Race and America -- could anything be more complicated, cruel, and contentious. Throughout American History, beginning with the first Africans brought forcibly to America in 1619, there has been the enslavement and then apartheid placed on Blacks in America, and then a revolution of equality in the 1960's. What has happened since then? Does the White Supremacist ideology that guided the racism of past decades and centuries to exist, just in a different manifestation? What actually is racism today, and how is it apparent? What is Donald Trump's role in this?

In this episode, Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker and I go through these questions, and many, many more. Dr. Jelani Cobb is a staff writer at the New Yorker, and the Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism at Columbia, writing on issues from Policing In Black communities to how Russia exploits America's complex history with civil rights and injustice.

I hope you take a listen!

Show Notes: This is the documentary Dr. Cobb was featured in: https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-policing-police/

Event that Jelani Cobb moderated with Stacy Abrams: https://www.brookings.edu/events/stacey-abrams-race-and-political-power-in-the-united-states/

Jelani Cobb's recent column on the shooting in New Zealand: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-new-zealand-shooting-and-the-great-man-theory-of-misery

Favorite Podcast: "The Daily," "Radiolab," and "This American Life"

Most insightful follow on Social Media: The Pew Research Center

A book that has most shaped your thinking: "Letters to a Young Contrarian" by Christopher Hitchens