Democracy Works: The Clumsy Road to Antiracism

Aug 27 2020
By B. Rose Huber
Source Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

This week’s show is special: We’re running an episode of Democracy Works, a podcast produced by Penn State University’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy. (You may remember we swapped episodes with them last summer.)

This episode features Tehama Lopez Bunyasi, assistant professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, and Candis Watts Smith, associate professor African American Studies and political science at Penn State.

Bunyasi and Smith are coauthors of a book called "Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making all Black Lives Matter," which looks at the history of structural racism in the U.S. and gives people information and tools to become antiracists.

In this episode, they talk about the clumsiness associated with changing patterns of thinking and behavior and how that’s playing out across our online and offline lives and among both individuals and companies. They also discuss the inherent messiness of the Black Lives Matter movement and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing.