What is to blame for still existing racial disparities in American society? Are they, as someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates would say, attributable to an historical, implacable, and foundational white racism? Is racism the engine of American history? Is race itself real, ontological--or are we free to say that racism is real but that race is a fiction? Here we go: on episode 29, Dane and Kevin are talking woke politics, the neoliberal tendency to divorce race from class, and the pitfalls of reducing everything to race; needless to say, Dane got mad uncomfortable disagreeing with Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Before that: a detailed look at how "hip hop" pundit DJ Akademiks used victims of Chicago gun violence to create a vast and lucrative social media following.

Intro and break music courtesy of Chris Giuliano.

Works Cited:

Touré Reed: Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism