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Dismantling the Racism Machine and understanding White Fragility w/ Karen Gaffney and Robin DiAngelo
Part two of our two-part show on Racism featured two educators on Racism and Whiteness in America. How was Racism created? What is Whiteness, why do white people find it so difficult to discuss Racism, and how it is a white problem, not a black or brown problem? And finally, how can we dismantle Racism before it dismantles us?
Listen to audio here!
Reconsidering Race w/ Dr. Joseph L. Graves, Jr. and Dr. Ann J. Morning
ETFF speaks with evolutionary biologist Joseph Graves and sociologist Ann Morning about their essays in the new text, Reconsidering Race: Social Science Perspectives on Racial Categories in the Age of Genomics.
Audio can be heard here!
Host Matthew LaClair interviews Leonard Pitts Jr., a nationally syndicated columnist and novelist. Throughout his 35 year career, he has written on subjects ranging from music to politics, religion to science, race, writing, and more. We touch on all these subjects, with a focus on how interest in facts and critical thinking have declined, with ignorance taking its place.
Audio can be found here!
Whiteness, Racism, and The Economics of Cruelty
Audio Show 1 here!
Audio Show 2 here!
America is a racialized country. Built in part on chattel slavery predicated on a decidedly European model, the hegemonic power exists under the social construct known as Whiteness. If you are of that hegemony – or dominant group – you have access to many of the privileges this society has to offer. Of course there are other hegemonies in place: Male over Female, Straight or Cisgendered folks over LBGT folks, the Upper Class over the so-called Middle Classes – and both of those over the Working Classes and the Poor – Christians over other religious groups, and indeed religious groups over atheist and agnostic ones, and so on.
Over the course of US history, the tensions between those who dominate and are considered the “norm,” and those who are subordinated, has helped shape the culture and subcultures we now see. And this built in, often considered virtuous, hierarchical nature of our society determines the ways which resources are distributed and lives are lived.
In short, wealth leads to power and power leads to more wealth. We currently live in one of the most economically unequal society on the planet, which some argue is just what we should expect from late-stage Capitalism.
Today we will be speaking about what capitalism has wrought, as concerns the majority of the American population, and how being a highly racialized society is a big part of how we got to our current tragic circumstances. We will be speaking with a longtime friend of Equal Time, Tim Wise, and with someone I only recently discovered, Robin DiAngelo. Robin is the author of What Does it Mean to Be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy. Tim’s new book is Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America.
Part two includes excerpts from Dr. Joseph Graves, author of The Race Myth, Peggy McIntosh, and a special segment on ISIS with excerpts from Noam Chomsky.
Considering the Confederate Flag, Part Two
Audio here!
Chasing the Scream!: ETFF Fund Drive special!
Audio here!
This week we are once again asking our listeners and supporters to help WBAI and ETFF stay on the air. This special edition of Equal Time will be a discussion on the War on Drugs policies in the US.
It is now 100 years since drugs were first banned in the United States. On the eve of this centenary, journalist Johann Hari set off on an epic three-year, thirty-thousand-mile journey into the war on drugs. What he found is that more and more people all over the world are beginning to recognize three startling truths: Drugs are not what we think they are. Addiction is not what we think it is. And the drug war has very different motives to the ones we have seen on our TV screens for so long.
So please tune in on Saturday at 2pm and donate to keep this kind of programing alive in the ever-corporatizing mass media market of the U$A. We will be offering Chasing the Scream (the book, and a DVD interview of the author, Johann Hari) as a gift for those who do!
Stephen Eric Bronner on The Bigot: Why Prejudice Persists
Audio here!
What are the conditions which lead to bigotry? How common is bigotry in American society today, and how does it manifest itself in our post civil rights, gay rights, and women’s rights culture? Has the twice elected, first black president helped cool the flames of prejudice and racism, or has it fanned them instead? And how do we challenge bigotry if it is so deeply rooted in many segments of American culture and around the world?
We’ll talk about this and more this week with Stephen Eric Bronner. Bronner is a professor of political science and the Director of Global Relations at the ‘Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights‘ at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He is also the author of over a dozen books including the subject of this show, “The Bigot: Why Prejudice Persists.”
“Dear White America…” w/ Tim Wise
Audio here!
Prominent anti-racist essayist, educator, and author, Tim Wise, joins the Equal Time For Freethought this Saturday with a message for white folks: shape up, because your status as a “majority” is about to be shipped out.
According to estimates, people of color will be the majority in the United States by no later than 2050. The change in demographics is just one of four fronts on which “white normativity,” as Wise calls it, is being challenged. In his latest book, Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority, Wise pens a 153 page letter directly to white Americans (as well as non-whites who subscribe to a destructive ideology of white privilege), that challenges and dismantles the roots of their beliefs.
Wise, who does not “hate white people” as many have claimed, says white folks of today should not assume blame for the racially motivated atrocities of their forefathers, but do have a responsibility to foster a socially just and equal society today.
In this interview, Wise will discuss changes on the other three fronts – political, economic, and cultural – as well as elaborate on points made in his book including how whites’ inability to identify with the pain of black and brown people – in particular, a failure to acknowledge and stop predatory lending practices in communities of color – may have contributed to the spread of high-cost mortgage tools into middle “white” America.
Dear White America is Wise’s sixth book. Others include his acclaimed memoir, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama.
Audio here!
This week, Aladdin Ullah will perform excerpts of his one-man show, Indio, which follows his travels from his childhood home in the projects of Harlem to the childhood home of his parents in Bangladesh. This surprisingly hilarious show deals with the ache of displacement, the contrasts as well as the commonalities of oppressed people on different sides of the globe, and a unique perspective on religion as it takes shape in different cultures.
Continue reading “Show 351: Secular Art W/ Global Perspective w/ Aladdin Ullah”