Then he and recurring guest Chenjerai Kumanyika discuss that longstanding image – and its neglected flipside: white-on-black violence.įor years, Myra Greene had explored blackness through her photography, often in self-portraits. Host John Biewen tells the story of a confrontation with an African American teenager. Smithsonian Institutionįor hundreds of years, the white-dominated American culture has raised the specter of the dangerous, violent black man. Thind’s “bargain with white supremacy,” and the deeply revealing results. Supreme Court that they were white in order to gain American citizenship. The story of Bhagat Singh Thind, and also of Takao Ozawa – Asian immigrants who, in the 1920s, sought to convince the U.S. What happened, and how such racial cleansings became “America’s family secret.” It was one of many racial expulsions in the United States. In 1919, a white mob forced the entire black population of Corbin, Kentucky, to leave, at gunpoint. Image: Skulls in the Samuel Morton Collection, University of Pennsylvania Museum. But for hundreds of years, racial scientists claimed to provide proof for those racist hierarchies – and some still do. Scientists weren’t the first to divide humanity along racial – and racist – lines. Part 7 of our series, Seeing White.Ĭomposite image: Chenjerai Kumanyika, left photo by Danusia Trevino. “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. With recurring guest, Chenjerai Kumanyika. Part Six of our ongoing series, Seeing White. Host John Biewen spoke with some white Southern friends about that tendency. 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. history – the hanging of 38 Dakota warriors – following one of the major wars between Plains Indians and settlers. In 1862, Mankato was the site of the largest mass execution in U.S. Growing up in Mankato, Minnesota, John Biewen heard next to nothing about the town’s most important historical event. Image: Bronze Statue of Thomas Jefferson being erected in Jefferson Memorial. But what did those words mean to the man who actually wrote them? By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika. “All men are created equal.” Those words, from the Declaration of Independence, are central to the story that Americans tell about ourselves and our history. By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika. The innovations that built American slavery are inseparable from the construction of Whiteness as we know it today. Ĭhattel slavery in the United States, with its distinctive – and strikingly cruel – laws and structures, took shape over many decades in colonial America. Photo: The Monument to the Discoveries, Lisbon, Portugal. Who invented race as we know it, and why? By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika. By John Biewen, with special guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.įor 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.
#THE MAKING OF THE MOB NEW YORK PART 7 SERIES#
An introduction to our series exploring what it means to be White. The series editor is Loretta Williams.Įvents of the past few years have turned a challenging spotlight on White people, and Whiteness, in the United States. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for? Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans.