A guest on NPR’s show Fresh Air promoted the idea that the desire to be thin stems from white supremacy while discussing how parents should communicate weight with their children.

Journalist Virginia Sole-Smith appeared on the show on Tuesday to discuss her new book Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture which includes the theory that fat phobia can be traced back to the end of slavery in the US.

Her argument is that when slavery was abolished and African Americans started gaining rights, white supremacists sought to maintain old inequalities by demonizing black bodies and glamorizing thinness.