Rising Out Of Hatred

670 4th Avenue North,Fargo ND 58102

14 October, 2021

Description

The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist Humanities North Dakota Presents A Brave Conversation with Eli Saslow Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Eli Saslow will speak about his experience interviewing former White Nationalist Derek Black, David Duke’s godson and former leader of the youth White Nationalist Movement. Through compassion and education Black renounced his involvement in the movement risking his life and walking away from the family and community he grew up in. This event will explore the rise of white nationalism and political polarization in contemporary America and point toward overcoming divisions and hatred. Eli Saslow In his Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage for The Washington Post, Eli Saslow, who has been called “one of the great young journalists in America,” reveals the human stories behind the most divisive issues of our time. From racism and poverty to addiction and school shootings, Saslow’s work uncovers the manifold impacts of major national issues on individuals and families. Saslow’s book, Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, charts the rise of white nationalism through the experiences of one person who abandoned everything he was taught to believe. Of the book, Ibram X Kendi says, “The story of Derek Black is the human being at his gutsy, self-reflecting, revolutionary best, told by one of America’s best storytellers at his very best. Rising Out of Hatred proclaims if the successor to the white nationalist movement can forsake his ideological upbringing, can rebirth himself in antiracism, then we can too no matter the personal cost. This book is an inspiration.” Born out of his Washington Post feature “The White Flight of Derek Black,” Rising Out of Hatred tells the story of how the one-time heir to America’s white nationalist movement came to question the ideology he helped spread. Derek Black might be termed white nationalist royalty: his father, Don Black, launched Stormfront, the first major white supremacist website; his mother was once married to former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, who was Derek’s godfather and mentor from birth. Derek was an elected politician at 19, with his own daily radio show on which he urged white nationalists to “infiltrate” the American political system to prevent what he termed “white genocide.” But when Derek chose to attend a tiny liberal arts college, his ideological foundations began to crack. By 2016, white nationalism had become a glaring presence in the political mainstream, and Derek was ready to confront the damage he had done. Built on extensive, wide-ranging interviews with Derek, his father Don Black, and many other people, Rising Out of Hatred traces Derek’s painful but ultimately profound evolution, and explores the enormous ramifications of his decision to publicly denounce white nationalism in an open letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2013. Saslow’s next book is Voices from the Pandemic, drawn from his ongoing oral history project for The Washington Post of the same name. Collected from interviews with a cross-section of Americans, Voices from the Pandemic documents a country struggling in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. From the first ominous stirrings of COVID-19, Saslow began interviewing a cross-section of Americans, capturing their experiences in real time: An overwhelmed coroner in rural Georgia; a grocery store owner feeding his neighborhood for free in locked-down New Orleans; rural citizens adamant that the whole thing is a hoax, and retail workers attacked for asking people to wear masks; patients struggling to breathe and doctors desperately trying to save them. Through these conversations Saslow reveals a kaleidoscopic picture of a people dealing with the unimaginable. These deeply personal accounts, showing Americans at their worst and at their resilient best, was recognized with a George Polk Award for Oral History, the first time that category has been awarded. Voices from the Pandemic is forthcoming in September 2021. Saslow won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for a yearlong series of stories about food stamps and hunger in the United States. Collected into the book American Hunger, his stories were praised as “unsettling and nuanced…forcing readers to grapple with issues of poverty and dependency.” Saslow was also a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing. “The Lonely Quiet,” Saslow’s intimate, devastating portrait of parents whose first-grader was murdered at Sandy Hook in 2012, explores both staggering loss and the determination to wrest something meaningful from that loss. In 2016’s “How’s Amanda?“, he profiled a mother trying to support her adult daughter’s recovery from opioid addiction; he co-wrote the script for the film adaptation, Four Good Days, starring Glenn Close and Mila Kunis, a film that “preserves the story’s power” (The New York Times). As The Washington Post puts it, “Saslow’s story captured that rawness and power…. [The film] hurts where it should, yet lands with a touch of hope.” Saslow’s first book is also concerned with untold American stories and the complex ways we understand our leaders. Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President, grew out of Saslow’s fascination with President Obama’s daily habit of reading ten letters he had received from Americans. By turns angry, optimistic, and moving, these letters—addressed from “Dear Mr. President” to “Dear Jackass” —serve as Saslow’s lens through which to understand who we are as Americans. David Maraniss, who has written biographies of both Obama and Bill Clinton, calls Ten Letters “a luminous book.” Saslow is a longtime staff writer for The Washington Post, where he was initially a sportswriter. He covered the 2008 presidential campaign as well as President Obama’s life in the White House. Four of his stories have been anthologized in Best American Sportswriting, and he is an occasional contributor to ESPN The Magazine. Saslow speaks on the role of journalism in highlighting social and public health issues, the craft of longform journalism, the human impacts of public policy, and the importance of civility and radical inclusion. He was the T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor of Journalism at the University of Montana, and he has spoken at Princeton, Syracuse University, UNC Wilmington, UVA, Northwestern, USC, and elsewhere. In 2011, Saslow cofounded Press Pass Mentors, a writing-focused nonprofit for underrepresented high school students in the Washington, DC area A graduate of Syracuse University, Saslow is the winner of two George Polk Awards, a PEN Literary Award, a James Beard Award, and other honors. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and children. For more information on Eli Saslow, please visit him on Twitter and at eli-saslow.com, or explore his page on The Washington Post. It’s easy to find a gym to keep your body healthy, but what about your brain? At Humanities North Dakota we create classes and events that are like group fitness for your mind. Join in the exercise of ideas by becoming a member and turn your gray matter into what matters.