Race and Hate in the United States

Putting the fight against hate into historical, economic, and psychological context

This summer, attempts to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia sparked protests by far-right activists that ultimately turned deadly, shocking the national conscience.

But while many Americans were shocked, for a lot of minorities, Charlottesville was just one more in a long litany of experiences that prove just how far the United States has to go to excise the prejudice that traces back to its founding.

So how do we confront this reality? How do we dismantle the hate that has persisted in various forms for centuries?

It’s certainly a bigger question than a single podcast episode can address, but with the help of this week’s roundtable, hopefully we can at least make some progress. This week’s guests include:

• Dr. Robert Livingston is a Kennedy School faculty member whose research has included experiments in the psychology of implicit bias as well as broader examinations of discrimination in society
• Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad joined HKS last year after serving as the Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library and the world’s leading library and archive of global black history.
• Karen Finney is a Fall 2017 Fellow at the Institute of Politics here at the Kennedy School. She previously served as Senior Advisor for Communications and Political Outreach for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

HKS PolicyCast is the official podcast of Harvard Kennedy School, featuring weekly interviews with scholars and leading practitioners in public policy, leadership, and international affairs. It is hosted by filmmaker, writer, and policy wonk Matt Cadwallader.