Notes from America with Kai Wright

How NYC’s first Black mayor tried to balance concerns about public safety with demands for a more accountable police force -- and the violent resistance he faced from the police union. Under the Dinkins administration, the crime rate declined, but his complex relationship with the New York Police Department - which grew in size under his tenure - often overshadows his legacy. As voting is underway...

Ibram X. Kendi reflects on a shifting political culture -- and the fierce backlash against it. Plus, a remembrance of the 1921 Tulsa massacre.  With five best-selling books, including   How to Be an Antiracist   and   Four Hundred Souls ,   Kendi   has been at the center of the nation’s racial reckoning over the past year. He talks with Kai about the ideas people have found most challenging, and a...

Jazz pianist Jason Moran brings us an exploration into the life and work of James Reese Europe and how the infamous 369th Infantry Regiment - also known as the Harlem Hellfighters - crossed racial lines and brought jazz to Europe. Joe Young of New York Public Radio talks about how using music as a service member informed his own patriotism Companion listening for this episode: Juneteenth, an Unfin...

New Yorkers reacted to George Floyd’s murder with mass protests demanding police accountability. NYPD met them with targeted violence and abuse. On June 4, 2020, a few hundred people gathered in the South Bronx neighborhood of Mott Haven to protest the murder of George Floyd. They were met with overwhelming force -- in an event that has come to represent NYPD’s steadfast refusal to accept public s...

We’re finally back in the streets -- but are we ready to reimagine how we share public space? This week, a trip through the century-long fight between cars, bikes, and people. Kai Wright takes us on a   bike tour   across Brooklyn - alongside   Streetsblog New York   reporter   Dave Colon   - to survey the ways in which inequity is built into the blacktop.   Former New York City Traffic Commission...

We failed her long before the cops killed her. We’re failing thousands more children like her now. In this bonus episode, we meet one of those girls. Girls often land in detention because they have experienced some form of trauma: abusive families, bad experiences in the foster care system, and especially sexual abuse. Desiree is a young woman who has bounced between foster care, detention centers...

Erased from history. Ignored in public policy. This Mother’s Day, we ask how to truly value “motherwork.” Plus: The story of one “woke birth.” Gates scholar and author Anna Malaika Tubbs   encourages each of us to reimagine our relationships with motherhood and challenge the erasure of mothering figures - starting in the past. Her book,   The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, J...

History suggests we shouldn’t laugh off what’s happening in right wing media right now. Plus, profiting off of racism is a business model as old as the news. Nicole Hemmer, an associate research scholar at Columbia University and author of   Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics , explains how right wing media serves -- and surrounds -- its audienc...

The answer isn’t simple, but it’s time to ask. Listeners weigh in with stories of their own efforts to solve problems with and without cops. Community organizer and educator   Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele   joins callers as we reimagine a world without policing, and shares his own stories from decades of police reform activism in New York City. Plus,   Dr. Jameta Nicole Barlow , a psychologist, public...

A retired NYPD detective says the force’s stubborn, insular culture was built to last. And Elie Mystal explains a 1989 Supreme Court ruling that made killing “reasonable.” Armed with the lessons from a 20-year-long career in law enforcement, retired NYPD Detective Marq Claxton talks about the police mindset and how a badge never shielded him from the fear that so many Black Americans carry everyda...

How did Americans come to think so poorly of government? And how did Joe Biden come to be the first modern president who’s even tried to change our minds?  Kai talks with three change-makers about the role of government in our lives. Activist   Mari Copeny   a.k.a. “Little Miss Flint” recounts how a letter that she sent as an elementary school student brought national attention to a public health...

A gun-toting Black Power advocate was made principal of a Marin County, California school during efforts to desegregate 50 years ago. As they try again, we recount his radical legacy. As the Sausalito Marin City School District continues to grapple with school desegregation, Reporter   Marianne McCune   brings us the sequel -- and the prequel -- to “ Two Schools in Marin County ”. She takes us bac...

Andrew Cuomo’s just the latest. Why is masculinity so often conflated with domination? And how do we separate the two? Kai turns to a historian and to a novelist for answers.  Linda Hirschman, author of   Reckoning: The Epic Battle Against Sexual Abuse and Harassment , tells the story of how a small group of women in a room in Ithaca, New York, came up with two words that attempted to change the l...

We’ve been here before: A time of national stress, Asian Americans made into scapegoats, and violence follows. The community saw it coming. So why didn’t everybody else? A mass shooting in Atlanta follows a year of warnings from Asian Americans who have said they do not feel safe. But the violence has forced to the surface old questions about where Asian Americans sit in our nation’s maddening rac...

More than half a million Americans - our family, friends, neighbors, loved ones - have lost their lives to the virus over the past year and our collective grief continues to compound, but communities have come together in remarkable ways to take care of themselves. Grammy-winning singer and songwriter   Gregory Porter   checks in with us on the first anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic to talk ab...

As Amazon workers conclude a historic unionization drive, we consider the history of collective action -- and the struggle to shield our humanity from the demands of productivity.  Labor journalist and   Type Media Center   reporting fellow   Sarah Jaffe   breaks down the history of workplace organizing at Amazon and in the Black South. And she talks about her new book, “ Work Won’t Love You Back:...

On December 4th of 1969, Fred Hampton -- the 21-year-old chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party -- was shot dead in his sleep during a raid by Chicago police, but decades of investigation into his death revealed an even more insidious plot.  Actor Daniel Kaluuya -- known for his roles in “ Get Out ” and “ Queen & Slim ” -- portrays Hampton in the new film, “ Judas and the Black Messiah ,” wh...

A cop in Westchester, NY, was disturbed by what he saw as corruption. He started recording his colleagues -- and revealed how we’re all still living with the excess of the war on drugs. Following months of investigation into allegations of police corruption in Mount Vernon, reporter   George Joseph   of WNYC’s   Race & Justice Unit   brings us a story about unchecked power, policing in communities...

Our Future of Black History series concludes with conversations about self-expression. Because when you carry a collective history in your identity, it can be hard to find yourself.  We reflect on the life, language and legacy of renowned writer   Zora Neale Hurston   with   Bernice McFadden , a novelist and contributor to the new anthology,   Four Hundred Souls: A Community History Of African Ame...

People are excited to replace Andrew Jackson’s face with an abolitionist hero. But Brittney Cooper argues not all honorifics are the same. The Biden Treasury Department has   announced   that efforts to put abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s portrait -- in place of President Andrew Jackson -- on the face of the twenty dollar bill will resume. It represents an effort to celebrate her and “reflect the hi...

The Senate’s trial and acquittal of Donald Trump left many with mixed emotions. But did it move us any closer to a reckoning with the worst of America’s political culture?  Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Blight returns to the show to help Kai put the trial in historical context. Blight has warned that the former president is trying to create a Confederate-style Lost Cause mythology. So whe...

Cultural historian  Saidiya Hartman  introduces Kai to the young women whose radical lives were obscured by respectability politics, in the second installment of our Future of Black History series.  The  MacArthur fellow is the   author of “ Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals ,” which   offers an intimate look into...

We’ve got complicated relationships with this annual celebration -- from joy to frustration. So to launch our Future of Black History series, we ask how it began and what it can be. Producer   Veralyn Williams   invites us into a lively conversation about her annual Black History Month parties -- before COVID-19 social distancing was imposed -- with some friends of the show.  Then,   Dr. Pero Dagb...

Kai checks in with poet Jericho Brown, historian Kidada Williams, and listeners as we all try to transition out of the Trump presidency.  Jericho Brown , recipient of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, reads his new work ‘ Inaugural ,’ and reflects upon the power of our words - political rhetoric and prose alike - to strengthen communities. Professor and historian   Dr. Kidada E. Williams   refle...

Historian Timothy Snyder offers lessons on what could happen if those who enabled the attack on our democracy don’t face consequences.  President Biden was just inaugurated and many Americans are eager to turn the page into a new era. But many are still processing the January 7th U.S. Capitol riot. In this segment from our colleagues at   The Brian Lehrer Show ,   Timothy  Snyder , professor of hi...