Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Start the Week

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday

BBC Radio 4 LW

Tom Sutcliffe

Colson Whitehead

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Heather Mac Donald

Katy Hickman

Start the Week: Identity Politics in New York

Identity Politics in New York

17/10/2016

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Identity Politics in New York

New York: Colson Whitehead, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Heather Mac Donald and Jim Zirin.

Tom Sutcliffe in New York with novelist Colson Whitehead, philosopher and 2016 Reith Lecturer Kwame Anthony Appiah, political commentator Heather Mac Donald and lawyer Jim Zirin.

In a special edition of Start the Week recorded in New York, Tom Sutcliffe explores the impact of identity politics in America. This year's BBC Reith Lecturer Kwame Anthony Appiah explores the shifting sands of identity through creed, country, colour and culture, and considers the mistakes we make when we think of them as fixed. The US best-selling novelist Colson Whitehead turns to the question of race, the founding of America, and the history of slavery with The Underground Railroad. The political commentator Heather Mac Donald describes herself as a secular conservative and warns that race-based attacks on the criminal justice system are eroding the authority of the law and putting more lives at risk, while the lawyer Jim Zirin attacks the make-up of the Supreme Court, arguing that the judges are informed more by their political identity, than Constitutional law.
Producer: Katy Hickman.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Start the Week

Identity Politics in New York

Contributors

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4