America Are We Ready For Truth And Reconciliation?
Airing LIVE Wednesday, September 23th, 8-10pm ET
Join WNYC's Brian Lehrer, host of The Brian Lehrer Show, and Kai Wright, host of The United States of Anxiety, their guests and listeners around the country to examine racial justice and the presidential election -- how we got here and where we go now.
Hour One: Truth
The extent of racial disparity as it exists today, more than 150 years after the end of slavery, more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act, is a big issue in this year’s election. In this hour with Keisha Blain, University of Pittsburgh historian and president of the African American Intellectual History Society, we’ll account for disparities in wealth and income, health, political power and more, and point to the policies of both parties that have been most responsible for perpetuating those disparities and ask what truths need to be understood in order for any president to make serious progress toward racial equality?
Hour Two: Reconciliation
Reconciliation doesn’t mean everyone smiles and all is forgiven. When you reconcile a financial statement, you determine who owes who what, and where the money actually goes. In this hour with Black feminist scholar Barbara Smith, co-founder of the Combahee River Collective, we ask who owes what to whom, financially and otherwise, to approach real equality in America? What and how serious are the Trump and Biden or Democratic and Republican approaches to getting there?
