Violence is a central element of American history—and it’s often been used in the service of maintaining white supremacy. Today on the show, Wednesday host Ali Muldrow hosts a roundtable discussion with WBEZ reporter Odette Yousef and history professor Ashley Howard about their reactions to the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, the existential […]
The Sinking Middle Class
The concept of the middle class has a unique hold on the American imagination—for years, it’s been the central talking point of both dominant political parties. But what is this middle class and what does it really mean to “save” it? Save it from what? From whom? Today on the show, Allen explores these questions […]
Paul Robeson’s Art and Politics
Paul Robeson was an acclaimed singer, actor, and athlete best known for films like The Emperor Jones (1933) and Show Boat (1936). He was also a political activist with communist sympathies, leading to his being blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Today on the show, we learn more about Paul Robeson’s amazing story with comic artist […]
Terrorcraft and the Legacy of 9/11 with Deepa Kumar
As we approach the nineteenth anniversary of 9/11, today we turn our attention to the five-trillion-dollar “war on terror” and the construction the racialized terrorist in the American imagination with professor Deepa Kumar, author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire. Deepa Kumar is a professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, where […]
The History of Racism in the Midwest
There are myths that persist about the Midwest: that it’s just a “naturally” white space, that Black folks haven’t lived here that long, that it doesn’t have the same histories of slavery, racism, and violence as the South. Last week, in the wake of police violence and white vigilantism in Kenosha, Smithsonian Magazine published an […]
Lessons from James Baldwin’s America
The throughline of American history is the “value gap,” or the belief that white people matter more than others, argues Eddie S. Glaude Jr, and this belief disfigures our character and distorts who we purport to be. Today, Dr. Glaude joins Allen on the show to talk about our current racial and political moment and […]
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