racism

Lecture by anti-racist author and activist Tim Wise

As the South Carolina legislature debates removing the confederate flag, this week's show takes a musical look at the ugliness of racism through the music of racists, and a diverse African American response (don't worry; only the first three songs are racist).

2 editions of Laura Flanders' Grit TV featuring interviews with Michelle Alexander and Cornel West, plus commentary from Thandisizwe Chimurenga

A look at the issues and details surrounding the Baltimore protests and their underlying causes as portrayed in alternative media outlets, not beholden to the standard narrative.

An article by Arun Gupta on the next steps for the Black Lives Matter movement, and a speech by Angela Davis on the same

Continuing protests against police brutality are met with continuing intransigence by law enforcement, as well as continued censorship and distortion by many media outlets. Audio from the most recent Black Lives Matter demonstration in Columbus, and an op-ed by Thanidisizwe Chimurenga about the sparse attention given to female victims of violence.

Interview with James Hayes and Alwiyah Shariff of the Student Organizing Committee on the directions and perspectives of the current movement to oppose police brutality, and audio, including interviews, chants and speeches from the 700+person march and rally for Black Lives in Columbus on Dec. 8

Panel discussion on the historical conditiions that underlie the police shootings in Ferguson and Ohio, featuring author Richard Rothstein, and NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Sherrylin Ifill

Pt. 1 of audio from a symposium held at Stanford University on the implications of Ferguson

Welcome to Conscious Voices, a weekly program dedicated to bringing you alternative points of view and to challenging popular assumptions in order to help you be better informed and civically engaged. I'm Evan Davis, your host for this edition. Well, if we are to believe the media reports, "calm" has returned to Ferguson, Missouri after nearly a week of nightly protests since the verdict of the grand jury investigation of the killing of Michael Brown, who was Black by police officer Darren Wilson, who is White. In an earlier edition of this program I criticized the media for reporting on clashes between demonstrators and police in Ferguson by saying that "violence erupted at demonstrations", or that "demonstrations turned violent", when as countless videos and witness accounts revealed, it was nearly always the police who initiated the violence, in the form of tear gas and rubber bullets which were used to disperse crowds of erstwhile peaceful protesters. Moreover, the violence in this particular chain of events started with the shooting of Michael Brown. But even that analysis fails to take in to account the much longer history - one that includes a decades-long legacy of institutionalized racism in the state of Missouri and the U.S, in general, some of the hallmarks of which are increasing racial segregation in places like Ferguson and East Cleveland, the sight of another questionable police killing of an un-armed, or nearly un-armed Black youth by white officers in just the last week. Ferguson has gone from being around 40% Black just a couple of decades ago to being over 70% Black today, which its over-all population hasn't changed. Its police force, however, remains over 90% white, with most of those officers residing in other Saint Louis suburbs. Unemployment in Black communities remains much higher than the reported national average, yet expenses are high as ever.