Richard Rothstein: Color Of Law

Richard Rothstein is a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and a Senior Fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He is the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, which recovers a forgotten history of how federal, state, and local policy explicitly segregated metropolitan areas nationwide, creating racially homogenous neighborhoods in patterns that violate the Constitution and require…

Reginald Bell: Black Slave Owners

Reginald L. Bell is a Professor of Management in the College of Business at Prairie View A&M University. Bell received his PhD in Business Education from the University of Missouri at Columbia. Bell writes mostly in the management communication area, which is his research focus. Bell has more than 80 articles published in peer reviewed journals and trade publications. He is the author, with Jeanette S. Martin, of three books on Managerial Communication. Dr. Bell discusses his article…

Reece Jones: Immigration as Racial Exclusion

Reece Jones is Professor and Chair, Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. Professor Reece Jones discusses his book, White Borders. Tracing the connections between the Chinese Exclusion laws of the 1880s, the “Keep America American” nativism of the 1920s, and the “Build the Wall” chants of the 2016, Prof. Jones makes the case that American Immigration policy has always been and remains racially motivated. Looking at the scholars and politicians who used…

Rebecca Grant: Pregnancy in America

Journalist Rebecca Grant author of "Birth: Three Mothers, Nine Months, and Pregnancy in America" discusses her book. She describes the current state of maternal care in America, how midwifery factored into early American birth care, and how the rise of doulas can minimize harm during pregnancy and birth. Racial, social, and economic roadblocks create a system in maternal health defined in part by discrimination, judgment, and disparate treatment. But while things can seem desperate,…

Rebecca Grant: Inside the Abortion Underground 

Rebecca Grant discusses her book, Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive Rights. Grant traces the reproductive freedom movement from feminist organizing before Roe through the seismic impact of Dobbs. The stories in Access span four continents, tracing strategies across generations and borders. Working above ground, underground, and in legal gray areas, these activists helped people travel across state lines for care, established telehealth practices,…

Randolph McLaughlin: Slavery in the Virginia Colony

Prior to joining the Pace Law School faculty in 1988, Professor McLaughlin was an attorney associated with Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, with whom he did litigation and labor law work. In 1978, he began his legal career at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil rights/civil liberties legal organization in New York City. For eight years he worked side by side with the renowned civil rights attorney William Kunstler fighting for the rights of activists and the communities across the…

Randall Balmer: Race and the Religious Right

Randall Balmer, the John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College, is the author of more than a dozen books. Professor Balmer discusses his book BAD FAITH: RACE AND THE RISE OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT. Professor Balmer debunks the myth that the Religious Right formed around opposition to Abortion. Instead, he finds that the movement coalesced around de-segregation of white's only Religious Universities. As the religious right fought to keep their white only segregation academies,…

Rana Hogarth: Slavery and Medicine

Professor Hogarth discusses her research into how the professionalization of medicine and the production of scientific knowledge in the Americas was bound up with the making of race. We talk about her first book, "Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840" and how white physicians defined blackness as a medically significant marker of difference in slave societies of the American Atlantic. And the legacy slave bodies had on the foundations of…

Philip Reichel: Slave Patrols: Origins of the Police

During his more than 45 years in academia, Professor Reichel has received awards for teaching, advising, service, and scholarship. He is the author of several textbooks and has authored or co-authored more than forty articles and book chapters. His areas of expertise include comparative justice systems, transnational crime generally, and human trafficking more specifically. Professor Reichel discusses his articles "Southern slave patrols as a transitional police type" and "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…

Paul Finkelman: Slavery and the Supreme Court

Paul Finkelman, the Chancellor of Gratz College, is the author of more than 100 law review articles, 100 other scholarly articles and more than fifty books. He is a specialist on slavery, civil rights and race relations, African American history, American Constitutional and legal history, the American Civil War, religious liberty, the history of religion in the U.S., American Jewish history, and legal issues surrounding baseball. The United States Supreme Court has quoted and cited his work in…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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.

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 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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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

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…