There’s a push these days to inject political discourse with a heavy dose of civility. Best-selling author and social commentator Roxane Gay calls that a pipedream. She spoke recently to KPBS’s Amita Sharma about why civility is unattainable, and actually shouldn’t even be a goal, in today’s political environment.

Roxane, you write that civility, this idea that there is a perfect, polite way to communicate about sociopolitical differences, is a fantasy. Why is it a fantasy?

Roxane Gay : It's a fantasy because people are human, and when we are passionate about certain things, when we are committed to our beliefs, the idea that it's always going to be easy to talk about them and that it's always going to be a well-mannered exchange of ideas is really just that, a fantasy. It's this idea

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