What We Inherit: A Brief History of American Racism

The national and international protests over the death of George Floyd have generated larger and more widespread conversations about systemic racism in the United States. We hope to use our platform to help provide context and understanding around our shared moment in history, to show how our past creates our present, and to help illuminate how anti-Black racism has been passed on through our culture and politics, changing with each generation but also very much staying the same.

Here are some books by Black authors that helped create this episode that we strongly recommend for further reading:

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi

Choke Hold by Paul Butler

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

This episode was put together by Chelsey Weber-Smith, Riley Smith, Rod Rodriguez, and Miranda Zickler.

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