When governments go wrong

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

Slides

Download the slides from today’s class.

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: