On this week's episode of Justice Matters, co-host Maggie Gates speaks with Dr. Charity Clay, Assistant Professor of Sociology and UNCF Mellon Fellow at Harvard's Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research. As a sociologist of the African Diaspora, Clay's research interests are varied but center around the dispersal, preservation, maintenance, and adaptability of African culture throughout the diaspora. In this conversation, Gates and Clay discuss Clay’s upbringing in Minneapolis, the importance of Black spaces and place-making, commodified Blackness in New Orleans, her theory on systemic police terrorism, using drones for socioeconomic mapping of Black spaces, and how she sees her role as a multi-hyphenate scholar, musician, and athlete.

Listen to Dr. Charity Clay's Hutchins Center Lecture on 'Systemic Police Terrorism: A Conceptual Framework', Part of the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Colloquium Series.