Hi everyone, this is Relesa Arce, welcome to this week's Cricut conversation.

I'm really excited by this conversation we just had with Dee Watkins who is the editor

at large for salon.

He's a professor at the University of Baltimore, the founder of Be More Writers Project, and

he is a New York Times Spaceler author of two amazing books, The Beside and The Cookup.

This conversation we had was a really raw and eye-opening conversation around the policies

that are being rolled back in the Trump administration that are supposed to protect people of color,

and what the impact is on all of us.

So I hope you enjoy.

You and I have talked about panels we've been on before about this notion that any person

can put in the work and achieve whatever they want in America.

And I think we both know that's not the full story, and there are millions of obstacles

put in front of people of color and especially black people that prevent us from following

this formula of do the work and you'll achieve anything you want.

And people use this excuse all the time that slavery was so long ago and can we just

get over it, but you've pointed out that emancipation perclamation was 155 years ago, while

slavery lasted over 400 years.

And it wasn't like slavery ended in the next day, black men and women were seen as equal.

So being a professor and all, can you take us through just a brief history of all the

shit loss after the end of slavery that were created to discriminate against black people

and minorities?

Yeah, for sure.

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