Octavia Butler imagines a world without racism

During Black History month, Book of the Day is bringing you some interviews from the archives, including this one with author Octavia Butler. Butler wrote many sci-fi classics, like the Parable series and Kindred, so she's accustomed to imagining different worlds. NPR's Scott Simon asked her back in 2001 to imagine a world without racism. Butler believed that in racism's place we would have to have absolute empathy. But she told Simon that this would most certainly present its own challenges – and we would probably just find something else to fight about.

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