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The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The Killing of George Floyd and the Origins of American Racism

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

President, Wickenden, Washington, Lizza, Obama, Wnyc, News, Barack, Politics

4.33.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The killing of George Floyd has inspired a renewed public reckoning with America’s legacy of racism. Racial prejudice is so ingrained in the origins of the country, and so pervasive in all of our institutions, that its insidious effects on all of us can be hard to grasp. The anti-racism trainer Suzanne Plihcik joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how the concept of white racial superiority was constructed in America, and what people can do to oppose structural racism.

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Transcript

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This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and guests about

1:16.5

politics. It's Thursday, June 4th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of The New Yorker.

1:23.0

The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day

1:28.4

has touched off a renewed public reckoning with the epidemic of racism in the United States.

1:34.6

The history of racial prejudice in this country dates back to before the founding of the country,

1:39.9

to the subjugation of Native Americans by early European colonists, and has continued through 250 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow,

1:50.0

and countless subsequent measures that deny black Americans the rights promised in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution.

1:58.0

This week, Reverend William J. Barber II, the president of the North Carolina chapter of the

2:04.7

NAACP, spoke on CNN about the pain and fury behind the protests in cities across the United

2:11.3

States.

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