Ainsley LeSure on Racism Beyond Intent

What if racism is not just a belief someone holds, but something people do through everyday choices, institutions, and patterns of behavior?

Ainsley LeSure joins Faithful Politics to explain why racism cannot be reduced to personal belief, private intent, or what someone claims is in their heart. Drawing from her book Locating Racism in the World, LeSure argues that racism is better understood through practice, behavior, outcomes, institutions, and the everyday relationships that shape our shared world. The conversation covers institutional racism, the post-civil rights era, Christian political mobilization, democracy, equality, voting rights, and the ways racial common sense continues to shape American politics. We also discuss the recent BAFTA awards incident involving racist language during an acceptance speech connected to Sinners, using it as a real-world example of how harm, responsibility, intent, and public response become more complicated when racism is treated only as a question of personal motive.

Locating Racism in the World:

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/locating-racism-in-the-world-9780197833865?cc=us&lang=en&

Guest Bio

Ainsley LeSure, Ph.D. is a political theorist and Assistant Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Brown University, where she specializes in race and racism, phenomenology, democratic theory, feminist theory, and political thought. Her book Locating Racism in the World develops a phenomenological account of antiblack racism and challenges post-civil rights understandings that reduce racism to individual belief or intent. Her work helps explain how racism operates through everyday practices, institutions, relationships, and democratic life. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

So I just had this idea. I want to get away from racism as something that you are, and rather say it's something that you do, right? Like racism is a doing, and you can stop racist things, right? Or not. And also, like racism is something that is beyond us at the same time that it involves us. So it's like I as an individual can make decisions and choices about what I do that will implicate me in perpetuating racism. I can also try to withdraw, right? Like I can try to fight certain things. Like I might be aware that, okay, this is a really problematic way to engage with people. This perpetuates racial inequality, racial injustice, and I no longer want to participate.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers. I am your political host, Will Wright. Joined as always by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. What's going on, Josh?

SPEAKER_03 1:13

Hey, what's going on, Will?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

And we are joined today by Ansley Ainsley. LaShore.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

You had it right.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Yeah. Here's a note. Normally I screw up the last name. Very rarely do I screw up the first name. So Ansley LaShore. Did I get the last name right? Perfect.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Who is an assistant professor of political science and Africana studies at Brown University. She's also a political theorist whose work focuses on race, racism, democracy, and how we actually understand those ideas in the real world. Her latest book, Locating Racism in the World, challenges the way we've talked about racism since the Civil Rights Era and makes a case that focusing on intent and beliefs has limited our ability to address it. And we're just so happy to have Ansi here with us today. Welcome to Faith of Politics.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Yeah, you are very, very welcome. And we are very, very honored to have you here. But as we do with a lot of our interviews, I mean a lot of our experts that we talk to, I'm I'm always just curious. Like, how do how does one get into the field that uh you are in with like the impressive just resume that you've got? I mean, like, do you wake up like was there a little version of you thinking to yourself, one day I am going to go to Howard and I'm gonna write this crazy huge book and dedicate hundreds of hours of my life into just to show up on the Faithful Politics podcast?

SPEAKER_00 2:45

No, no, I wanted to be a lawyer. I actually wanted to be a politician. I thought I was going to, and I would say that I'm gonna be president of the United States, the first black president of the United States in 2032. So that was my whole state back in the day. But I am Melon May's undergraduate fellow in undergrad that got me interested in the idea of being a scholar, a professor, and completely changed the trajectory of my career. And I went to graduate school at the U of Chicago and wrote a book about racism. I've always been concerned about power, also always patently aware of race. I'm from Columbia, South Carolina. You know, like I was born in '83, telling you my age. And, you know, this is supposed to be the post-civil rights era, and I'm going to majority black schools. Like, I can count the number of other people on my hand, right? Like, isn't this supposed to be the era of integration? Right? Like, post things are not supposed to be segregated, but it was very segregated. So I had all these questions. Then I went to undergrad at in car at Carleton College, which is in Minnesota, and my experience at a predominantly white institution, and all the questions I had about how race is working. Like now I'm in the north and I'm like, oh, all white folks aren't Republican, right? This is interesting, but still experiencing the similar kind of racial dynamic, right? And this is in the early 2000s. Things have changed now. But like, yeah, those so that sort of background, that experience sort of like got me to do what I am currently doing.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

That's really, really cool. It's always cool to hear someone's story, you know, even thinking about my own story. Like, did I think I'd be a podcaster and a pastor and you know, help like, you know, other pastors do research for their material. I I don't know if I really imagined that when I was six years old, but here we are, and I'm able to sit here and talk to people that are super interesting. And and that's kind of how life goes. But there was something in there that kept coming up and was this idea of race. And of course, this is what your book is about. And this is a lot of work that you've done on this. And and one of the concepts, and I'm super curious to dig in deeper with you, is that you have the concept of racism, and you try to like racism as belief, and then then and then this sense of racism as something more than belief, maybe as as the world or as the context that come maybe the waters that people swim in, kind of. And so I would love for you to kind of help us understand that more, go deeper into that argument, because I think that there's people that will hear this, and well, I know that they are, and people that I know, and they'll be like, well, I mean, I a racism is something in the heart. You're either racist or you're not, and it's something in the heart, and that's something. So as long as I'm so so a couple things, right? As long as I'm not internally racist, then what I do should be judged differently, right? Maybe regardless of impact. Or you might have some people just kind of questioning this whole idea we're post-race, or you know, we're we're we're not Jim Crow anymore. So, so how can we really still talk about race as institutional? So you're gonna have a lot of different, you know, ideas coming into this, like from people that are watching this. Um, some people already on your side and will already agree or even go beyond you, and then other people that that that won't. And so I'm just wondering, can you explain to us like what is the difference between racism as belief and and then racism as world?

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah, that's a really great question. So, I mean, the the study of racism is at bottom or fundamental aspect of what the study of racism is trying to get at, is it tells us how we come to know race and how we come to know anything at all. And we call sort of like the study of knowing, like how we know epistemology, okay, like in in philosophy and and and theory, and so it's like racism is a theory of the epistemology of race, okay? And so my book is intervening on the discussion of racism from that level, okay? And so one of the things that happened in the post-civil rights era, right, is that you had folks, I I call it institutional race, well, not call it like it's the institutional racism argument that happens at the end of the 1960s. We see the first use of the concept in this book called Black Power, um, The Politics of Liberation, is written by Kwame Toure, formerly known as Stokley Carmichael, and Charles V. Hamilton. And in this book, and and what they're representing is this concept that is emerging in the in kind of like the black power phase of the civil rights movement, the idea that racism, we can trace it by following practice and action and outcomes, right? And there was a backlash against that claim, and a particularly a scholarly backlash that said that that claim was actually mistaken. You can't trace racism by looking at practice and outcomes because you have to know the intention and motivation of the people, the institutions, entities involved in order to then say that a particular practice or outcome is racist, right? And so you can't account for intention and motivation by pointing to practice and outcome. So now we have to focus on mental states, emotion, right? The heart, right? So, and so this is also interesting about kind of like the discourse on racism. Before you have the civil rights movement, there's this sort of emphasis on prejudice, right? Like how you were saying racism is in the heart. And there was this sense that the civil rights movement fundamentally changed people's hearts, fundamentally changed consciousness, okay? But then as you have the sort of like impact of the civil rights movement happening too, like there is sort of like resid the residual problems, right? Like there is sort of like the announcement of success because of the civil rights movement. And but then there's like this this sense from the black power phase and and sort of like these figures like Stokely, Carmichael, and and and other sort of like more radical black figures that, or especially folks in the north, that not a whole bunch has changed, right? Not things are not as radically different as folks thought it was. And so then that then the intervention is we're focused too much on prejudice, less focus on practice and outcome. But then people come back and say, no, no, no, that is analytically mistaken to focus on practice and outcome. We have to tell, we have to account for intention and motivation. That, and the only way to account for it is to tell a story about the belief and inner states of the individual. Okay. And so that shift back to the inner states, right? Basically disempowers our ability to observe racism in the world, right? It sort of makes perpetrators and potential perpetrators of racism the final authority on it. So if you say racism is at play here, it can be like, well, that wasn't my intent. That's not in my heart, right? So they have sort of like this untold authority to say where racism exists in the world because the ultimate mitigation, the ulti, the ultimate adjudicator is the nature of their inner state. And they have final authority over that, right? It also puts those who dare to raise the question of racism into mere speculators, right? Like I'm speculating about your inner state, being an uncivil person because I'm questioning your character and your heart, right? So that's that puts us in a bad situation. And then now we're talking about your heart or your your mental state, what you meant to do or what you knew and what you did not know, instead of actually looking at actual behavior and the interactions happening between people on the everyday basis, that I would argue, right, tells an observable story about intention and motivation that that that now all of us can say something about, not just the potential perpetrator, right? So that's sort of like the intervention of the book to say that, you know, we talk about intention and motivation as if they are these private inner states of individuals, but they ultimately but they actually are not, right? They are things that we disclose across time in space with people that we are in relationship with. And if we're going to be able to talk about where racism is, how it's unfolding, how we're perpetuating racial inequality and racial injustice, we have to attend to the unfolding of our everyday relations. And so, and I'll add this one other thing: the intervention of the world here for me is the sort of like the philosophical analytic that shows why the focus on practice and outcome is actually right. And the folks who would make a counter-argument about epistemology that would point us to inner states or the mental states are actually misguided.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

We could literally stop the interview there, and I would be like, hey, you know, that buy the book because like that was awesome. But that'd make for a terrible show. Um but but what what I what I want to do though is take what you just said and maybe kind of help put it into context using like real-world events, and and I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna just give you one, and apologies if you're not familiar with this particular scenario, but it it ties in pretty closely to sort of the the premise of just our our podcast and has faith in politics. So there's this belief that Christians as a whole got into politics because of abortion, and anybody that has kind of like studied this space knows that you know the thing that really kind of mobilized them was racism, right, racism in whatever context you want to use it in. And a lot of that came on the heels of the Brown v. Board education ruling. A lot of uh Christians were vehemently against the ruling, they didn't want to integrate, so you know, developed a school voucher program. Anyways, it became a whole thing. Brown, you know, Brown v. Board Education really, I think, sort of showed kind of the racist side of evangelical Christianity in America. And and but but but if you were to ask just about any Christians, they would say, no, we're not, you know, we're not necessarily founded on racism, you know, like like that's not really our thing. We got mobilized because of of abortion and and what have you. So so like is is that is that an example of kind of like, you know, Christians as a whole, like we all we like to think of Christians, and I'm a Christian too, like we like to think of Christians as like Ned Flanders, right? Like, like people that are just salt of the earth, you know, not harming anybody and for anybody to make a claim that Christians as a whole could be in any way racist, you know, like like how do we know because we don't know what's in their heart, kind of thing. So, like, based on your your explanation of kind of racism and you know, structures and systems, you know, being more indicative of seeing racism, like would that be a good example or is that a terrible one?

SPEAKER_00 15:22

No, I mean, so first of all, like first of all, these conversations are always illuminating for me too. So I just had this idea. I I want to get away from racism as something that w that you are, and rather say it's something that you do, right? Like racism is a doing, and you can you can stop racist things, right? Or not, and yeah, also like racism is something that is beyond us at the same time that it involves us. So it's like I as an individual can make decisions and choices about what I do that will implicate me in perpetuating racism. I can also try to withdraw, right? Like I can try to fight certain things. Like I might be aware that okay, this is a really problematic way to engage with people. This perpetuates racial inequality, racial injustice, and I no longer want to participate. And at that moment, right, like you're ethically aligning yourself with racial justice, right? But there are things that are gonna go on and happen around you and that you're a part of that does exceed you, right? That that you're still that and racism is still a problem that you may not be actively bringing about, but still involves you, right? A lot of times when we talk about racism, we automatically go to that story that, well, I'm not doing anything that's racist. Racism is a structural systemic thing, and I have a responsibility to do something, but also I didn't do anything, right? And I think that it's a lot more tenuous than that, right? Like you begin to figure out where the systems and structures or the worldly forces that are pulling us in racially unjust ways when you do the work to make better decisions with regards to people uh, you know, involving racial relations in our everyday lives, right? So, like I say that to say that, and also there is a context that we are born into that we do not get to choose, right? We are racialized, right? Like if I I am black, discernibly black, right? I am white, exactly, and that means something for when we engage with each other. There are I how my ancestors got here through the transatlantic slave trade or co or capital flows due to co you know Western colonialism in the world, right? Those the the sort of like the the opportunities that are afforded to me, the schools that I was able to go to, my the wealth that I have, like all these things are racialized, and we have to deal with them. So, you know, there is a context under which we are we're acting and we're engaging, and we have to account for that context and where that positions us and situates us, right? So like one could say, oh no, I'm in this because of abortion, but abortion, anything have to do with women's rights, reproductive rights, is a racialized minefield. Okay, we're talking about we're talking about populations, we're talking about democratic majorities and minorities. Why are you so invested in reprodu in the population? You know, and and and and and the demographics of the population. Are you interested in protecting birth for everybody? Or, you know, like we and my thing too is that like these are the kinds of things that we have to get on the table. These are the kinds of things we have to be curious about, these are the kinds of things we have to talk about. And it is sometimes convenient to disavow the fullness of our commitments because it allows us to will power in certain ways and to sort of table certain discussions, so then we can just do what we want to do, and we don't have to be accountable to anybody. So that's that's how I would respond to that. I don't know if I responded directly.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

I like that. I mean, there's uh there's so many things that uh I I got thinking on so many things that you said, and then I'm thinking about one thing you said and then and then you said another thing, and I'm like, oh, I gotta think about this now. And there's like so many different because my brain is weird. But so, so all right, I I want to get down to I love I love the conversation. Uh I want what counts as evidence? I guess the question I have is what counts as evidence if it's not if it's not looking for someone to confess I'm racist, which I admit, if you're looking to try to prove that something or someone that some they you know, if you're trying to only locate racism within someone's heart, right? And that's the only place exists within a culture, not institutionally, but only within the individual as an individual, not within the individuals of a collective group, right? Because I I guess institutions are what are they, but the agreements and moving back and forth between people, right? So there's so I and and I and I think I'm very sympathetic to what you're saying, as as as I understand it. But what is the evidence? We're not looking for confession, and I admit we're we can't expect if you make the race, someone who's racist, the arbiter of whether or not they're gonna say they're racist or not, then you're basically creating an incentive where people can hide something and continue it. And they can they have no reason to say that they're racist because they can continue in whatever, especially if they can continue in whatever behaviors are there that they're already doing, and you're not gonna stop them unless they explicitly say they're racist. Well, of course they're not gonna say that in most cases, right? I do think, and I'd love to hear your thoughts. I do think there's a rise in people being outwardly racist right now, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. But what are we looking at in terms of evidence? It's not confession, it's not conscious belief or explicit intent. Then what is the evidence? I mean, you kind of alluded to it, right? In relationships over time, things emerge, patterns emerge. But can I what should we be looking for if not someone's intent?

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Yeah, so you know, racism for me. Is like a is a democratic problem. It literally puts us at odds with, I think, the core principle of a democracy, which is equality, right? So that's one thing I would say. Then another thing I would say is I I bring myself back to Toure and Hamilton's book, Black Power, right? So one of the things that they put on the on the table that I think is is really insightful. So they made this distinction between individual racism, which they say is more covert, mean no, more overt, and institutional racism, which is more covert, right? Now some people understand that to mean, understand them to be saying that individual racism is so easy to see, and covert racism is more subtle and harder to see and harder to address, right? And they also periodize it. So like before the civil rights movement, we were beset with a lot of individual, overt individual racism. So people saying explicitly racist things, doing heinous terroristic action, like lynching people, bombing churches, right? But after the civil rights movement, things are more subtle. It's like discriminating, not showing families all the homes that are available to them, a black family that available, I mean a black, not showing a black family all the homes that are available to them, but maybe only the homes that they think black people should be living in, or you know, like this sort of like, or like, you know, people sort of take to, you know, you want to reduce crime, so you think, oh, the statistics show that black folks are are doing it more, so we'll just surveil more black people instead of everybody else because it's it's more economic, right? So people oftentimes think about, and then that then you know, this the subtler, more kinder kind of racism becomes very hard to pin down. But how I understand what Touraine and Hamilton is is telling us is that these like we focus on, right? We define racism by pointing to overt individual, sort of exaggerated versions of racism, and we say that's racism. And then what people will do, respectable people who aren't doing those horrible things, use that behavior as a foil to then avoid accountability for the things they do do, like the respectable sort of like modes of behavior that happen in society to to do the that does the vast majority of racial harm, right? So for them, as I understand them to be, as I read them, racism is this this this these two things in over individual racism, covert institutional racism, coexist and they are inextricably interlinked. Okay, so that's the first thing. Then the second thing is that, well, we live in a racialized society, right? Race means something. Black people to just be sort of like the under the the undergirding sort of like social meaning is that black is inferior, black is not as good, does not hold the same status, white is inferior, white is has a higher status, okay? And so, like the the way that racialization has happened over time, the fact, you know, and when I say racialization, I'm talking about literally the racial categories and how they developed over time, like produces this meaning that is sort of like baked in our racial order, okay? And that that that sort of like that racialization leads to racial common sense. And then what they tell us is that, right, like you can begin to sort of see the operation of racism in the political sphere by looking at how how pluralism, American pluralism, collapses into American unity, right? So, so they tell they talk about how, like, you know, yeah, people talk about the American American society as being very plural. There's a whole bunch of different opinions and views. Um, and they're talking in the late 1960s here, right? But at the moment that you have black people gaining political power and making political demands, you see that plurality collapse into unity, into one. Okay. And and and and then that unity, right, is adverse to black demand, black influence. It it it sort of like mitigates it, it it dulls the the voice of black people, you know, et cetera, right? So one telltale sign of racism happening is seeing this unity that happened amongst sort of like white constituents, right? And across checks and balances. We're watching that right this moment, right? So, like, but it's a little tricky now, right? Because like if you remember when Obama runs for president, okay, we talk about this as a unimodal sort of curve. Look, I'm a political theorist, so now I'm I'm putting on an American politics and talking about do it, do it, do it, whatever. But but you know, Democrats and Republicans are converging towards the middle, right? Like that's the idea, like moderate politics, okay. We have Obama enter into the political field, okay. It his race, his blackness, literally, like right, like so his position as an executive already challenging racial common sense, blackness should be inferior. He's in the highest seat of the land, okay, right? That is really gent like changing white public opinion on the Republican side. So it's like some Democrats, Democrats who are being racialized as black. The Democratic Party has already been racialized as black since the moment that you know the legislative, the civil rights legislation gets passed, right? Like that really big realignment that happens in the 60s, where white democrats leave the party to go to the Republicans, that is race. That is a signal of racism happening. And and I define racism as a reality violating common sense, right? So it's it's this sense of how the world ought to work that then people are able to plug into and sort of activate a public around and sort of use as as a sort of like as a as a means to build political power, right? So that's already happening. We're already dealing with the impact of race in our politics in a way that the Democrats and Republicans looked, you know, before Obama was president. Obama becomes president and it literally radicalizes the Republicans, okay? It moves them to the right. Okay. The Democrats are still holding strong in that middle position. And they're like, hey, why don't you come join us? Like, come back. Like, let's just, we can, we can maintain our thing here. But they they are radicalized, right? And what you see is in that radicalization, there's a challenge to majority rule. That I mean, majority rule is not gonna get them the outcomes that they want. So they are now open to minority rule, right? You see like challenging elections, right? Like even questioning the the importance and significance of equality, like misrepresenting the racial reality that the civil rights voting, the voting rights act was is is very integral to protecting black voice and influence and the gutting of it, right? Like the thing that they are then using as evidence for why we don't need anything to account for race, right? Because, you know, clearly the South has come a long road. Wait, I think this is how Samuel A. Alito, just as Samuel A. Alito sort of like put it, right? Like, completely able to disregard how you could get there, or how we got to a better place, right? And then it's like, and then collusion across every every branch of government. So they have the the Supreme Court, they the the Congress is aligned with the executive and will not challenge him, right? Like that, you know, sort of like I want to say my friends is an evidence of racism at play, right? Like racism is like, yes, racism happens on the everyday level with us, right? And on that everyday, and the and the everyday level is, you know, sort of like the how we treat each other, how we interact with each other, but also how it shapes our opinions, what we what feels right, you know, like what we think is appropriate and not appropriate, and how those opinions then impact how people make political decisions in the voting booth. Like who, like what policies are seen as good, Obamacare, right? Like the whole idea of solving the sort of insurance crisis was able to be maligned by associated with Obama and making it black. So there's like this race-neutral policy is completely sort of like demonized and used as a way to build Republican power to then snatch away people's sort of like insurance and access to affordable insurance, right? So it's like it really is quite crazy the ways in which racial common sense impacts how people think about what feels right and what doesn't feel right, how then that like generates certain kinds of opinions that then political entrepreneurs, and and Trump is like an excellent example of this, comes along and is able to capture it and wield it, right, to undermine democracy. And that's what racism does, right? And uh, one other thing, I know I'm talking a lot here. The reason why this is and this story is not a new story. So, another one of the thinkers that's really central to the book is Hannah Arendt, right? Hanna Arendt is a German Jewish woman who has to flee Nazi Germany, has to flee France, ultimately ends up in the United States. She's like one of the most important political theorists, political thinkers of the 20th century, okay, writes this book, Origins of Totalitarianism, which is really trying to explain how Nazi Germany in the 20th century happened when you had the emancipation of the Jewish people in Western Europe in the 18th and 19th century, and they were being integrated in European society, right? Like they were they were embraced by aristocrats, they had education and capital flows, they, you know, were supposed to be accepted as equal, formally equal, right? But the whole story is that in those moments when you have democracies who are trying to solve the problem of racism, right? Like in their societies. And it's like that initial sort of exclusion of the racially marginal from a place of equality in the political field. And they're like, hey, look listen, we're going to we're going to forge for with equality. We are going to try to be inclusive with this segment of the population that we have formally excluded. That that is a very vulnerable time. Because at that moment where there's formal equality being exercised to these people that have been denigrated, demonized, looked at as other, like one of two things can happen, right? Equality as a principle, as a guiding principle in a democracy can be fortified so that it can sort of successfully embrace racial difference so you can have multiracial democracy. Or what's going to happen is that through the extension of that equality, racial common sense is going to bend equality into sameness and sort of operate as this exclusive practice where only certain segments of the population can be equal if they follow, or certain population, certain strata of the marginalized racial population can be equal, if they follow certain rules to make themselves sort of like, you know, palat palatable to the sort of the portion of the racial or racially dominating part of the of the society, right? Like you have those people who, you know, they have to sort of they have to bend to the rule of race in order to be accepted, right? And in doing that, what happens is that the principle of equality is delegitimized and undermined, right? And then we have a situation on our hand where we have the rise of these like really ghastly terroristic political organizations that don't care about equality, that instrumentalize democracy to undermine democracy, and and we're like we're in the danger. This is what this is the racism playbook, right? Like it happens on the everyday, and then it is the sort of fuel and anchor for these really global destabilizing forces. You know, like we're literally watching the undermining of the post-World War II human rights world order, and it's and it it is so much related to American racial politics. Yeah, and it means and not just but the but the way race is an organizing factor in in sort of our sense making. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

You know, Angley, that agree with everything you said, super depressing. So I'm gonna I'm gonna try to elevate like the conversation a little bit and and talk about one of my my favorite movies that I just watched recently, Sinners. Have you seen it?

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Oh, it's so good. I watched it on a plane. I actually watched it on a plane ride to the West Coast, and I watched it again on the way back because it's it's so so good. Well, anyways, the the the folks from Sinners accepted an award at the BAFTA award some time ago, something that I'm sure everybody is probably familiar with. And the in the the process of them accepting the award, there was somebody in the crowd who yelled the N-word multiple times. I'd I'd love for you just kind of take take that example and place it into sort of the broader context of your book and then kind of of like all the stuff that you've been talking about, and hopefully it won't be as nearly as Didn't you say that we're you're raising up and making this like a lighter conversation? I mean, sinners, you know, it's a movie. I'm you know I'm trying to bring into like I guess that's true.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

It is a good i i I I haven't seen it, but I have seen the like reviews of it, and I I need to watch it.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

As long as you don't say the saddest part of the movie was at the very end when the real estate agent died. As long as you don't say that, you're good.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Well, I think the BAFTA incident is really interesting in in terms of of the themes of the book because the person who yelled the N-word repeatedly is a Tourette's advocate, right? Who who suffers from Tourette's. And like the sort of like response was like from him was like, look, I have Tourette's. I didn't mean to do it. Like, okay, right? And that can be true, right? But there are there are sort of there are multiple me there are multiple harms that we need to adjudicate here, right? Potential harms here. It's like yelling the N-word to people is is harmful, and you're aware of your your I don't know, disability, your the the sort of problem that you have. What kinds of were steps were taken to sort of deal with this potential problem, right? Like it wasn't just the advocate's responsibility. Well, how did the award show think about this possibility, right? Like and and and try to sort of to address multiple needs, right? Like we are called in our everyday lives to be responsive to complicated situations that that our racial circumstances place us in, that we don't get to choose, right? So there could have been foresight on the on the eye on the on the part of those people organizing the award show. They're also like, okay, they missed that opportunity. Well, why did they air it? Right? Like, why did they sh they air this this moment? They didn't try to edit it out, like there was no sense that they should they should remove it, right? So that's another thing. And then when people, a lot of folks on the internet sort of made these claims, right? They they sort of apologized or or whatever, but like oh, and this is the other part, right? That the the intent versus impact piece, right? Like it was like, well, it's not about intent, it's about the impact, right? For me, intent is something that unfolds in how we respond to each other, right? So, you know, someone who is who who has Tourette and says the N-word three times, and there is sort of a public outcry about the extent of the harm that that moment caused, saying, Well, I have Tourette's, it should be okay, it's not acceptable, it's not enough, right? The, the, the, the your relationship to others is not appropriate, and we should fix that. We've got to fix that if we're going to begin to cultivate the kinds of habits that we need to have in order to challenge the unmitigated influence of racial common sense and the way that it's sort of organized who matters and who doesn't matter. Okay. And then also, it it does require us to think about everybody that's involved. It's a community effort, right? So, if anything, the book is really calling us to think about, it's like it moves from the individual level to the really big level, right? Like when we don't do what we're supposed to do in our day-to-day interactions, when we don't sort of deal with the sort of the the way that racial common sense organizes the way that we relate to each other, right? Like for me too, racial common sense, I think you mentioned this too, is like, is our environment. It is a condition. Like, belief is beyond the point. Like, yes, there are people who believe it, take it up, and mobilize it and do all these other things. And it's about being able to pinpoint that, know it, and to try to hold people accountable to it, and to and to and to mobilize a collective sense about those things so that it it those people can't they can't do what they they're doing with impunity, right? Like, so that's one thing. But then there's the way that that that racial common sense organizes our relationships that we have to be aware of and we have to do our part of mitigating its harm and trying to actualize what equality looks like in our everyday relationships. And that looks like being responsive to everybody that's involved and coming up with solutions that doesn't sort of like give precedent of one harm over another. And this one is a tricky one, right? Because you do have someone who who has a psychological problem, actually has a psychological problem, right? We it's not that we've psychologized one's sort of like beliefs and sort of made it into a private interstate, right? No, they actually do have a psychological problem, but but that is also something people were aware of the issue, they were aware of what the what kind of Tourette's this person had, like whatever. You've got to be in you're in there in the public audience. Well, how do you deal with that? I'm sure someone could have figured that out, right? Without sort of opening everybody up to this like really big catastrophe. And it's that kind of sensitivity that we need to adopt in our everyday lives that's going to help us, I think, build the base of opinion and the base of sensibility that is going to allow us to then have the kind of political power we need to begin to impact what this what our broader sort of structure or broader situation circumstances look like. Josh, I really appreciate it when you sort of were reasoning that like when you think about institutions, institutions are not outside of people, right? Like people, like people talk about that as like the meso level of things, like these interactions, right? Micro, macro, meso, right?

SPEAKER_03 45:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

That kind of yeah. And and and really having to grapple with how all these things, like how the micro scales up. And then it really sort of emphasizes the importance of our everyday individual interactions and what we do.

SPEAKER_03 45:29

Yeah, I I really appreciate that. And I, you know, something that came to my mind as you were talking about, you know, this individual who screams out the N-word. It's obviously extremely offensive, and yet he has Tourette's or they have Tourette's. I wasn't really aware of the story. And and and I was thinking, you know, obviously, you know, I hear that and I feel this shock. I feel like disgust, like I can't believe like it's even still happening. That kind of like I'm feeling all these things, right, inside as I'm hearing it. And I know it's I know it's harmful. And yet I was sitting there thinking, how how do I know exactly what that harm is? And harm is we I've always I've thought about this a lot. Like someone says something mean, hurtful, nasty to me, right? That that harms me, but it's different than someone stealing from me or or hurt like physically harming me or destroying my property or something like that, or harming someone, like physically doing that to someone I love, right? One of my family members or something. And so there's so so I guess my point is not that one is harm and the other isn't, but that there's it seems like there's gradations of harm, or at least maybe in their personal impact. And then it gets all kind of like complicated when we start talking about institutionally the meso level and the macro. It's almost maybe it's even easier to see on the macro level how something could cause harm, even than maybe even than maybe on the meso level. And I guess like, and it seems like it would be important to define harm at each of those levels. And I guess how do you define harm? How do you work through the concept of harm when you're thinking about race? Because obviously, like when we think about harm, that that there's legal definitions of harm, things like uh actual um actions can be done, legal procedures can be taken on the basis of that definition. And so it's a very important definition, right? And concept, at least have some unity on. And I'm wondering where where do you define harm? What is harm? How would you describe that in this context particularly?

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Well, that's I mean, that's a good question. I don't know if I deal with that sort of like outrightly. I think for right, I just love to hear your think out loud. Yeah, I think for me, it's more so. So, you know, we hear that that that saying sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will never hurt us. But also what the book grapples with is how racism, how this reality vi uh, you know, reality violating common sense is a symbolic power. It's a symbolic force. Like it it is literally like sort of I think helps us grapple with the significance of words, the significance of meaning, and how it materializes how those meanings get materialized in our everyday relationships, right? So it's like, yeah, you know, was it really that big of a deal, right? The yelling of the N-word, like, you know, we had to rets, like, let's move on. Yeah, no, right? Because it's like it's about the patterns of behavior, you know, like the same kind of patterns of behavior that happen when it comes to sort of like the N-word, right? Well, was it really that big of a deal or whatever happens with other kinds of harms, right? And these things accumulate across time and and and and and you know, sort of volume and ripples across people. And then that's how you get the really big impact, right? And then it's also sort of like the the sort of like the the sensory inclination to discount the significance and importance of it, I think comes from sort of like a pattern, a consistent pattern to do the same thing on all levels, right? Like discounting the significance of slavery and its reverberating impacts throughout generations, you know, the the patterns of behavior that that heinous crime unleashed in our everyday relationships, right? The way we think about each other, like that, that the way we understand and know each other, it's a that racial, it's a racialized symbolic force that gets materialized every day. So this is one instance, one small instance of its materialization. But the reason why it's so important is because it's so indicative of the like the little things that amount to such big things, right? That we can talk about these these grave harms and and constituencies who make small decisions that then lead us to you know catastrophe. You know, like who thought that we would be looking at a world circumstance where Iran might be hit with a nuclear bomb from the United States? And I I want to say that this situation that we find ourselves in, right, is is sort of like the pattern of behaviors that we are involved in, like in our everyday lives, manifesting itself at the executive level and in our world politics. So, you know, it's like that that's what the book is trying to get us to understand. Like also, like in the book, I taught like the world for me is the sort of like really big analytic, the like, you know, focusing on everyday life and really analyzing it and understanding the sort of like significance and meanings that are embedded in every little interaction, every little perception, right? Is a phenomenological sort of approach to how to knowing and the significance of our knowing in our lives, right? And one of the things that the book emphasizes is the world. And I say it's like the world is like this spatial environment that we all share. It has a temporal and a spatial dimension to it, right? But the world is also something I possess as because it's like the world is the thing that gives me my senses, it allows me to hear, like what I hear at this very moment is possible because of everything I've heard since the moment I was born, right? You know, the me seeing you two on the screen, like that's that ability to see is a scene that has been building up over time. And it is my engagement with the material artifacts of the world, right, that we share in common that then gives me my perceptual ability. And there like my perceptions are not, and my sort of interfacing with the world is not something I get to will, it is something that actually exists and is, right? So everything we do, right, everything, every little thing we do is connected to a shared world and it's expressive of our hold of that shared world. And if the shared world that we are producing in our everyday relationships with each other is a messed up world, then my everyday relations are going to reflect that. And so part of like what it means to really understand the significance of what we do is to build that awareness around the significance of what we do and how we perceive and how we relate to each other, so that we can build a world that can reflect a greater respect for humanity and really allow us to actualize equality, which is essential if we're not going to just brutalize each other and sort of put ourselves in the situation of great horrible harm. And like oftentimes, or you know, I think, like, man, like, are we going into the dark ages? You know, like the way that we sort of relate to each other, the way we relate to knowledge production, the sort of degradation of it, like nobody, you know, like it's just like we're at odds with each other in so many sort of like pernicious ways, like no meaningful connection with each other. And the and and and and yes, so we have to become attuned to the significance of our everyday actions and what we do. And and so, yeah, that little small interaction, what you might what we may think about is small, it's not small, right? It is it is reflective of our condition, our situation, and and where we're placed and how we've been conditioned to relate to each other. And every little interaction gives us an opportunity to reshape our condition. And and we've got to really take that seriously, I think, if we're going to be able to get out of what seems like a very perilous situation right now.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

Yeah, yeah. You know, Andy, this this has been great. And and I and I want to on this our last question for you. Maybe you can just finish this this sentence for me. So you'll know that somebody really, really understands your book if dot dot dot.

SPEAKER_00 55:28

That's a good one. I'll know that someone really understands my book if they think about racism as grounded in their everyday lives, and and and tries to analyze their opportunities to intervene upon it to mitigate its harm.

SPEAKER_01 56:00

Wow, that's great. Where where can people buy your book?

SPEAKER_00 56:05

So the book is available at Oxford University Press. I also my I have a personal email, um, not a personal email, personal website. Ansley lasure.com a-in-s-l-e-y-l-e-s-u-re- um dot com, where there's links to to purchase the book as well. It's it's also available on Bookshop, independent book um sellers website. It's also on Amazon, your favorite bookstore. You can go and ask them to purchase it for you, but get it into the the bookstore for you. So, yeah, it will be available on May 8th, 2026.

SPEAKER_01 56:47

That is awesome. Thank you so much, Anzy. This has been a phenomenal conversation and and good luck with with your book and the rest of your interviews. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, and uh, and to our audience, hey, thanks again for stopping by. As always, um, we really, really appreciate you all. And hey, um, if you haven't subscribed to my Substack, make sure you do that. Um, we've got some pretty big announcements coming out. We've got a huge project, Church and State 250, coming out. So make sure you sign up to get all the deeps about that. And as always, keep your conversations not right or left, but uh, and we'll see you next time. Take care. See ya.