Seeing White: Chenjerai’s Challenge
“How attached are you to the idea of being white?” Chenjerai Kumanyika puts that question to host John Biewen, as they revisit an unfinished conversation from a previous episode.
racism
A Time of Reckoning
It has been an awful and amazing two weeks – a time of reckoning that is long overdue, a time of coming together that, despite the tragic circumstances, has been enlivening. What is so remarkable is that the Black Lives Matter protests have been nested within a larger, unprecedented trauma, the pandemic.
Seeing White: That’s Not Us, So We’re Clean
When it comes to America’s racial sins, past and present, a lot of us see people in one region of the country as guiltier than the rest. Host John Biewen spoke with some white Southern friends about that tendency.
A Time to Speak up, but Also a Time to Shut up: White Privilege in America (Episode 30 of Crazy Town)
Is there anything crazier than the people in our towns, who are sworn to protect and serve, instead coldly taking the lives of our neighbors? Given this moment in American history marked by outrage, sadness, and massive protest, we discuss the need to address institutional racism and white privilege.
Seeing White: Little War on the Prairie
Growing up in Mankato, Minnesota, John Biewen heard next to nothing about the town’s most important historical event. In 1862, Mankato was the site of the largest mass execution in U.S. history – the hanging of 38 Dakota warriors – following one of the major wars between Plains Indians and settlers. In this documentary, originally produced for This American Life, John goes back to Minnesota to explore what happened, and why Minnesotans didn’t talk about it afterwards.
Now Is the Time – Revolution, Inner and Outer: Part 2
We are called to an evolutionary leap – from divisiveness to connectedness, from separation to co-creation, from enmity and hate (or complacent apathy) to caring, love in action. We are all part of one human race, and the clock is ticking. It is either now or never.
Now Is the Time – Revolution, Inner and Outer
George Floyd’s death was a flashpoint, erupting into the flame of truth, spreading over the world like wildfire. What is that truth, too long hidden, that needed to break through into the light of day, to break open our hearts?
White Supremacism and the Earth System
The US is on the brink of becoming a racist failed state. It is no accident that this terrible moment arrives in the midst of a global pandemic; an escalating economic crisis; an oil sector meltdown. This is a perfect storm of simultaneous, complex crises. How did we get here? How do we solve this?
Honoring the Righteous Rage, Agony and Despair of this Global Uprising
We call for fundamental policy changes focused on reparative justice and healing, such as defunding policing, deconstructing our carceral state, and demilitarizing our federal budget. This fed-uprising must be a wake up call to Americans. There will be no peace without justice. There will be no reconciliation without truth and repentance.
Seeing White: Made in America
Chattel slavery in the United States, with its distinctive – and strikingly cruel – laws and structures, took shape over many decades in colonial America. The innovations that built American slavery are inseparable from the construction of Whiteness as we know it today.
Seeing White: How Race was Made
For much of human history, people viewed themselves as members of tribes or nations but had no notion of “race.” Today, science deems race biologically meaningless. Who invented race as we know it, and why?
Seeing White: Turning the Lens
We should know better, and do better. For those of us who are white in America, that includes grappling with our own identity—particularly the fact that white privilege is as much a part of the scaffolding of our society as fossil fuels, environmental destruction, and unsustainable consumption and growth.
