated into voting for a candidate due to their racist ideas and were instead able to vote for whatever candidate boost whatever policies benefited them, or would actually happen is white middle classes and working classes would have more than they do now. they'd be more egalitarian or equalising in society. that's fascinating, but i'll then point to one specific measure that you regard as fundamentally important to anti—racist agenda, and that's reparations. your message is the united states of america needs to make massive reparation compensation to descendants of the slaves who were enslaved for so long, suffered for so much and whose descendants of the black americans of today.

it would cost upwards of $1 trillion for meaningful compensation to be delivered. most americans regard that as both impractical but also probably unjust, because they personally are not responsible. well, first, actually that's not how i would frame the reparations debate. how i'd sort of frame the reparations debate is currently we have a racial wealth gap in the united states. the white median wealth is about 10 times more than black median wealth. and that racial gap is actually growing such that by 2050, forecasters are estimated that black median wealth will redline at $0 and during that same period, white median wealth would have grown. so we have a growing racial wealth gap. and what i ask of my fellow americans is how do we reduce that racial wealth gap, which is both the result of past and present

racist policies, without reparations? that's the question that i ask. and i would be more than willing to think about any other sort of policy that can reduce the racial wealth gap if it's not reparations. i just want to quote to you... this is such a live debate right now, there's a congressional testimony about reparations recently, one black commentator, i believe he is respected, coleman hughes, he said "i worry that our desire to fix the past compromises our ability to fix the present." there is a difference between acknowledging history and allowing history to distract us from the problems of today. we don't need an apology, we need better schools, better neighbourhoods, a better criminaljustice system. do you accept the logic of his argument? what i would say is his argument is that — when you think about wealth, wealth is the combination of the past and present, right?

you have people who pass on wealth, people who invest and that wealth grows over time. and so you can, when you talk about a racial wealth gap, separate the past from the present. past is the present, particularly as it relates to wealth. which is why something like reparations, which both combines the past and the present is an effective strategy. aren't you setting up to fail? because we've been here before. in the early 2000s, there was a movement to have reparations put on the agenda, it died and failed. it's almost certainly going to failagain, certainly in this current political climate. if you push reparations as the ultimate litmus test about whether america is serious about dismantling racism, you're setting up for failure in a very negative and bleak output. i wouldn't say it's the ultimate litmus test, i'm saying it the litmus test to say if they are serious about eliminating the specific racial wealth gap, one of the serious racial

disparities we have in our society. now, there are other litmus tests for other issues, but this is just one of many. and in terms of the cost of reparations, you know, we can't forget... i can't forget, in the united states that we have through our federal or government budget, half of the federal government budget goes to the military. when you talk about the war on terror cost trillions of dollars, and many americans opposed it. the idea that there is no money to literally provide reparations, it could be shifting money from places and spaces that americans actually don't necessarily support. in nothing more than a few words, do you think america is travelling in the right direction in terms of addressing the race question? i think there are two cars — one is travelling in the right direction, the anti—racist car, and the racist car is travelling in the wrong direction. these two cars are racing each other.

isn't that going to be a profound and bumpy collision? well, we've been bumping cars from the founding of this country. ibram kendi, we have to end there, but thank you very much for being on hardtalk. you're welcome. thank you. hello. it's been a weekend of wild weather. we've had heavy rain that's caused some flooding, thunderstorms and strong winds, too. the week ahead looks a little bit quieter, but still an unsettled theme. there's further rain at times, particularly on wednesday. and things are feeling rather cool and breezy, too. now, the low pressure that brought us the weekend's wet and windy weather is now pushing off towards the north—east, but we've still got a few weather fronts draped across the country during monday morning.

so, some heavy showers, particularly in the south. some thunderstorms possible too anywhere from the channel isles up toward sussex and kent as well. to the north of that, a little bit drier. so some sunshine for norfolk, through the midlands towards wales and the north—west of england. a little bit of light, drizzly rain still lingering for north—east england through monday morning. and some showers packing into parts of northern ireland and the west of scotland. but for the bulk of scotland, a much improved day after the heavy rain and flooding we've had recently. much drier weather for scotland. a few showers towards the north and the west. some showers too for northern ireland. further south in england we're also going to see a few heavy showers through the day. but, some sunshine and it is generally a drier day than we've seen recently. 0nly16—i9 degrees to the north—westerly breeze, so things are feeling quite a bit cooler than they have done. showers will continue to monday night to tuesday but they'll slowly ease away towards the east through into the early hours and quite widely in the countryside down into single figures. so quite a cold, fresh start

for tuesday for many of us. some misty patches should clear a pretty quickly. through the day on tuesday, one or two showers still, but they'll be much fewer and further between then we have seen recently and the winds will be much lighter, too. so actually in sunshine tuesday, one of the best days this week. 16—21 degrees or so. later in the day, it'll cloud over from the south—west with the arrival of some more rain overnight. all down to this area of low pressure during wednesday, that brings us a very unsettled story, especially across england and wales. that's where we see the bulk of the rain on wednesday. the winds also strengthening, particularly strong and gusty along the south coast of england. also, some heavy showers likely across parts of scotland once again through the day on wednesday but i think a drier slot for southern scotland, northern england and for northern ireland. but it will feel pretty cool, particularly where you've got the showery rain. by the time we get to thursday, again, most of the showers will ease away. so a slightly drier window in the weather on thursday. some sunny spells, a few showers moving in from the north—west but many of us will avoid them. temperatures about 15—21 degrees on thursday but then things turn

more unsettled as we look towards the end of the week. down to another area of low pressure moving in — that brings us some strong winds and some heavy rain by saturday. bye— bye.

this is the briefing — i'm sally bundock. our top story: violent scenes as the tenth consecutive weekend of anti—government protests in hong kong come to a close. beijing warns britain not to interfere. hundreds of people search the malaysian jungle as the hunt for a missing irish—french teenager enters a second week. fewer migrants are landing on the italian island of lampedusa — so why is anti—migrant feeling rising? we investigate. ditch diesel and petrol — india pushes more people to drive electric cars. a warm welcome to the programme —