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The absurdities of race

Originally published: London Review of Books on August 23, 2020 by Paul Gilroy and Adam Shatz (more by London Review of Books)  | (Posted Aug 27, 2020)

Adam Shatz talks to Paul Gilroy about his intellectual background and the recent anti-racist protests in the UK and U.S.

They discuss Gilroy’s experience growing up in North London in the 1950s and 1960s, the influence of African-American culture on his understanding of racial ordering, the role of Turner’s painting The Slave Ship in the history of the ‘Black Atlantic’, the shifting use of terms such as ‘racism’ and ‘anti-blackness’, and how the imminent threats of climate change might affect racial identity.

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