Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of Between the World and Me, and now, We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy. He sits down with Isaac Chotiner to discuss the costs of writing off your fellow citizens as “deplorable,” why he chose writing over activism, and how Trump is both uniquely dangerous and a predictable consequence of American racism.

This interview was first published November 8, 2017.

Podcast Production by Audrey Dilling.

Email: ask@slate.comTwitter: @IHaveToAskPod 

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