Kevin M. Schultz: Why Everyone Hates White Liberals

Kevin M. Schultz discusses his book Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals). In it Schultz lays out some of the objections to liberals—ineffective, spineless, judgmental, authoritarian—placing these objections in a historical frame. It turns out that how one defines a “white liberal” is less a reflection of reality and more a Rorschach test revealing one's own political anxieties. Kevin M. Schultz is professor and chair of history at the University of Illinois…

Kevin Waite: Transcontinental Ambitions of the American South

Kevin Waite is an assistant professor at Durham University in the United Kingdom. Professor Waite discusses his book, West of Slavery: the Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire. He explains his thesis that the Southern Slave States had ambitions and plans to extend slavery across the West. Prof. Waite explains how railroads, camels, and the hope for new international markets all played a part in the coming of the Civil War.

Khiara M. Bridges: Race and the Roberts Court

Khiara M. Bridges has written many articles concerning race, class, reproductive rights, and the intersection of the three. Today’s episode focus on her 2022 Harvard Law Review article, “Race in the Roberts Court”. Professor Bridges talks about Dobbs, Bruen, and the fate of Affirmative Action in relation to how each uses arguments about black history and freedom in contradictory and problematic ways. The Roberts Court's leans on racial skepticism to up end established precedent. Khiara…

Kidada E. Williams: Surviving Reconstruction

Kidada E. Williams discusses her book, I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction. Professor Williams begins by describing how she elevated and amplified the voices of the survivors of Klu Klux Klan terrorism. Mining Congressional Investigation reports and the Works Progress Administration interviews, the survivors recount the continued terrorism of ex-Confederates and other Southern whites intent upon destroying Freed People's success. Professor…

Kirstine Taylor: Evolution of Southern Criminal Punishment

Kirstine Taylor discusses her book, Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State. Prof. Taylor examines the evolution of southern criminal punishment from Jim Crow to the dawn of mass incarceration, charting this change from chain gangs to private prisons. Kirstine Taylor, Associate Professor of Political Science and Law, Justice & Culture at Ohio University, on her book, Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State. November 14, 2025.

Kirstine Taylor: James Baldwin and Racial Innocence

Kirstine Taylor on her article “Racial Capitalism and the Production of Innocence.” James Baldwin's concept of "racial innocence" has been understood as a matter of practiced unconsciousness about the reality of racism in the United States. Taylor revisits his essays highlighting racial capitalism to show how segregated urban space, racialized labor relationships, and policing contribute to Baldwin's racial innocence. . Kirstine Taylor, Associate Professor of Political…

Lasana Kazembe: Mohonk Conference and Black Education

Lasana Kazembe, discusses his article, “The Steep Edge of a Dark Abyss: Mohonk, White Social Engineers, and Black Education.” Professor Kazembe discusses the key objectives of the First Mohonk Conference on "the Negro Question" and how this built the education standards for Black Americans. Emerging from the Conference sessions and speakers were themes of racial fear, social engineering, and economic exploitation that supported white supremacy rather than black integration. Lasana…

Laura Bieger: Essay as Politics

Laura Bieger is Professor of American Studies, Political Theory and Culture at the University of Groningen, where she co-directs the Research Center for Democratic Culture and Politics. In this interview, Prof. Bieger discusses her essay “The 1619 Project as Aesthetic and Social Practice

Laura Meckler: Shaker Heights History of Integration

Journalist Laura Meckler of the Washington Post discusses her book, Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity. Beginning with a historical overview of the Cleveland suburb and its uncanny ability to propel itself into the national spotlight, Ms. Meckler discusses how the suburb fought segregation and racial covenants to become one of the first integrated communities in Northeast Ohio. The desegregation of Shaker schools has been one of success and challenge, but through the…

Leah Litman : Bad Vibes at the Supreme Court

Leah Litman discusses her book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. In it, she argues that the Supreme Court is no longer practicing law. Rather, it’s running on vibes. And by “vibes,” Litman means legal-ish claims that repackage the politics of conservative grievance and minority rule. Leah Litman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School and is a co-host of Strict Scrutiny, a podcast about the Supreme Court of…

Leoandra Onnie Rogers: How Parents Talked To Their Children About BLM

Leoandra Onnie Rogers, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, discusses her article, “Exploring Whether and How Black and White Parents Talk with Their Children about Race: M(ai)cro Race Conversations About Black Lives Matter.” which presents the results of an online survey conducted in 2020-2021. Professor Rogers details the ways in which white and Black parents spoke to their children about Black Lives Matter. While most parents had conversations about BLM, their methods and…

Lerone Martin: J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI's White Christian Nationalism

Lerone Martin discusses his new book, "The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism." Prof. Martin argues that J. Edgar Hoover molded the FBI after his own personal and deeply held religious beliefs and crafted a culture where FBI Agents were defenders of a certain type of religious faith. Hoover solidified a vision of America that was founded on white Christian values, so that any deviation of politics or thought threatened the…

Leslie Picca: Two Face Racism

Professor Leslie Picca discusses her work, Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage, which examines the racial attitudes and behaviors exhibited by whites in private versus public settings. Prof. Picca explains how simple racial jokes work to maintain dominant racism while offering up an easy out for racists. The creation of these white safe spaces where intolerance and prejudice are elaborated are rarely challenged by other whites, instead the behaviors are excused or dismissed.…

Leslie Schwalm: Civil War and Racial Medicine

Leslie Schwalm discusses her book, "Medicine, Science, and Making Race in Civil War America." Drawing on archives of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, recollections of Civil War doctors and medical, and testimonies from Black Americans, Professor Schwalm exposes the racist ideas the lent authority and prestige to Northern doctor's and other elites.  Leslie Schwalm is a Professor Emeritus of history and gender, women’s, and sexuality studies at the University of Iowa.

Luke Baumgartner: The Violence of the Great Replacement

Luke Baumgartner discusses his paper “Where did the white people go? A thematic analysis of terrorist manifestos inspired by replacement theory.” By delving into the long history of immigration resentments and fears, Baumgartner defines two stages of the imagined "great replacement" grievance. Further, he examined four mass shooter manifestos to demonstrate how this toxic ideology leads to terrorist violence against racial and religious minorities. Luke Baumgartner is a Research…

Manisha Shina: History of Reparations

A historian of the long nineteenth century, her research interests lie specifically in the transnational histories of slavery, abolition, and feminism and the history and legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction. She is currently writing a book on the Reconstruction of American democracy after the Civil War. Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft…

Marcy Dinius: Legacy of David Walker's "Appeal"

Marcy Dinius discusses her book, The Textual Effects of David Walker's "Appeal": Print-Based Activism Against Slavery, Racism, and Discrimination, 1829-1851. David Walker's "Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829-1830)" was one of the first antislavery texts published that openly called for slave self-defense and resistance. Professor Dinius explores how Walker used research and typography to introduce varied levels of readership and understanding to…

Margaret Ellen Newell: Native American Slavery in New England

Professor Margaret Ellen Newell isl professor of history at Ohio State University. Professor Newell discusses her book, Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery, which explores the enslavement of Indians by the English Colonists in New England. Massachusetts became the first English colony to legalize slavery in 1641, and the colonists’ desire for slaves shaped the major New England Indian wars, focusing the conflicts on obtaining captives and…

Marquis Bey: Black Trans Feminism Liberation

Marquis Bey is Professor of Black Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and English, and core faculty in Critical Theory, at Northwestern University. Professor Marquis Bey discusses their book, BLACK TRANS FEMINISM in which they argue that how we define, label, and identify ourselves can be a way to embrace freedom and the liberated possible. First looking at how we are captured by systems and stereotypes when we see ourselves as defined by our race, gender, or sexuality, Dr. Bey sees the…

Matthew Boedy: Seven Mountains Mandate and Turning Point USA

Matthew Boedy is a leading expert on the right-wing political activities of Turning Point USA and its founder Charlie Kirk. He discusses his book, The Seven Mountains Mandate: Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy, in which he details the development of the Christian Nationalist idea of the Seven Mountains and how that became the leading ideology of Turning Point USA. Matthew Boedy is assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of…

Michael Conklin: Public Opinion of Reparations

In this interview we discuss Prof. Conklin's paper An Unhill Battle for Reparationists: A Quantitative Analysis of the Effectiveness of Slavery Reparations Rhetoric. Prof. Conklin walks us through his research on normal citizen's attitudes toward granting or recieving reparations. The findings are often at odds with conventional assumptions.

Michael E Brooks: History of Hate in Ohio

Michael E. Brooks discusses his co-authored book, A History of Hate in Ohio: Then and Now. Ohio’s great history of abolitionism is widely known, but there is also a long history of white supremacist activity. Brooks analyzes the historical origins of white supremacy in Ohio and the emergence of the earliest hate groups, covering the colonial period into the 1970s. Michael E. Brooks is professor of teaching at Bowling Green State University

Michael Hayden: When White Nationalists Move Into Town

Michael Edison Hayden discusses his book, "Strange People on the Hill: How Extremism Tore Apart a Small American Town." When an influential white nationalist group relocated its headquarters to Berkeley Springs, West Viginia, the town reacted in all sorts of ways. Hayden recounts the story of what happened to the white nationalists, the merchants reliant upon tourism, and his personal struggles covering this troubling beat. Michael Edison Hayden is an investigative reporter and a…

Michael Omi and Howard Winant: Racial Formation Theory

Michael Omi and Howard Winant discuss their foundational work, Racial Formation in the United States. Unlike other traditional race theories, in Omi and Winant's view, racial meanings pervade US society, from defining individual racial identities to the structuring of collective political action. Race as a master category, the rise of colorblindness, and how the Right weaponizes civil rights advancements are all discussed. Michael Omi is a Professor Emeritus, Asian American and Asian…

Nakia D. Parker: Slavery in the Chickasaw Nation

Nakia D. Parker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Michigan State University. Professor Nakia Parker discusses her article, "Regarded as an Appendage of His Family”: Slavery, Family, and the Law in Indian Territory." Chattel slavery spread into the Chickasaw Nation, in part, due to the "Civilization Program." How the Chickasaw legalized ownership and kinship is the focus of our discussion.

Nancy Heitzeg: School to Prison Pipeline

Dr. Nancy A. Heitzeg is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Race/Ethnicity Program. Dr. Nancy Heitzeg discusses her research and book "The School to Prison Pipeline: Education, Discipline, and Racialized Double Standards." Dr. Heitzeg touches on police in schools, unfair suspensions, racialized biases, and the emergence of a system of medicalization that is different for white and black children.

Nell Irvin Painter: History of White People

Nell Irvin Painter is the award-winning author of many books, including Sojourner Truth, Southern History Across the Color Line, Creating Black Americans, The History of White People, and Standing at Armageddon. She is currently the Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University. She has a second career as an artist after retirement from Princeton University and lives in Newark, New Jersey. Professor Painter discusses her book, THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE. Prof. Painter…

Olivarius: Disease, Slavery, and Politics in New Orleans

Antebellum New Orleans sat at the heart of America’s slave and cotton kingdoms. But it was also the nation’s "necropolis," with epidemic yellow fever killing thousands each summer and leaving countless more orphaned, widowed, and bereaved. Olivarius shows how this city became stratified between the "acclimated" and "unacclimated," why these immunity labels mattered, and how yellow fever was mobilized by white elites to further divide and exploit the population.…

Pamela Newkirk: Racial Diversity

Pamela Newkirk, PhD, is a journalist, New York University professor, author and multi-disciplinary scholar whose work examines contemporary and historical depictions of African Americans in popular culture. Professor Pamela Newkirk discusses her book, Diversity Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business. She exposes the decades-old practices and attitudes that have made diversity a lucrative business while they fail to realize diversity. We discussed the history of exclusion, the…

Patricia Banks: How Corporate Philanthropy Leversage Black Culture

Patricia A. Banks is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Poetics and Chair and Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Mount Holyoke College. Professor Banks discusses her book, Black Culture Inc.: How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America. By examining how corporate support and giving to Black museums, cultural events, and music festivals, Prof. Banks details the complicated and often fraught relationship created by these gifts. Afropunk, Kool Cigarettes, and Dennys are all…