:00:00. > :00:00.said it left him feeling he belonged to the universe. It is time now for
:00:00. > :00:15.HARDtalk. Welcome to HARDtalk, I am Steven
:00:16. > :00:16.Sako. The more things change, the more things stay the same.
:00:17. > :00:19.An adage that seems tailor-made for race relations in America.
:00:20. > :00:22.After eight years of a black President, amid a swirl
:00:23. > :00:25.of demographic and social change, black Americans still feel the bite
:00:26. > :00:30.My guest today is Paul Beatty, whose prize-winning novel Sellout
:00:31. > :00:51.is a devised satire to unpick the black American experience.
:00:52. > :01:11.It is funny and provocative but is it also fundamentally bleak?
:01:12. > :01:18.It seems to be optimism has always been seen as the default mood
:01:19. > :01:31.Reading the book, the Sellout which has caused a storm
:01:32. > :01:34.and won the Booker Prize, some would read it and think,
:01:35. > :01:36.gosh, this man has a very bleak world view.
:01:37. > :01:40.I don't think it is that bleak really, in a weird way.
:01:41. > :01:43.I think hopefully within the energy, there is a kind of something that
:01:44. > :01:53.The energy contained vicious humour and it is very
:01:54. > :01:56.funny but fundamentally, you have a book that is pretty much
:01:57. > :01:58.about race relations and the experience of being black
:01:59. > :02:02.in America today and it is not that different from the way it has ever
:02:03. > :02:05.been, including the era of outright slavery and segregation
:02:06. > :02:15.I can't say that, I am 54, I am not 254.
:02:16. > :02:17.So I cannot speak for how it is different.
:02:18. > :02:24.My life is different within 54 years.
:02:25. > :02:36.Barack Obama, when he talks as the head of the nation
:02:37. > :02:38.about race issues, he says, change has come and things
:02:39. > :02:44.are different and we are making progress.
:02:45. > :02:48.Good for him, he is the President and he should say that.
:02:49. > :02:51.He wouldn't say that if it wasn't true.
:02:52. > :02:57.We went through huge wars over stuff that wasn't true.
:02:58. > :03:04.I only speak for myself, not for everybody else.
:03:05. > :03:17.I just speak for myself, or I try to.
:03:18. > :03:20.So "we" is a word I don't use very often.
:03:21. > :03:23.Just from my perspective, I am not trying to send this message
:03:24. > :03:26.from the body politic black, it is just my perspective,
:03:27. > :03:34.It is Obama's job in a weird way and someone said earlier...
:03:35. > :03:37.The book is kind of about what is progress and what it feels
:03:38. > :03:42.You were talking about American optimism.
:03:43. > :03:50.It is kind of an optimism that is sort of spreading to world politics.
:03:51. > :03:53.Everyone is doing things the way Americans do.
:03:54. > :03:58.You have to be optimistic, I don't know if that is new.
:03:59. > :04:05.There has been all of these police shootings in the news in the States.
:04:06. > :04:12.I can't remember a time when there were not police shootings.
:04:13. > :04:16.You are someone who grew up in Southern California
:04:17. > :04:22.and I guess a defining moment for you was probably the Rodney King
:04:23. > :04:27.I don't know if it was a defining moment, these things happen
:04:28. > :04:30.and it was one of those things where it was...
:04:31. > :04:33.That was when the match finely ignites, it was that last straw.
:04:34. > :04:35.It was on tape and there was this thing...
:04:36. > :04:44.Obama was in the new Smithsonian Museum of African-American History,
:04:45. > :04:55.He is flanked in the background by all this iconic stuff
:04:56. > :05:03.of the civil rights movement, photos.
:05:04. > :05:06.There is a black woman Robin Roberts asking him,
:05:07. > :05:09.she has a weird passion in her voice, wanted him to respond
:05:10. > :05:13.She asked him about a specific shooting where a guy has his hands
:05:14. > :05:17.up and it is all on tape and the police officer just shoots
:05:18. > :05:24.Obama equivocates, that's what he does.
:05:25. > :05:27.I think it is that equivocation that doesn't read as optimism.
:05:28. > :05:33.There is a sense of people wanting to hear an opinion, a passion,
:05:34. > :05:42.something beyond diplomacy in these things.
:05:43. > :05:45.They want to hear, hey, what do you think?
:05:46. > :05:49.They want to know what you really think and it is hard to read
:05:50. > :05:52.and it is one of those things where I remember when I saw it,
:05:53. > :05:56.I was not angry with him or anything but I was just like,
:05:57. > :05:58.yeah, that is the true power of the position.
:05:59. > :06:01.He is the Commander-in-chief, not the police chief.
:06:02. > :06:03.It's a weird thing about what this means.
:06:04. > :06:07.On HARDtalk a while ago, we interviewed Professor Cornell West,
:06:08. > :06:10.one of the great intellectual thinkers of black America today.
:06:11. > :06:12.Hopefully, he is just a great thinker.
:06:13. > :06:18.When he thinks about race and Obama, I am not sure he has ever used
:06:19. > :06:20.the specific word sell-out that you titled your book with,
:06:21. > :06:25.he basically says Barack Obama has sold out black Americans.
:06:26. > :06:35.It is weird, it is not an impulse behind that book but I wish...
:06:36. > :06:39.I don't think there was an author in this book, it was a funny book,
:06:40. > :06:41.like a phone directory of Uncle Tom's sell-outs
:06:42. > :06:48.You go through that book and it is every black American
:06:49. > :06:57.Some people will call Cornell West a sell-out for their own reasons.
:06:58. > :07:06.It is not like I am a huge fan of Obama, I think he has his faults.
:07:07. > :07:13.It is a hard thing to say because somebody is of a certain
:07:14. > :07:16.race or gender or something that, they owe that demographic
:07:17. > :07:25.It is that notion of, people should know better.
:07:26. > :07:30.It is the people who should know better, who sometimes are the most
:07:31. > :07:40.I am not calling Obama ruthless... I think if I
:07:41. > :07:42.was suffering drones, I would think he was ruthless
:07:43. > :07:46.but I am not saying I think he is an insensitive person.
:07:47. > :07:49.You picked me up when I described Cornell West as a leading black
:07:50. > :07:52.thinker and you said, look, he is a thinker,
:07:53. > :07:57.I think a lot of your writing is about identity and when it comes
:07:58. > :08:00.to being a black American, the degree to which your blackness
:08:01. > :08:14.The identity is shifting, it changes.
:08:15. > :08:17.I have a slight background and one of the identity things
:08:18. > :08:20.that was always interesting was, there was this kind of self
:08:21. > :08:24.actualisation when you reach this nirvana of consciousness and some
:08:25. > :08:28.of the book is based on a guy, a psychologist called William Cross
:08:29. > :08:32.I think it was from Negro to black consciousness.
:08:33. > :08:35.There was this ideal kind of black identity.
:08:36. > :08:47.It was fascinating and done with such care.
:08:48. > :08:50.The central character in your book seems to reflect a bit
:08:51. > :08:57.The central character goes on to do absurd things
:08:58. > :09:00.like acquiring a slave, he is a black man and he gets his
:09:01. > :09:03.own slave and launches an initiative to segregate the local school
:09:04. > :09:10.In many ways, a very likeable character.
:09:11. > :09:13.In his own relationship with his father, he was used
:09:14. > :09:26.His father was trying to condition him to become the right
:09:27. > :09:35.My mother is beautiful, a super genius, I ask her everything
:09:36. > :09:40.Did she discuss with you how to live as a black person?
:09:41. > :09:46.Me and my sisters are all left-handed.
:09:47. > :09:52.No one in my family is left-handed other than us.
:09:53. > :09:56.We asked our mother about it and she said, I tied your right hand
:09:57. > :09:59.behind your back and so whatever left-handed is supposed
:10:00. > :10:06.It was that weird kind of experiment and she also raised us Japanese
:10:07. > :10:10.You don't want to get into this, believe me!
:10:11. > :10:29.My mum's a huge Asiaphobe is what I would call it.
:10:30. > :10:32.I might be misinterpreting this but the message
:10:33. > :10:35.of the book seems to be, you lacerate many of the tropes
:10:36. > :10:38.and stereotypes of black culture and black thinking and in a really
:10:39. > :10:42.In a way that frankly only probably a black person could.
:10:43. > :10:45.I don't think so, I don't think that is true.
:10:46. > :10:48.Hopefully it is the only way that I can.
:10:49. > :10:53.Let's talk about language, you spray cuss words through the book
:10:54. > :10:58.That is not street talk, I cannot let you get away with that!
:10:59. > :11:09.I don't know if you read it or not but it is not street talk, for me,
:11:10. > :11:11.the language is the whole thing for me.
:11:12. > :11:14.The book is about everything and we are talking about blackness
:11:15. > :11:17.and I am always thinking about what that is for myself
:11:18. > :11:22.For me, you know, my blackness is all cultural appropriation,
:11:23. > :11:25.you know, from where I grew up, from my Latino American friends,
:11:26. > :11:27.my Filipino American friends, you know.
:11:28. > :11:31.The degrees to whatever blackness is, it is all me,
:11:32. > :11:34.I just happen to be black, thank goodness, and I am not
:11:35. > :11:40.It is not just about the skin or things that are going to be
:11:41. > :11:45.on the black shelf in the library, it is everything.
:11:46. > :11:49.For me, it is everything and so the language is how
:11:50. > :11:53.I try to render that and so for me, the language is what you quote
:11:54. > :11:57.as street talk is the way I might talk to my friends which is not
:11:58. > :12:01.necessarily street talk but it is how we talk to each other
:12:02. > :12:03.because we have known each other our whole lives.
:12:04. > :12:06.I have an academic background, so it is some of that.
:12:07. > :12:09.What about, if I may, I am picking a specific
:12:10. > :12:12.because it is so emotive to so many different audiences
:12:13. > :12:14.in the United States and around the world,
:12:15. > :12:19.For me, it is a difficult proposition because we do not use it
:12:20. > :12:28.But everyone watching this will know what word I am talking about.
:12:29. > :12:32.The point is, when I said there are certain ways
:12:33. > :12:35.in which you write in which ways a white person couldn't write,
:12:36. > :12:41.This is HARDtalk, but you can't talk so hard, I guess!
:12:42. > :12:44.It is about offence as much as anything else, some
:12:45. > :12:49.Absolutely, there is no reason that they shouldn't.
:12:50. > :12:54.The word comes up in that book because Mark Twain uses it 200
:12:55. > :13:06.So it's not like only some people can use it.
:13:07. > :13:09.Mark Twain was writing in a different period.
:13:10. > :13:12.If white people use it today, they get hammered.
:13:13. > :13:20.But it is redolent of - well, you know - slavery,
:13:21. > :13:21.disrespect, total discrimination and prejudice.
:13:22. > :13:30.Just this point, for example, I read in the New York Times,
:13:31. > :13:32.the praise for the book was consistent and
:13:33. > :13:41.I read about a reading you did in New York City where the writer
:13:42. > :13:43.who was present said it was interesting because
:13:44. > :13:48.the audience was predominantly white and the author said it seemed
:13:49. > :13:52.to them that some of the audience didn't know whether to laugh or not.
:13:53. > :13:54.They were a little unsure of this territory.
:13:55. > :13:57.I don't think that necessarily has to do with race,
:13:58. > :14:02.I have read for black audiences, some laugh and some don't.
:14:03. > :14:08.I have won the Man Booker Prize, a huge honour.
:14:09. > :14:20.I did a thing at the Man Group in the States and a woman
:14:21. > :14:24.who was interviewing me was, like, "As a white person I wasn't sure how
:14:25. > :14:30.A colleague told me, well, why don't you start with maybe
:14:31. > :14:35.the book is funny, and that opened up some stuff."
:14:36. > :14:39.And I said, "Well, the person who told you that is also white."
:14:40. > :14:41.So everybody's bringing their own things and in securities
:14:42. > :14:50.I think I agree with you on some level.
:14:51. > :14:53.I think we have a hard time talking about grey areas.
:14:54. > :14:55.You know, we're really good with pontification,
:14:56. > :14:59.prognostication, but it's that grey stuff that for me is the most
:15:00. > :15:01.interesting stuff, the stuff where I'm lost and don't necessarily
:15:02. > :15:10.It's a book, it's not a memoir, it's fiction and some of the stuff
:15:11. > :15:14.I believe some of the time and some of the stuff I don't believe,
:15:15. > :15:20.In one way, just in terms of plot, it's a story that doesn't
:15:21. > :15:22.have the ending you might wish to have.
:15:23. > :15:25.There's this wonderful premise that the main character in the book
:15:26. > :15:27.is actually being taken to the Supreme Court
:15:28. > :15:32.You want to know at the end whether he's going to be found
:15:33. > :15:42.Is that because you don't believe in resolution in your books?
:15:43. > :15:48.I'll get my doctorate in psychology at some point,
:15:49. > :15:51.so there's a huge undertone in the book.
:15:52. > :15:54.So the book ends with a discussion of what closure is.
:15:55. > :15:57.I've been talking for a while about the book in person,
:15:58. > :16:00."Do you ever see it getting better," I don't know what that is,
:16:01. > :16:03.I don't know what people want from closure because people want
:16:04. > :16:08.different things and I don't know if I believe in the construct.
:16:09. > :16:11.We were talking about President Obama earlier,
:16:12. > :16:15.and when he won the first go-round, I had a friend of mine who I've
:16:16. > :16:19.known for a long time and he had an American flag in his car,
:16:20. > :16:22.and I was, like, "Dude, what's up with the flag?
:16:23. > :16:24."I'm not knowing you as a flag waver."
:16:25. > :16:26.He was, like, "Yeah, I kinda feel like America's
:16:27. > :16:31.And he said, "To us, to black Americans.
:16:32. > :16:34.I was, like, "Man, that's a huge debt!"
:16:35. > :16:38.I'm not trying to put everything on equal footing but there's
:16:39. > :16:40.Native Americans, there's the environment, there's
:16:41. > :16:48.But it's interesting when someone feels like that debt has been paid
:16:49. > :16:57.I want to come back to that big canvas.
:16:58. > :17:00.It's not just about race, there's so much going on in today's
:17:01. > :17:02.America and I want to know what you're thinking
:17:03. > :17:05.about and writing next but before that, there's one other thing
:17:06. > :17:07.about your writing that fascinates me.
:17:08. > :17:10.People have called you a satirist, I think you prefer the word
:17:11. > :17:16.Whatever the right word is, you find ways to make really
:17:17. > :17:23.Is there anything that for you is off-limits,
:17:24. > :17:29.in terms of getting entertainment, a laugh, comedic value?
:17:30. > :17:31.I don't think about it being off-limits.
:17:32. > :17:34.I think, "What's this narrative I'm trying to tell."
:17:35. > :17:37.Language is so important, and I think there are things that
:17:38. > :17:40.can be read on the surface as, like, I've violated some sacred trust,
:17:41. > :17:48.Everybody has the right to use whatever language they want to use.
:17:49. > :17:52.If somebody feels like they don't have that, that's on them,
:17:53. > :17:55.I'm not trying to say it's equal and a level playing field,
:17:56. > :18:03.So, yeah, why do it if something's off-limits?
:18:04. > :18:07.For you, the Civil Rights movement isn't off-limits,
:18:08. > :18:10.some of the great heroes of black freedom movements.
:18:11. > :18:15.Could you imagine writing a funny novel about,
:18:16. > :18:26.So, yeah, my first book is about that.
:18:27. > :18:31.So, yeah, I don't think about that stuff very much.
:18:32. > :18:35.It's not like I'm that sensitive that other people might think
:18:36. > :18:38.about that but as much as I can I try to be considerate
:18:39. > :18:41.about what I'm talking about and how I'm saying it,
:18:42. > :18:48.I'm sort of mocking them, but these are things I care very
:18:49. > :18:51.deeply about and are things that I respect.
:18:52. > :18:58.I think in the same sentence, in the same joke, I think that
:18:59. > :19:02.And I start by ridiculing myself, whether it's apparent or not,
:19:03. > :19:05.that's the person I'm picking on because I'm really trying to test
:19:06. > :19:08.myself and where are my boundaries and stuff like that.
:19:09. > :19:13.Bringing it back to the United States today,
:19:14. > :19:16.Obama's leaving office, the next president is going to be
:19:17. > :19:23.You didn't know that when you wrote the book.
:19:24. > :19:26.It's a fascinating take on modern America but America's sort of had
:19:27. > :19:29.another shift and another lurch since you wrote it.
:19:30. > :19:33.How are you feeling about the United States of today?
:19:34. > :19:38.Some people are pleased as punch, I'm not one of those people.
:19:39. > :19:42.I feel in a weird way similar to how I always feel,
:19:43. > :19:43.which is very cautious and very pessimistic.
:19:44. > :19:54.your perception of the world isn't all about race,
:19:55. > :19:57.but nonetheless in the switch from Obama to Trump,
:19:58. > :19:59.there are some people in the Civil Rights movement
:20:00. > :20:02.and politics saying this is a disaster for minorities.
:20:03. > :20:11.This is a guy who ran a whole identity-based campaign.
:20:12. > :20:14.There's a thing for me, there's kind of a white self-hatred
:20:15. > :20:30.It always feels like it's 1913 to me.
:20:31. > :20:34.I know a lot of people are trying to compare it to feeling
:20:35. > :20:37.like the late 1920s and '30s with all the nationalism,
:20:38. > :20:39.but I'm going earlier somehow, that weird...
:20:40. > :20:41.Archduke Ferdinand match hasn't been struck that's going to send
:20:42. > :20:44.the world into a weird kind of chaos.
:20:45. > :20:51.This guy was chosen for a reason, people feel a certain way.
:20:52. > :20:54.You know, there's an image that they want to project,
:20:55. > :20:57.there's something in how they see themselves and how the country sees
:20:58. > :21:00.them, they want him to be that figure and that face of something
:21:01. > :21:14.Yeah, preaching this retroactive, out-and-out antipathy
:21:15. > :21:24.Scary, does it make you feel alienated from your own country?
:21:25. > :21:30.I'm not a person who's ever felt like this is my place,
:21:31. > :21:33.I live there, it's my home, but I'm not a person, like...
:21:34. > :21:37.I kind of know that it's not this place that was designed for me.
:21:38. > :21:43.But it's my home so I have to make it work.
:21:44. > :21:46.Its job supposedly is to make it also work for me,
:21:47. > :21:48.so these things are happening in concert.
:21:49. > :21:54.On the show we've had different, sort of, voices from the black
:21:55. > :22:01.We've had Al Sharpton on not so long ago and representatives
:22:02. > :22:03.from Black Lives Matter, there are approaches to protest.
:22:04. > :22:09.What's your take on how best to achieve change
:22:10. > :22:14.I don't have a take on it, it's something I always am imagining
:22:15. > :22:18.in these books but for me my take is just to write, that's what I do,
:22:19. > :22:23.I get nervous when people tell me how to think,
:22:24. > :22:27.it's one of the things about this election that's made me nervous.
:22:28. > :22:30.People are so comfortable being told how to think because in a weird way
:22:31. > :22:38.These things make me nervous, I'm always nervous.
:22:39. > :22:41.I've learned that I write from a point of being uncomfortable,
:22:42. > :22:43.from being apprehensive but sometimes when I write
:22:44. > :22:47.there is a sense that I'm unfettered and much more bold on the page
:22:48. > :22:57.That's interesting you say that because on the page you're fizzing
:22:58. > :23:00.with energy and you go to places a lot of people wouldn't go,
:23:01. > :23:04.I'm a kind of boring, inert person here.
:23:05. > :23:07.I'm intrigued to know where you're going to take the spirit that's
:23:08. > :23:12.I have stories that come to me over over time,
:23:13. > :23:15.I have a couple of ideas, I don't know exactly
:23:16. > :23:18.Are they going to be about contemporary America?
:23:19. > :23:21.One of them actually is and the other one might not be.
:23:22. > :23:29.You opened up with this thing of the more things change the more
:23:30. > :23:34.One of the nice things is, you know, my first novel's 20 years
:23:35. > :23:37.old and some guy recently wrote a review of that first novel
:23:38. > :23:43.I think good art does that hopefully.
:23:44. > :23:47.A final thing, and I can relate to this, you once said that writing
:23:48. > :23:51.is hard, in a way you hate writing, but you can't stop doing it.
:23:52. > :23:56.There's nothing that gives me the kind of satisfaction of writing.
:23:57. > :23:59.so I don't want to throw it away just yet.
:24:00. > :24:32.Paul Beatty, thanks so much for being on HARDtalk.
:24:33. > :24:35.We got some topsy-turvy weather conditions across