Demystifying Metaracism: Tricia Rose with Robin D. G. Kelley
April 5, 2024
VIDEO:
In recent years, condemnations of racism in America have echoed from the streets to corporate boardrooms. At the same time, politicians and commentators fiercely debate racism’s very existence. And so, our conversations about racial inequalities remain muddled.
In Metaracism, pioneering scholar Tricia Rose cuts through the noise with a bracing and invaluable new account of what systemic racism actually is, how it works, and how we can fight back. She reveals how—from housing to education to criminal justice—an array of policies and practices connect and interact to produce an even more devastating “metaracism” far worse than the sum of its parts. While these systemic connections can be difficult to see—and are often portrayed as “color-blind”—again and again they function to disproportionately contain, exploit, and punish Black people.
By helping us to comprehend systemic racism’s inner workings and destructive impacts, Metaracism shows us also how to break free—and how to create a more just America for us all.
About the panelists:
Tricia Rose is Chancellor’s Professor of Africana Studies and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She is author of three books, including the award-winning scholarly analysis of hip hop and its sequel, The Hip Hop Wars.
Robin D. G. Kelley is Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA, a contributing editor at Boston Review, and the author of many books, including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression.
BOSTON REVIEW is a magazine of ideas, politics, and culture, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Animated by hope and committed to equality, we believe in the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a more just world.
Read us online at https://www.bostonreview.net.
