About This Episode

Host Kenneth Pruitt interviews Karen Yang.

“It wasn’t until I moved to St. Louis that I really understood race in terms of oppression. Before that I always understood racism as something that just ignorant and dumb people did. So if they said slurs, that was just them not knowing any better or they weren’t really nice. Coming to St. Louis, then studying social work, then going to seminary, and being shaped by what happened with the murder of Michael Brown, and the uprising in Ferguson, then I started to understand what Black folks experience in the United States of America, the legacies of red-lining, the impact of debtors prisons and payday lending, and educational and health inequalities. There is a whole host of issues that crop up with racism.”

In This Episode

00:30 Ethnoburb Upbringing
4:20 Shifting from Personal Racism to Systemic
8:00 De-centering Whiteness from the Racism Conversations
11:45 Fighting Oppression Wherever You Are
16:10 Moments that Highlight Identity and Intersectionality
20:40 Parting Thoughts: Race is a Function of Space