Diane Negra: Irish Identity in America

Diane Negra is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture at University College Dublin. Professor Diane Negra discusses her most recent scholarship which investigates Irish identity in the United States. She begins with the election of John F. Kennedy with a sense of hopefulness which progressed through the 1980s and 1990s with an explosion of interest in all things Irish. But beginning in the 2000s, Professor Negra locates a growing sense of dread as images of skulls and death begin to…

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…

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.…

Vida Johnson: White Supremicist Police at Jan. 6th

Professor Vida Johnson discusses her 2022 Brooklyn Law Review article, White Supremacy’s Police Siege on the United States Capitol. Professor Johnson details the failures of the Capitol Police, the unsettling involvement of active law enforcement officers in the January 6th Insurrection, and how White Supremacists continue to infiltrate and plague police departments. The difference in police preparation, presence, and intervention between the Jan. 6 and Black Lives Matter protests is instructive…

Fran Shor: White Identity Politics

Francis Shor is an Emeritus Professor of History at Wayne State University. Professor Fran Shor talks about his book, Weaponized Whiteness [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/...] which interrogates the meanings and implications of white supremacy and, more specifically, white identity politics from historical and sociological perspectives. Prof. Shor looks at the history of immigration, slavery, and moments of resistance against White Supremacy. Examining how white people participated in the…

Elizabeth Gillespie McRae: Women of White Supremacy

Elizabeth Gillespie McRae is the Creighton Sossoman Professor of History at Western Carolina University where she also co-directs the Appalachian Oral History Project. Professor Elizabeth Gillespie McRae discusses her book, Mothers of Massive Resistance. We begin with the shocking history of Virgina's Racial Integrity Law which sought to identify citizens attempting to "pass" as white and how this law served to discipline Segregationist ideologies. Next, we look into how women…

Daniel Kilbride: Cannibals, Gorillas, and Racist Travel Tropes

Daniel Kilbride is professor of history and director of the Honors Program at John Carroll University. Professor Daniel Kildride discusses his article, “Cannibals, Gorillas, and the Struggle over Radical Reconstruction.” By examining best selling travel books of explorers and missionaries in Africa the current events of the 1850-1870s take on a new racist tone. How sensational tales of cannibalism and brutality sold books and tickets on the lecture circuit to how Darwin's Origin of the…

Paula Ioanide: Racism's Emotional Economy

Dr. Paula Ioanide is a mother, teacher, scholar, and organizer who strives to counter the social and spiritual ills produced by systemic racism and build new worlds rooted in reparative justice. She is the author of The Emotional Politics of Racism: How Feelings Trump Facts in an Era of Colorblindness and co-editor of the free, open access book, Antiracism Inc.: Why the Way We Talk About Racial Justice Matters. Professor Ioanide discusses her book The Emotional Politics of Racism: How Feelings…

Sang Hea Kil: Covering the Border War

How the news media create crime, race, nation, and the USA-Mexico divide examines border newspaper coverage of the USA-Mexico divide and how the nation and immigration are racially imagined in crime news discourse, where whiteness is associated with order and brownness is associated with disorder in a variety of imaginative, nativist ways. By applying critical discourse analysis methodology to the Los Angeles Times, Arizona Republic, Albuquerque Journal, and Houston Chronicle during a peak epoch…

Alison Skinner-Dorkenoo: The Water We Swim In: An Examination of Systemic Influences on Our Attitudes

This talk will make the case that systemic forms of oppression are maintained and reinforced through subtle patterns of thought and behavior, and present some paths through which those systems can be challenged. Dr. Skinner-Dorkenoo has been an assistant professor at the University of Georgia since the fall of 2019.