When governments go wrong
Content for week of Monday, July 20, 2020–Friday, July 24, 2020
Readings
Note: This looks like a lot, but most of these are really short videos or tweets or websites
- Noah Smith on why we should worry about race, culture, and politics when thinking about economics
- Excerpt from Martin Luther King’s May 8, 1967 interview with NBC
- Dr. King gave an in-depth interview with NBC a year before he was assassinated. If you’re interested, you can view the full interview, or read some commentary about his claim that his dream had turned into a nightmare.
- Adam Ruins Everything, “The Disturbing History of the Suburbs”, October 4, 2017
- Play through “Parable of the Polygons” by Nicky Case
- Aaron Glantz and Emmanuel Martinez, “Kept out: For people of color, banks are shutting the door to homeownership,” Reveal, February 15, 2018
- Alternatively, listen to the podcast version of this story, which goes in more depth and is really fantastic: “The red line: Racial disparities in lending,” Reveal, February 17, 2018
- Emma Roller’s interview with Mehrsa Baradaran, “How the U.S. Government Locked Black Americans Out of Attaining the American Dream,”, Splinter, October 11, 2017
- Excerpt from Amanpour and Company’s interview with Mehrsa Baradaran, July 15, 2020
- Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Chuck Collins, Darrick Hamilton, and Josh Hoxie, “Ten Solutions to Bridge the Racial Wealth Gap”
- Hamilton, et al., “Umbrellas Don’t Make it Rain: Why Studying and Working Hard Isn’t Enough for Black Americans”1
- Mehrsa Baradaran, "The Real Roots of ‘Black Capitalism’’, The New York Times, March 31, 2019
Optional listening but highly recommended
- This American Life, “The Problem We All Live With, Part One,” episode 562, July 31, 2015
- This American Life, “The Problem We All Live With, Part Two,” episode 563, August 7, 2015
Videos
Videos for each section of the lecture are available at this YouTube playlist.
- Introduction
- Economics, identity, and whiteness
- Public policy and the institutional legacies of white supremacy
You can also watch the playlist (and skip around to different sections) here:
Darrick Hamilton et al., “Umbrellas Don’t Make It Rain: Why Studying and Working Hard Isn’t Enough for Black Americans” April 2015, http://econ.hunter.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/seminar2016-darity2.pdf.↩︎