As we prepare for the Nationly and Sportly podcasts launch and Immigrantly's newest episodes, we are sharing an episode by our friends at the Future Hindsight episode.

In this Future Hindsight episode, host Mila Atmos is joined by Hajar Yazdiha for a conversation on the role of collective memory in the myth-making of American exceptionalism. 

Collective memory is how we remember history and becomes central to our idea of who we are as a people. It’s a storytelling process and the most central story to who we are as a people. The civil rights movement has become one of the central collective memories in America's story of both who it is and who it wants to be. However, careful examination of the record reveals that the civil rights movement was a political project meant to dismantle multicultural democracy. Further, as the collective memory of Dr. King became sanitized and whitewashed, his legacy carried a lot of moral legitimacy, and his moral symbolic authority became ripe for manipulation.

Hajar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the author of The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.

Please tune in to Future Hindsight every Thursday whenever you get your podcasts. 

https://www.futurehindsight.com/

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos 

Guest: Hajar Yazdiha

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Senior Producer: Zack Travis

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