Food for Thought Media: Audio

Bob Stilger

Listen: The Racial Contract, from The Atlantic

When you look at the coronavirus world, it is entirely shaped by the structure of the before world. All of the racial inequities that were in the before world, they are naturally being reproduced in the coronavirus world because the structure of our society was built along those tracks. You can put a new train on it; you can send everybody $1,200; you can try to put out $600 million for small businesses. But because the train is going to go to the same destinations, you’re going to have 90 percent of black and Hispanic small businesses being denied loans. You’re going to have a disproportionate number of workers in service and health-care industries being black and Hispanic people. The train is going to go to the same destination no matter how new and shiny it is, because that’s where the tracks are built to go.

Read More »
Bob Stilger

Heather McGhee on Confronting the Denial of Racism

McGhee describes how the election of Barack Obama resulted in both a racial backlash and the illusion that we were suddenly living in a post-racial society. She also shares a hopeful story that demonstrates a pathway towards healing the divisions that harm us all.

Read More »
Bob Stilger

My Grandmother’s Hands

My Grandmother’s HandsResmaa Menakem points out that one of two things will happen now. Ideally, America will grow up and out of white-body supremacy; Americans will begin healing their long-held trauma around race; and whiteness will begin to evolve…The other possibility is that white-body supremacy will continue to be reinforced as the dominant structured form of energy in American culture. In much the same way Aryan supremacy dominated German culture in the 1930s and early 1940s.”

Read More »