BBC interviews Nobel laureate Toni Morrison on race in contemporary America

We sat beneath an enormous chandelier and talked among other things, about the things that define her work, the history of African Americans, slavery, and she shared her insights into contemporary American society, including thoughts on President Obama, a man she admires.

When I asked her whether she thought the election of Barack Obama as the country's first African American President was more than just symbolic, she was keen to comment on the ways in which he is vilified by the right.

It was a sobering moment in the interview when she reflected on President Obama's deceased mother and grandmother, both of whom were white. "I wonder what it would have been like if he had won the presidency and his mother, from Kansas and his grandmother, from Kansas, those two white people, were alive and living in the White House, or visiting. You know, I wonder what the language would be. Now what would you say?"

There is something regal about Toni Morrison, now in her 80s, she displays a very quiet and still wisdom, acquired from years of reflecting on the world she grew up in, as a child in the 1930s, whose grandparents had been slaves, and who has lived to see an African American in the White House.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-19827316

The video of the interview is here.