— James Fallows

Once in a great while, starting as a newspaper reporter in my early 20s and extending all the way into my time at The Atlantic, I have the occasion to interview very young children about their experiences––as a first grader at a charter school, say, or a promising talent in athletics or music or sports, or a member of family whose story bears on the news. One of them is likely the least racist person I’ve ever interviewed.

In time, they will encounter the poisonous ideology in many forms. A few will be indoctrinated into its most poisonous iterations. Most will absorb at least some racism, even without intending to do so, or despite their best efforts to remain free of it from cradle to grave. But whatever their race or nationality or religion, no child emerges from the womb racist, and most can speak their own thoughts before the concept stops seeming as absurd as it should. Against the discouraging persistence of racism, there is always promise in new humans being born every day. It is an opportunity for progress, and brings us closer to vanquishing a scourge.

— Conor Friedersdorf

On a visit to Lebanon a decade ago, I visited with an important ayatollah, a force in the Hezbollah movement. Everything he said was premised on a single belief: The entire world, headed by the United States, was engaged in a sinister conspiracy against Shia Muslims. Any word of disagreement from me elicited a pitying shake of the head from him, as if to say, “Either you are lying to me, or you are very, very stupid.” Shia versus everybody else: to him, that was as indelible a fact about the world as the law of gravity.

The propensity to divide the world between “us” and “them” seems hardwired into the human brain, like language or spirituality. The propensity to hate or despise or fear those who are different—that also seems hardwired. The thing that changes from person to person is how the line is drawn. If I ever do meet an interview subject for whom people are just people, I’ll be very curious: Is he or she a saint elevated above the rest of us? Or somebody missing a big part of what makes us human, for better or worse?

— David Frum

There are a lot of good contenders but the one I keep thinking of is Lonnie Bunch, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, whom I spoke to for this piece on the future of museums. He’s someone who’s spent much of his career thinking about how to get people to see each other, and each other’s history, with more empathy and more interaction—to help them get to a place where they can cross barriers and engage with the most crucial issues in America.

— Sophie Gilbert

Risking the possibility of virtue-signaling (or some other sort of disreputable signaling), I would argue that the Dalai Lama is the least-racist person I’ve ever interviewed. One caveat: In my encounters with the Dalai Lama, I’ve only understood about half the things he’s said. He speaks oracularly (of course); his English isn’t very good (my Tibetan is worse); and he laughs frequently at jokes only he seems to understand.