The Strange Drive to Describe the Situation in Maximally Negative Terms

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

There's a temptation to describe the challenges facing all black people in the United States as being the same. And even within the U.S., that just doesn't seem to be a very convincing image of what's actually happening, he says. Nigerian Americans, Kenyan Americans and other groups of African immigrants are doing extremely well because they came from an elite group inside their own society. The problem with many of these progresses is that they treat race and therefore racism as this almost metaphysical category which essentially transcends context.

Tomiwa Owolade is a writer and author of the forthcoming book This is Not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Tomiwa Owolade discuss how some popular forms of anti-racist thinking can obscure which groups are struggling most; how Labour MP Diane Abbott’s response to an article of Owolade’s in The Guardian led to the Labour MP’s formal censure by her party; and what Americans can learn from Britain on issues of race (and Britons from America).

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight.

If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone.

Email: podcast@persuasion.community

Website: http://www.persuasion.community

Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry

Connect with us!

Spotify | Apple | Google

Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion

Youtube: Yascha Mounk

LinkedIn: Persuasion Community

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices