Race, according to activist and writer Scot Nakagawa, was an idea created originally to justify the enslavement of a people, and has displayed pernicious staying power in the centuries since. That’s why, as Nakagawa explains in this video with Laura Flanders, he believes that his liberation and the liberation of all people of color in the United States is tied to the liberation of African-Americans. For Nakagawa, anti-black racism is “the fulcrum of white supremacy.”

Watch the full conversation at GRITtv.org, and read more from Nakagawa at his blog, RaceFiles.

—Zoë Schlanger