#RaceClass

University of Mississippi professor James (JT) Thomas joined the #RaceClass Podcast for a convesation about whiteness, teaching sociology in a deep red state, and glimpses of the impossible in Mississippi. We also explore how Du Bois can help us understand the "Souls of Jewish Folks" and what it's like to grow up on both sides of color line in Kansas City.

Arnie and Jon discuss Trump's plan to leverage the IRS to resegregate higher education. The effort echoes Christopher Rufo's call for the Trump administration to "industrialize" its assault on higher education by exerting "existential terror" on the entire sector. In real respects, the proposed IRS rule could advance Trump's campaign to push Black and brown students out of higher education and ent...

UC Berkeley Law Professor Russell Robinson joins for deep dive into the Trump administration's war on Blackness, civil rights and the prospect of multiracial democracy. We explore how courts and institutions will respond to our "upside down moment" in which the federal agencies created to protect civil rights are led by individuals & organizations nostalgic for the racial and gender hierarchies th...

Sociologist Rahim Kurwa discusses his new book "Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing." The book documents decades of antiblack racism and white supremacy in the Antelope Valley -- Los Angeles County's northern outpost. Professor Kurwa traces the Antelope Valley's evolution from a white segregated postwar suburb to a destination for individuals priced, policed, and evicted out...

"We openly support the assassination of basically every elected Democrat in New Hampshire." So posted the New Hampshire Libertarian Party on X earlier this week. Arnie and Jon discuss how the likely person behind that post is embedded within the fabric of NH's rightwing ecosystem extending to the state's Republican Party. New Hampshire's also become home for Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who apparently...

German historian Thomas Zimmer joins the #RaceClass Podcast for a deep dive into AfD (Germany's neo-Nazi party), the links that bind AfD and MAGA, and what looking to Germany can teach us about the United States. We discuss the broad failure of liberal and centrist scholars and institutions to deliver an analysis or politics that attends to racism, patriarchy and other organizing forces that shape...

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig joins the #RaceClass Podcast for a wide ranging conversation about familial ancestry, the Jason Arday tragedy, Tyler Austin Harper's appeal to white liberals, Jon's former torts professor turned President of Columbia university and what it means to lead under authoritarianism. We also dig into Julian's blog Cloaking Inequity and the ongoing demand for university administr...

Arnie and Jon discuss how the Trump regime is leveraging accreditation to make universities heel. The gambit traces straight to Project 2025 and rightwing activist Christopher Rufo, who explained to the New York Times the plan to use federal funding as a weapon to exert "existential terror" on every university that refuses to fall in line with their anti-democratic agenda. Shame on the ABA Legal C...

Environmental law scholars Carmen G. Gonzalez and Rebecca Bratspies join the #RaceClass Podcast to discuss their new teaching guide: Teaching Environmental Law in Context. Their guide offers a corrective to the traditional environmental law course that disconnects students from the power dynamics, structural racism and local politics that animate today's most pressing environmental fights. We also...

Why is Texas' GOP so scared to educate their own students? Jon & Arnie discuss the rising repression across Texas' public universities. The Texas state legislature, with help from handpicked rightwing administrators, is systematically undoing the decades of work that cultivated world class higher education in the state. At Texas A&M, administrators are scanning syllabi to cancel classes and conten...

"Everyone committed to democracy, intellectual freedom, and the rule of law should be alarmed at what is happening--and be prepared to act." That call came from Professor Jafari Sinclaire Allen in a recent piece for The Nation that catalogued MAGA's ever-escalating assault on Black studies. Jon and Arnie use the piece as a jumping off point to discuss why home-grown authoritarians from Florida to...

Justice Clarence Thomas doesn't know what "diversity" means. UC Berkeley Law Professor David Oppenheimer does. David joined the #RaceClass Podcast to discuss his new book "The Diversity Principle." The book traces the diversity principle's long and circuitous (and often overlooked) history -- one that weaves through John and Harriet Mill, the legendary Pauli Murray, and fights for academic freedom...

SMU Law Professor Carliss Chatman joined the #RaceClass podcast to discuss DEI "rollbacks" and the rise of "reverse racism" lawsuits from private actors and the Trump administration. We do a deep dive into Section 1981 and the myth of "free markets" -- with a specific nod to "white economic comfort," a term Professor Chatman coined to capture a powerful dyanmic that continues to drive who can ente...

Jon and Arnie discuss the Justice Department's decision to indict the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on fraud charges related to its use of informants to infiltrate extremist hate groups. The indictment turns the DOJ upside down; rather than prosecute the Klan, the DOJ is targeting organizations that help combat the Klan. It might sound absurd, but it is a predictable consequence of a federal...

In this special cross-posted episode, Jon joins Yvette Borja and the Radio Cachimbona podcast to discuss affirmative action. We spend much of the episode outlining the many many (did we say many?) ways that institutions may continue to intentionally build racially equitable, diverse and inclusion institutions -- all consistent with federal antidiscrimination law. Lots of the conversation draws on...

Chandra Taylor-Sawyer joined the #RaceClass Podcast to discuss the fight for environmental justice. Chandra is a Senior Attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and leads its Environmental Justice Initiative. For nearly two decades, she has worked to confront the disproportionate burden of pollution borne by communities of color and low-wealth neighborhoods across the South. We exp...

Jon and Arnie discuss the many segregationist and white supremacist dimensions of the Trump administration’s war on multiracial democracy. To map the assault on equality and democracy, we engage a recent report from the African American Policy Forum titled: “Antiblackness is the Point: Racism, Misogyny, and Donald Trump’s Assault on Equal Opportunity.” The AAPF report connects today’s racial fasci...

UC Davis Law Professor Brian Soucek joined the #RaceClass Podcast to discuss his new book: "The Opinionated University: Academic Freedom, Diversity, and the Myth of Neutrality in American Higher Education." Brian is one of the most thoughtful folks out there when it comes to grappling with - and injecting quite a bit of sense into - the most contentious and ongoing debates about academic freedom,...

Education Scholar Julie Park joins the #RaceClass Podcast to discuss her new book: "Race, Class and Affirmative Action: College Admissions in a New Era." It's hard to imagine a more timely book that takes on so many enduring questions regarding race and class in university admissions. We break down the good, bad, and oh so very ugly new frontier of college admissions following SFFA v. Harvard and...

Dr. Evelyn Carter joins the #RaceClass Podcast to discuss her new book: "Was That Racist? How to Detect, Interrupt and Unlearn Bias in Everyday Life." Dr. Carter is close friend of the Pod and one of the smartest folks out there when it comes to understanding how racism manifests and how institutions can cultivate equitable and inclusive environments. We explore a range of topics from the racial a...

Jon and Arnie chat about Ta-Nehisi Coate’s observation that “Trump has clarified an inconvenient fact—the culture war is an actual war.” The actual war manifests physically in ICE, the $85 billion entity that gleefully profiles, terrorizes and executes people across the United States. The actual war is also the anti-Black racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and anti-LGBTQ bigotry that...

As part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Congress created the little-known Community Relations Service (CRS). CRS has since become known as "America's Peacemakers" -- a nod to this small federal agency's outsized role resolving conflicts and restoring peaceful relations in American communities struggling with civil rights violations and hate crimes. In this special episode, former CRS associate direc...

Boston University Law Professor Steven Dean joins the #RaceClass Podcast to discuss his new book: "Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: the Story of Global Jim Crow." Our conversation explores how international tax law was designed to serve white nations and harm Black nations following decolonization in the mid-20th century. Professor Dean also reflects on his experiences as a Black man i...

Fordham Law School professor Atinuke Adediran joins the #RaceClass Pod to discuss her new book "Disclosureland: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress." Against the backdrop of Trump's war on civil rights, Professor Adediran's book explores the brief tidal of wave of corporate commitments to antiracism that followed 2020's global protests for racial justice. We discuss what it means to be B...

Arnie and Jon discuss JD Vance’s white supremacist screed at last week’s Turning Point USA conference “AmericaFest.” Along with remarks defending racist speech, Vance proclaimed that “in the United States of America you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.” As others have observed, this language invokes white supremacist talking points from the past century – including leading southern...