by Rupe | Feb 1, 2016 | My PodCastings
America in Black and White Episode 4 of 4
How are black Americans represented and what does it mean to be black in America today? Rajini Vaidyanathan discusses with those involved in politics, culture and activism.
Travelling widely across the country she hears from families in Atlanta, activists in Missouri and academics in New York City. She speaks to the artist Kehinde Wiley about his subversive attempts to literally paint power differently; to the poet Tracy K. Smith about the vital role stories can play in encouraging empathy and hears from the civil rights icon John Lewis why he is using comic books to tell his story.
Rajini discusses what is taught in schools, what is shown on TV, and how the reality of being black in America means new black migrants to the United States are increasingly retaining their immigrant identity to avoid being considered ‘African American’. She discusses the next generation of leadership, who can authentically lead the Black Lives Matter movement, and attends a remarkable convention in Baltimore encouraging Americans to have ‘courageous conversations about race.’
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03g0cwg
by Rupe | Feb 1, 2016 | My PodCastings
America in Black and White Episode 3 of 4
Rajini Vaidyanathan examines segregation. The Brown versus the Board of Education case and the civil rights movement were supposed to have brought Americans together, but in Kansas City Rajini sees for herself the much more complicated legacy of desegregation. On the one hand, splintering solidarity in the black community; on the other a city where white and black Americans still live quite separate lives.
Demographers suggest America is becoming less segregated, but in Atlanta, one of the big southern cities supposedly driving the desegregation, she finds the reality doesn’t quite match the statistics. Catching up with a family featured throughout the series, she finds estate agents steering black families away from white neighbourhoods.
She discusses that with Julian Castro, the US Housing Secretary, and hears about his new rules to get communities integrating. And in Connecticut she sees a community which has spent 20 years integrating its schools, without requiring it of anyone.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03fcj7z
by Rupe | Feb 1, 2016 | My PodCastings
America in Black and White Episode 2 of 4
Rajini Vaidyanathan explores economic opportunity – or lack of it – amongst black Americans. She speaks to the academic whose study suggests employers think being black is as bad as having a criminal record but that they weren’t trying to be racist, and hears from senior corporate executives who have witnessed the subtle ways racial prejudice operates in the workplace.
In Kansas City she explains how government rules established during the New Deal locked black Americans out of home ownership for a generation, in west Philadelphia she meets the civic leaders with a comprehensive plan to improve the city’s poor, black neighbourhoods, and she hears from the San Francisco non-profit trying to reduce the very high cost of being poor.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03drnpt
by Rupe | Feb 1, 2016 | My PodCastings
America in Black and White Episode 1 of 4
Rajini investigates the criminal justice system. In Nebraska she visits the conservative politician promoting laws to reduce the number of people behind bars. Will that help black Americans? “I hope so” he answers.
Elsewhere she hears from critics who argue that the system can never be reformed, only broken; that the system is not fair, the police need to be disarmed. She visits the police chief advising President Obama on the way forward, who acknowledges the problem but argues that “all black lives matter”, including those killed by crime, and that protesters must accept that the police are part of the solution. Rajini also spends time with the police force teaching all its officers how to be ‘ethical protectors’.
Protests against shootings of young black men by the police have pushed the issue of race to the top of the public agenda in the United States. Now BBC Washington correspondent Rajini Vaidyanathan, who has covered many of the recent protests, sets out to examine some of the deep, underlying structural issues which America still has with race.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03db7zh#play
