#RaceClass

“Voting rights right now is precarious and leaves open the door for undoing the generations of work to protect our young and fragile multiracial democracy.” That's the upshot from my conversation with Professor Atiba Ellis, a national voting rights expert and law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. The conversation could not be more timely. This week in California, the Trum...

Washburn University law professor Rory Bahadur joins the #RaceClass Podcast to discuss his new book: A Critical Race Approach to Systemic Inequity. We explore Professor Bahadur's own racial education, his approach to analyzing racism in America, how human nature reproduces racism and the myths that corrupt our collective ability to understand the American project.

Professor Charisse Burden-Stelly, aka Dr. CBS, joins #RaceClass for a wide ranging conversation about the election of Zohran Mamdani, the legacy of Black Studies, resistance in the age of Trump, and her new book Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States.

As Thanksgiving and its enduring mythologies approach, Jon and Arnie discuss the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign to evangelize white supremacy in the United States and abroad. Invoking Trump’s anti-DEI Executive Orders, federal officials purged a “report on missing and murdered Native Americans” while claiming “countries with diversity policies are infringing human rights.” The cooptation...

Dr. Jennifer Gomez, an Associate Professor at the Boston University School of Social Work, joins the #RaceClass Podcast to discuss her award winning book: "The Cultural Betrayal of Black Women & Girls." Dr. Gomez walks us through the genesis and evolution of her scholarship on cultural trauma and sexual violence -- specifically with reference to the subject position of Black women and girls. Join...

In this episode, Jon shares why he traveled to Washington, D.C. for a teach-in at the Smithsonian with fellow scholars, artists, activists, podcasters and others. The teach-in was a collaboration of two historical podcasts, This Day and The Memory Palace, and drew inspiration from the teach-ins that academics organized in the 1960s to deepen and support anti-war movements across the country. Jon &...

"Latine" or "Latinx"? Race or ethnicity? English Language Learner or Emergent Bilingual? UCLA Professor Laura Chavez-Moreno joins #RaceClass to discuss her new book "How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America." We explore how schools teach about race implicitly and explicitly; making Latinidad; and racialization's consequences. We also hit on the escalating ICE raids terrorizi...

We discuss Democratic leadership’s inexcusable failure to speak honestly about and to denounce the racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, anti-LGBTQ bigotry and Christian Nationalism that animated Charlie Kirk’s ideology and continues to undergird the organizations he built. It should be easy to express empathy and denounce political violence without engaging in revisionist myth making that normalizes...

Arnie and Jon discuss how the Trump regime sees racism as both an end goal and a means to realize a whole slew of fascist desires. As to the end, we are witnessing an unrelenting campaign to entrench a racial order defined by white supremacist ideals that trace to antebellum America. The erection of confederate monuments, the erasure of Black history, the claim that “race is biological,” and the l...

In this episode, Jon and Arnie chat more about the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on Harvard University. We highlight some complexities to this dynamic. On the one hand, Harvard is the current bulwark against Trump’s authoritarian effort to control every aspect of every university in the country. For this reason, Harvard’s fight is everyone’s fight. On the other hand, Harvard enabled Trump...

Last week, Harvard University started fighting back against Trump's assault on higher ed. In this episode of #RaceClass, Jon and Arnie discuss why immediate praise for Harvard is premature. To deserve our praise, Harvard needs to do more than defend itself. It needs to leverage its near $60 billion endowment to defend all universities against unlawful federal interference. Harvard need not do it a...

We recorded about twelve hours after plainclothes federal officers abducted a Tufts University graduate student off the street in Somerville, MA. The student's apparent "transgression"? Writing an op-ed in Tufts' student newspaper advocating for Tufts to divest from Israel. To understand how we've reached this moment, we start to unpack how President Trump is wielding both anti-Black racism and an...

In this episode, Arnie and Jon explore why so many universities have voluntarily scrubbed websites and shuttered still lawful and mission critical diversity, equity and inclusion programs. We also discuss why President Trump's anti-DEI measures are themselves legally suspect. Part of the reason is that Trump's war on DEI rests on, and reinforces, the morally repugnant and empirically bankrupt noti...

In this episode, we discuss how Trump’s first week in office reflects what we already knew. Racism remains one of Trump’s favorite political tactics. He’ll use it to demean and delegitimize political opponents, and to distract from a separate pillar of his administration: massive self-dealing. As always, Florida stands out as a model for how opportunistic politicians can leverage racism, sexism an...

In this episode, the #RaceClass Podcast explores Trump’s relationship with higher education. On the one hand, independent universities present a threat to Trump and his authoritarian ambitions. On the other hand, universities can aid Trump by voluntarily ceding power or otherwise providing cover for his antidemocratic aims. To preview how Trump might try to break and capture the nation’s universit...

We discuss “Cancer Alley,” an 85-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that contains one of the largest concentrations of fossil fuel and petrochemical operations in the Western Hemisphere. These facilities expose nearby residents, who are disproportionately Black, to toxic pollutants and “severe health harms including elevated burdens and risks of cancer, reproductive, maternal, and ne...

[This episode first aired as a live virtual panel on September 27, 2024.] Since the summer of 2020, rightwing officials and organizations have orchestrated a coordinated campaign to redefine antiracism as the new racism. Early iterations of this campaign presented a caricature of Critical Race Theory to discredit modest antiracist reforms and to limit classroom conversations about racism, bias, an...

In a surprising turn of events, a federal judge recently upheld most of Oklahoma’s HB 1775, a law widely perceived as banning Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the state. However, the ruling delivered an ironic twist: Judge Charles Goodwin—a Trump appointee—clarified that the law does not prohibit teaching about race, racism, or related concepts like implicit bias. Instead, it compels such instruction...

Following the 2020-21 school year, the Sullivan County (TN) school board fired Matthew Hawn, a high school social studies teacher. As was reported at the time, the School Board punished Mr. Hawn after he assigned his Contemporary Issues class a Ta-Nehisi Coates article and shared a spoken word poem by Kyla Jenee Lacey. On Monday, after nearly three years, Mr. Hawn had his first opportunity to chal...

Dr. James Whitfield joined the #RaceClass Podcast for a wide ranging conversation about his racial education as a multi-racial child in west Texas; the hostile environment teachers and students face in Texas today; and reasons for optimism even in oppressive times. Dr. Whitfield is an award-winning education advocate centered on creating safe, nurturing, and equitable learning environments which,...

In this episode, Dr. OiYan Poon joins #RaceClass to discuss her new book “Asian American is Not a Color: Conversations on Race, Affirmative Action and Family.” Dr. Poon is a distinguished social scientist and race scholar. In a wide ranging conversation, Dr. Poon explores her own racial education as child in western, MA; how the term “Asian American” originated within the broader Civil Rights Move...

It has been a long semester, and we are tired. In this episode, Jon and Arnie connect lots of dots to explore the many ways race shapes contemporary fights in American society. From the Governor of Alabama dog whistling at the UAW, to pundits scolding university presidents who “negotiate” with student protesters, to GOP leaders weaponizing antisemitism for political gain, race is doing work—one wa...

On Wednesday Apr. 24, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would tour Columbia University and host a news conference to discuss “the troubling rise of virulent antisemitism on America’s college campuses.” Just ten days’ prior, Johnson appeared alongside Donald Trump for a press conference that “echoed language from the racist [and antisemitic] great replacement theory.” With his pivot to Columb...

One increasingly encounters the claim that antisemitism is on the rise and progressive politics are to blame. For anyone familiar with Christopher Rufo’s unapologetic smear campaigns against CRT and DEI, there is a reflex to dismiss both claims as somewhat obvious propaganda. That reflex makes sense, but it invites two risks: one analytical, one political. The analytical risk entails discounting a...

In this episode, we explore two things that Brown v. Board of Education and DEI have in common. The first is the story we know well. Both Brown and DEI have been openly vilified by the Right—a history that spans the Southern Manifesto to an ongoing assault on racial diversity. The second is the story that’s almost never told. The Supreme Court’s most celebrated decision and contemporary efforts to...