EP 161 Greg Thomas on Untangling the Gordian Knot of Race

Jim talks with Greg Thomas about American democracy & the problems created by racial essentialism & racialization. They discuss the Jazz Leadership Project, jazz as metaphor, the connection between racism & the concept of race, the slave trade's role in producing racial essentialism, Bacon's Rebellion & subsequent divide-and-conquer legislation, justifications for exploitation, the horrors of chattel slavery, a mutual love of Stanley Crouch & Fifties jazz, transcending race & including culture, Albert Murray's "omni-American identity," 3 foundational American archetypes, the developmental challenge of overcoming tribalism, legacy media's structural bias toward conflict, why Ibram X. Kendi & Robin DiAngelo's anti-racist books reify race, the blues as tragicomic & affirmative, varieties of racism, the impact of not thinking & acting in racial terms, appropriation as the way culture works, searching for something better than the past, and much more.