Image Source: Ijeoma Oluo’s book is out and you should read it!
This week we want to share with you two recent Friday Roundtables that Minnesota Public Radio’s Kerri Miller hosted; both deal with how we talk about race, racism, whiteness, anti-blackness, etc. We appreciate that both conversations offered examples of how we refine our vocabularies as we think through social structures, processes, and formations as well as how one can engage fruitfully with disagreement.
The first, “Was Ta-Nahesi Coates right to call Donald Trump ‘The First White President’?,” provides a thoughtful discussion around Coates’ work. It includes our fabulous Carleton colleague, Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly, who asks the whole group to nuance the term “white supremacy” and to consider what language really helps us name structural inequities.
The second, “How to talk about racism,” centers around Dr. Ted Thornhill’s “White Racism” class at Florida Gulf Coast University. Because many of the questions from listeners focus on how/why White people might not want to engage in discussions about racism, the conversation works through a number of strategies for how to name and discuss racism.
Both of these conversations left us feeling better educated, better equipped, and with a new appreciation for Kerri Miller who discusses openly how she is working on learning about her racial privilege.
(Note: you can find both of these discussions in your podcast app, under MPR News with Kerri Miller.)
Down With Brown 