In Class with Carr
In Class with Carr is a podcast that began when Karen Hunter asked Dr. Greg Carr if she could record a private discussion about Ida B. Wells. It has since grown into a global series featuring Dr. Carr, known as the People's Professor, on the Knarrative platform. The show covers a wide range of topics, including history, culture, and social issues, and encourages listeners to join the #Knubia community. Episodes are available on the Knarrative platform and YouTube.
Episodes
S E1345: In Class with Carr Episode 344: “Intergenerational Warriors”
This week’s In Class With Carr comes from the Annual Convening of the National Conference of Black Lawyers. NCBL, founded in 1968 to serve as the Legal Arm of the Movement for Black Liberation, brings together lawyers, scholars, organizers, judges, legal workers, law students and legal activists to enhance our collective ability to struggle for full social, political and economic rights.&
S E1344: In Class With Carr Episode 343: “Saving Institutions from Social Ignorance”
What happens when a society has access to more information but suffers an underdeveloped capacity for collective understanding? In this week’s In Class With Carr, the concept of "Super Ignorance" is used to label contemporary relationships between education, power, technology, culture, and collective memory and action. Continuing Session 342’s discussion of deepened literacy and slow lear
S E1343: In Class with Carr Episode 342: "Cross Colors"
This week’s conversation, "Cross Colors," confronts our current attention-deficit society, one that causes us to forget what happened last week, much less before, and to attempt to command attention with shorthands that too often court obscuring spectacle. We use our Africana Studies framework to examine recent cultural and historical flashpoints: A new book offering even more proof of Th
S E1342: In Class with Carr, Ep. 341: “Rooted Against Collapse”
Global and domestic systems upholding US power continue to fracture, threatening partial collapse. Other countries accelerate work to bypass US influence and form new protective alliances.US public institutions face new threats from a determined minority of self-centered political actors moving in a distortion field of disregard, delusion, and avoidance. Amid this instability, African, In
S E1341: In Class with Carr, Ep. 340: “Maps, Museums and Manifestos”
This week, Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie Bunch announced his retirement after a nearly four decade affiliation with its network and ending his seven year tenure as the first African American and first Historian to lead the institution founded in 1848. A decade ago this month, the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened. Bunche’s efforts leading both insti
S E1340: In Class with Carr, Ep. 339: Whose Labor? Which Stories?
This pre-Labor Day week was marked by the transition of Cultural Meaning-Maker Cassandra Wilson, whose artistic labor reminds us of the power of narratives of long-view memory as anchors for Ways of Knowing that shape our lives. As White nationalist politicians and others’ increasingly desperate efforts to force-feed us their own narrow, absurdist, and fevered stories of US and global aut
S E1339: In Class with Carr, Ep. 338: King Me: Africana Governance and Purpose in a Changing World
During Black August 2026, the Asantehene, Otumfo Osei Tutu II, and Otumfo-Yere Julia Osei Tutu of the Asante People are visiting the United States. Their trip features a Royal Lecture at Howard University and an Akwasidae Festival at Bowie State University, bracketed by a major African business summit. This historic visit highlights a foundational truth: Global African solidarity and belo
S E1338: In Class with Carr, Ep. 337: Hope Dealers
During this Black August, US White Nationalists have continued to compile victories in the federal court, from Donald Trump’s White Nationalist Department of Justice dropping charges against Oath Keepers January 6, 2021 insurrectionists to his illegal White House ballroom project being endorsed through inaction by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.Internationally, the US federal go
S E1337: In Class with Carr, Ep. 336: “Recentering Learning in the Living Syllabus”
As we enter the third week of Black August, our annual Kemet [Ancient Egypt] Study Tour concludes as debates on the changing nature and process of formal education continue in the US. Our work of “Jailbreaking the Black University” offers a clear contrast to current academic discussions on the nature and potential of HBCUs. The Kemet Study Tour is an immersive space that centers inward-fo
S E1336: In Class with Carr, Ep. 335: "Black August 2: Momentum of Memory in the Nile Valley”
In Session 335 of In Class With Carr, we continue Black August during our annual study tour of Kemet [Ancient Egypt] and the Nile Valley. Following pathways of liberatory intellectual work of previous generations of Africans engaged in Global Black Study helps us to resist current efforts to disrupt deeper collective study as well as to attempt to privatize and commodify broad access to i
S E1335: In Class with Carr, Ep. 334: Beginning Black August
Black August, an annual ritual introduced in the late 1970s as a period dedicated to African self-determination and collective political struggle, requires us to rethink sacrifice, rejuvenation and remembering. The month centers four grounding objectives: to study, fast, train, and fight. As with Kwanzaa, Black History Month and Juneteenth, every year these objectives reinforce the ongoin
S E1334: In Class with Carr, Ep. 333: Black Odysseys/White Facts
This week’s session continues to explore struggles for political power and cultural survival in hostile, nativist Social Structures. Even as politicians of African descent continue to be elected, even in spaces with majority non-African voters, the challenge to conform, integrate or culturally neuter in order to demonstrate trustworthiness persists. Hard White nationalists such as those w
S E1333: In Class with Carr, Ep. 332: "Rock the Vote!"
Around the world, including the United States, those in power fight desperately to cling to it, targeting a foundational element for legitimizing state power: the vote. Fascist efforts to maintain state authority have increasingly worked to undermine our capacity to assess information and distinguish between fact and false narratives.This week, as we continue our Africana Studies approach
S E1332: In Class with Carr, Ep. 331: "Odds and Ends"
Official commemorations of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence have now ended, with anticipated federally subsidized, countrywide conversations about the meaning of the U.S. never materializing. Instead, much of the commemorative and contemplative energy was consumed by a federal government temporarily captured by a White nationalist regime intent on narrowing ra
S E1331: In Class with Carr, Ep. 330: “Belonging Beyond 1776: The Semiquincentennial Blues”
As the United States notes the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, it confronts its deepest crisis of structural political integrity since its Civil War and Reconstruction. The ritual corridor between Juneteenth and July 4 exposes the widening gap between US founding mythologies and its lived political realities. This year’s observance arrives amid the Trump administrat
S E1330: In Class with Carr, Ep. 329: Belonging in the Liberation Corridor
The two-week “liberation corridor” between Juneteenth and US Independence Day (“White Juneteenth”) affords an annual opportunity to evaluate objectives of and rituals for enforcing collective identity. A nakedly white nationalist US federal administration intensifies its assaults on both a shifting global order and a rising domestic opposition to its increasingly absurd efforts, revealing
S E1329: In Class with Carr, Ep. 328: Celebrations
With the 160th observance of Juneteenth, the United States enters the two-week corridor between the largest Black liberation ritual directly connected to global rituals of African self-determination and the country’s nativist Semi-quincentennial Fourth of July celebration ritual. In a country entangled in a war of choice, this week marked a gauche white nationalist White House lawn brawlf
S E1328: In Class with Carr, Ep. 327: Cupping the World
Cash does not rule everything around us. At best, money is a simplified tally or or proxy for control, while power rests on perceptions of legitimacy and collective assent or consent. The trillion-dollar valuation of SpaceX this week intensifies larger questions about relationships between individuals and communities. Elon Musk has amassed immense financial wealth. He remains one person.
S E1327: In Class with Carr, Ep. 326: "Roots and Branches"
Drawing on reflections from last week’s experiences in Tulsa, this session of In Class With Carr traces relationships between roots of memory and community and contemporary branches of interventions, struggle and renewal. Beginning with the annual soil collection ritual at Greenwood’s Standpipe Hill, we consider Greenwood as one of countless other “Little Africas” that expand Governance
S E1326: In Class with Carr, Ep. 325: We Are All Greenwood
In Class With Carr 325 comes live from Justice for Greenwood’s weekend of rituals marking the 120th anniversary of Tulsa Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, where the memory and residue of “Black Wall Street” illuminates irreconcilable questions of violence, self-determination, and state power. We discuss nation-state’s monopolies on violence, restrictions on movement, and how Africans and ind
S E1325: In Class with Carr, Ep. 324: Black Space / Black Place / Black Pace
The U.S. Memorial Day weekend is often described as the unofficial beginning of summer. Amid mounting regional and global challenges to U.S. power, intensifying US white nationalist politics, and the approach of federal Semiquincentennial celebrations, questions of memory, governance and collective identity take on renewed urgency. This week’s In Class With Carr continues our long-term pr
S E1324: In Class with Carr, Ep. 323: “From Time to Time”
In session 323, In Class with Carr uses the 2026 Commencement Season to explore the nature of time and the ways rituals marking transition create opportunities to reflect on Africana Governance, our relationships to one another and our obligations to each other. Centering Sankofa as a Way of Knowing, we examine how individual and collective dignity and power are strengthened through actio
S E1323: In Class with Carr, Ep. 322: Everything Ends: White Nationalism vs a Third US Reconstruction
This week’s In Class With Carr confronts an enduring question at the heart of the U.S. experiment: How long can White nationalism strain the U.S. political order before the contradictions at its core permanently rupture the federated system itself? We trace this week’s racially politicized Southern gerrymanders back to the founding racial logic of the United States, moving from Virginia s
S E1322: In Class with Carr, Ep. 321: “Last Whiteness Standing”
This week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais sharpens what we too often soften with abstraction: Whiteness is not passive, accidental, or misunderstood. It is an intentional, strategic mechanism for establishing and protecting an increasingly fragile, minority-centered power base—globally and within the United States. Callais is not just a legal dispute over voting maps,
S E1321: In Class with Carr, Ep. 320: “Stop! The Love you Save: Claiming Community”
In "In Class With Carr" 320 we ask, “How can we live together?” Opening with the Jackson 5’s Stop! The Love You Save, This week’s conversation examines violence, narrative, community and continuity in African and Black life. In a week marking anniversaries of both the United Nations and the United Negro College fund, we explore how Africana Governance formations can draw on Ways of Knowin
S E1319: In Class with Carr, Ep. 319: “How to Build a House of Life”
This week, In Class With Carr comes from the 42nd International Conference of The Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, whose members have worked for over four decades to use the Per Ankh (House of Life) as a model for African renewal. Drawing on presentations in ASCAC’s five domestic U.S. regions over the previous year, we consider ASCAC’s work as a formation for
S E1318: In Class with Carr, Ep. 318: "The Way We Were"
This week’s In Class With Carr reflects on memory, leadership, and responsibility, using the passing of media giant Bob Law and global tensions like the Israel-US conflict with Iran to question how power is acquired, held and narrated. The work of educating through effective communication in order to help develop informed communities rather than passive masses requires us to first and sim
S E1317: In Class with Carr, Ep. 317: Citizens or Subjects: Belonging and Certainty in an Age of Distraction
This week’s “In Class With Carr” uses the Trump vs Barbara Birthright Citizenship case to explore questions of belonging, obligation, and power. Using the Africana Studies framework, we discuss how certainty of belonging and investments in creating better societies shape our relationships to others. Oppressive systems thrive on distraction and sensory overload, weakening collective though
S E1316: In Class with Carr, Ep. 316: "Six/Seven"
In the Thursday, March 26, 2026 edition of the New York Times, Lydia Polgreen observes that “America does not know how to exist in a world it does not control.” Through vacillations between seizing temporary control of state and federal government, White nationalist politicians in the US continue to fight desperately to impose their narrow ideology on the country’s fragile amalgam of geno
S E1315: In Class with Carr, Ep. 315: “You Gotta Choose”
As the US federal government exacerbates global and local political conflict and cultural struggle, this week’s session centers In Class’ latest exploration of secret places of Africana Governance, Cultural Meaning Making and Movement and Memory to highlight how Ways of Knowing in the form of narratives, institutions, and historical memory shape choices individuals and communities must ma
S E1314: In Class with Carr, Ep. 314: Common Humanity vs Exclusion: Montgomery as Method
This week’s In Class With Carr comes from Montgomery Alabama, site of the Second Annual National Fred D. Gray Symposium. We return to Alabama to reflect on how human and civil rights struggles waged here force us to consider contemporary questions of transitioning US and global Social Structures and Africana Ways of Knowing. Anchored by reflections from the Symposium and along the Selma-t
S E1313: In Class with Carr, Ep. 313: Free the Mind/Free the Land!
As Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war against the world enhances regional and global threats to the planet, this week’s session of In Class With Carr centers community self-determination as a strategy for both resisting oppression and changing the deteriorating Social Structure of the Modern World System. Drawing on the momentum of memory rooted in living movement institutions, we
S E1312: In Class with Carr, Ep. 312: “Slavemasters Without Slaves"
As we close the final day of Blackest History Month, the governments of the United States and Israel have declared war on Iran, an action that casts both countries as pariah states and threatens the lives and security of everyone in those three countries and beyond. At the same time, doomed efforts by predatory monied interests to shape and control mass media narratives and images are int
S E1311: In Class with Carr, Ep. 311: Black Power in Action: The Meaning of Jesse Jackson
On February 17, 2026, Jesse Louis Jackson made transition at 84, marking a watershed chapter in four generations of African struggle for US and global power. Emerging from Africana Governance formations, Jackson leveraged two currencies—voter power and consumer power—to push US domestic and global Social Structures to have to negotiate with the organized oppressed. From Operations Breadba
S E1310: In Class with Carr, Ep. 310: “Slaves Without Masters"
This second session of Blackest History Month centers on questions of freedom and liberty. What conditions define freedom? How is freedom related to self-definition, both individually and collectively? As we continue exploring freedom, governance, and memory in the Semiquincentennial year of the United States, today’s session marks Frederick Douglass’ chosen birthday and the close of the
S E1309: In Class with Carr, Ep. 309: “Blackest History Month I: Semi-quincentennial Wars”
On February 7, 1926, National Negro History Week was first observed. This week, we frame Blackest History Month as a Governance ritual against the coming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, not as celebration but as struggle—over memory, power, and education. Coming from this weekend’s “Blackprint 20” Conference in Philadelphia, we trace recurring conflicts
S E1308: In Class with Carr, Ep. 308: Black History in Times of Trouble
This week’s In Class With Carr with Dr. Greg Carr and Karen Hunter, launches this year’s Blackest History Month, affirming that African education is not—and has never been—merely a response to domination, but the transmission of enduring cultural coherence across generations. Using the Africana Studies Conceptual Categories, we juxtapose the latest intellectual warfare over the National P
S E1307: In Class with Carr, Ep. 307: Against Disassociation
This week on In Class with Carr, Dr. Greg Carr and Professor Karen Hunter turn to the geopolitical drama unfolding at Davos and the continued Trump-era decline of U.S. global authority—marked by a disassociative political posture that separates power from consequence and rhetoric from reality, deepening both global and domestic fractures.In this moment of renegotiating global and local So
S E1306: In Class with Carr, Ep. 306: "New World Order"
We enter episode 306 of In Class with Carr with Dr. Greg Carr and Karen Hunter, as the US cannibalizes its arrangements through increasingly absurdist white nativism and greed driven global destabilization, Social Structures are rapidly reorganizing. Drawing on reminders from figures such as Patrice Lumumba and Martin Luther King Jr., we recall that world orders do not announce themselves
S E1305: In Class with Carr, Ep. 305: Good vs. Evil
Session 305 of In Class With Carr with Dr. Greg Carr and Karen Hunter, examines this week’s U.S. and global political developments as a “Good vs. Evil” moment. The Trump administration’s escalation of a domestic and global Cold Civil War against legal, moral, and international norms is an attempt to normalize violence, abandon even the appearance of factual communication in favor of state
S E1304: In Class with Carr, Ep. 304: “New Year, Old Empire: Realign or Repeat?"
In Class With Carr 304, with Dr. Greg Carr and Karen Hunter, opens the new year by naming our unavoidable choices in a moment of U.S. imperial desperation. The session centers our obligation to renew commitment to collective study as an act of courage and discipline, as U.S. bombs fall in Venezuela and Nigeria and a fear-driven minority attempts to sabotage people-centered local and natio
S E1303: In Class with Carr, Ep. 303: Past the Longest Night : A Different New Year
Session 303 of In Class With Carr frames the passage of the Northern Hemisphere’s Winter Solstice as a time for celebration, remembrance and disciplined renewal. On the second day of Kwanzaa, Kujichagulia [Self-Determination], we reinforce Governance principles to center study over spectacle, memory over amnesia, and defining ourselves rather than allowing narratives imposed by others wit
S E1302: In Class with Carr, Ep. 302: "What’s in a Name/What’s in a Frame?”
As we enter the Annual Kwanzaa/Christmas/New Year two week corridor, Session 302 of In Class With Carr centers on the meaning of naming, framing, and narrative as sites of Governance, self-determination and collective power. Drawing on Carter Godwin Woodson’s “Much Ado About a Name” essay in his 1933 book “The Miseducation of the Negro,” this week we use our Africana Studies Framework to
S E1301: In Class with Carr, Ep. 301: “Memory Takes The Field”
This week’s session with Dr. Greg Carr and Professor Karen Hunter comes live from the 10th annual Celebration Bowl HBCU National Football Championship and Band of the Year Competition. These are Governance formation rituals where Ways of Knowing, Cultural Meaning-Making and Movement and Memory imprint our future. Against an increasingly desperate death rattle of US White Nationalism fed b
S E1300: In Class with Carr: “The 300th Session”
The 300th session of "In Class With Carr" opens with a framing question: “How has our communal intellectual project endured through shifts in the contemporary Social Structure, especially through society’s technology-fueled constant churn of noise and distraction?” Our weekly commitment to seeking and sharing deepening knowledge traces the evolution of the class—from pandemic-shaped learn
S E1299: In Class with Carr, Ep. 299: "Signal Failure!"
What happens when a train barrels down a track and reaches a junction where the signal to slow or stop has failed? It keeps moving at full speed—toward collision or derailment—a looming disaster now determined only by momentum. What happens when we miss signals, not only as individuals or communities, but as countries? In a social moment increasingly shaped by cognitive overload, familiar
S E1298: In Class with Carr, Ep. 298: "Power to the Pupil!"
What does it mean to have and to nurture the ability to take in information and convert it to action? What happens if the mechanism for taking in that light in the mind’s eye is damaged or not well tended to? Those gathered at the 8th Black Male Educator Convening in Philadelphia, are considering this year’s theme: “Power to the Pupil: History, Hip Hop, & the Future of Teaching &
S E1297: In Class with Carr, Ep. 297: "Open Season!"
In this session of In Class With Carr, real estate violence against the East Wing of the White House becomes the latest point of entry to examine the latest episode of the US “demolition derby”—the conflict and renegotiation of the political architecture and collective memory of a United States under siege by the latest assault of an increasingly desperate and fascist white nationalism. J
S E1296: In Class with Carr, Ep. 296: Victory Laps
The early November state and local elections held in the United State are part of a broader global wave of resistance to rising inequality and predatory government. From Tanzania and Madagascar to Bangladesh and Nepal, popular uprisings have triggered sudden changes in governments—or threatened to do so. In the United States, this week’s results reflect popular and voter response to deepe
S E1295: In Class with Carr, Ep. 295: "Day of the Trick"
This week’s conversation, “Day of the Trick,” invites us to explore how deception, ritual, and resistance intertwine. We’ll look at how Trick-or-Treat traditions of Halloween can be contrasted with rituals of generosity and remembrance in Ways of Knowing such as the Day of the Dead. How does manipulation, coercion, and transactional power threaten the work of mutual care? How does resista
S E1294: In Class with Carr, Ep. 294: Demolition Derby
In session 294 of In Class With Carr, real estate violence against the East Wing of the White House becomes the latest point of entry to examine the latest episode of the US “demolition derby”—the conflict and renegotiation of the political architecture and collective memory of a United States under siege by the latest assault of an increasingly desperate and fascist white nationalism.JOI
S E1293: In Class with Carr, Ep. 293: No Kings, New Maps
In this session, we explore acts of Cultural Meaning-Making and Movement and Memory as antidotes to fast-spreading poisons of disinformation and White nationalist distortion threatening African progress and the broader society. This week marks the birthdays of George Washington Williams, Lerone Bennett Jr. and Kerry James Marshall. We are reminded by their practice and genealogies of the
S E1292: In Class with Carr, Ep. 292: Ancestors' Wildest Dreams?
In this session, we use the Africana Studies Framework to reflect on continuities and disruptions in US and global Social Structures and how thinking in and with Africana Governance formations must lead to rejuvenating and sharing connections between memory, ritual and vision. How do we move beyond distractions to embrace ancestral wisdom in order to renew and best utilize our genealogies
S E1291: In Class with Carr, Ep. 291: “Can America Continue? Should It?"
In the 291st session of In Class With Carr, we explore the question: Can America Continue? Fresh from a gathering with legendary civil rights attorney Fred Gray, we connect past and present to examine how a US Social Structure grounded and reliant on a global network of unequal labor and exclusion, is speeding its inevitable and perhaps dispositive existential crisis. We juxtapose broadly
S E1290: In Class with Carr, Ep. 290: "It is Our Duty to Win!"
On Thursday, September 25, 2025, Assata Olugbala Shakur made transition in Cuba. In Chapter 3 of her autobiography, she contrasts the long history of criminal assaults against African people by Western Social Structures with the work of African resistance grounded in self-determining Governance spaces, closing her famous July 4, 1973, “To My People” recording with the powerful words
S E1289: In Class with Carr, Ep. 289: "The Hate That Hate Produced."
What happens when manufactured grievances are used to shape politics, mass and social media, and even a sense of government? This week, we explore how economic inequity, white nationalism, and billionaire-driven media power collide to enable a modern playbook for authoritarian control. Why are independent platforms and civic education so crucial at this point in the US and world Social St
S E1288: In Class with Carr, Ep. 288: Moving Targets
In this moment in US history, fear has been weaponized as a political tool, using white nationalist rhetoric to target anyone who can be cast as a political enemy. Terms like “The Left” become labels for “enemies of the people” of “enemies of our country,” shifting categories that include anyone who refuses to conform to narrow and white nativist politics. Whenever claims of blameless whi
S E1287: In Class with Carr, Ep. 287: "Reality Check!"
Missouri Senator Eric Schmidt’s September 2, 2025,speech delivered at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC was a white nationalist battle cry, the latest volley in a growing war on truth. These assaults on our common humanity are naked attempts to seize public resources to reshape the US state and the contemporary world system. JOIN KNARRATIVE: https://www.knarrative.com
S E1286: In Class with Carr, Ep. 286: Labors of Love!
In the US Social Structure, Labor Day weekend is both a ritual of Summer’s ending and a potential lens for examining how labor, Cultural Meaning-Making and love in Africana Ways of Knowing fuel the Momentum of Movement and Memory. In the rituals of this season, from the Annual West Indian American Labor Day Parade to anniversaries of the 1963 March on Washington and the 1955 murder of Emm
S E1285: In Class with Carr, Ep. 285: Black to School
The formal academic school year is underway in most places in a United States facing accelerated fascist overtures from elements in federal and state governments. Memories of Anti-Black state action evoked at the 20th anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster can be juxtaposed against current attacks on both state and African memory and education to remind us that we live in a moment
S E1284: In Class with Carr, Ep. 284: Foundational Blackness
In the United States, the back-to-school season signals more than just a return to “traditional” classrooms—in a moment of open white nationalist warfare on our common humanity, it is also a moment for renewed reflection on origins, connections, and relationships. This fall, a new iteration of that search in the discipline of Africana Studies takes shape with the launch of “The Black Univ
S E1283: In Class with Carr, Episode 283: "Why Not Call it Mdw Ntr?”
Our Annual Nile Valley study tour continues the process of strengthening the work of Africana Studies as a tool for jailbreaking the university and renewing deeper traditions of community-centered education. Inspired by a 1996 exchange between Greg Kimathi Carr and Jacob Carruthers—where Carruthers urged embracing language and concepts from Mdw Ntr over attempting to repurpose European co
S E1282: In Class with Carr, Ep. 282: Nations Within Nations
Can we live together? We must. This week’s funeral of Officer Didarul Islam in New York City, where leaders honored his immigrant journey and anchoring cultural identities, place current global tensions, tariff wars, and political upheavals at the center of our efforts to compare ourselves to each other. We explore the state’s role in that process, and find in our study of the past in rel
S E1281: In Class with Carr, Ep. 281: Referendum on America
The weaponization of the judiciary, cultural institutions, and federal agencies threatens deeper fissures. As demographic shifts challenge already fragile power hierarchies in places like Texas, the backlash grows, manifesting in state repression and ideological crusades. This week, "In Class with Carr" looks to historical memory to remind us that Governance formations can and must be re
S E1280: In Class with Carr, Ep. 280: “There Ain’t No Such Thing as Superman!”
The Cultural Meaning Making trope of Superman, especially as a trope used in US white nationalism, serves as a point of entry to consider power, collective identity and belief in the US Social Structure. In a moment in US and global history especially fraught with mass and social media manipulation, how can we leverage the momentum of memory to empower alternative visions of self-determin
S E1279: In Class with Carr, Ep. 279: "I Respectfully Dissent!"
In the 2025 Supreme Court term, Justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson authored more dissents than any of her colleagues, offering a searing critique of expanding executive power and the erosion of constitutional norms and the Rule of Law. This week we focus on her dissent in Trump v. CASA, the White Nationalist frontal assault on birthright citizenship, placing Brown Jackson’s dissent in h
S E1278: In Class with Carr, Ep. 278: America on the Ropes
The United States once again finds itself metaphorically “on the ropes,” staggering beneath the weight of white nationalism and nativist logics, elite-driven legislation, electoral political theater, digital mass media distortion, and deepening economic, social, and cultural divides. Buffeted by increasingly powerful international forces, is the idea of a US counterpunch more delusion tha
S E1277: In Class with Carr, Ep. 277: White Citizenship vs Everybody
The final US Supreme Court decisions of the term continue the assault on Reconstruction-era federal law, suborning the “neo-Confederate” agenda of reasserting racialized citizenship and dismantling protections clearly intended to be enshrined in US law in the Reconstruction Constitutional amendments. By restricting judicial orders to named plaintiffs, the Court once again attempts to curb
S E1276: In Class with Carr, Ep. 276: Juneteenth and the Unyielding Work of Liberation
The annual period between June 19 and July 4 in the US should be viewed as a time when we read Africana Governance formations against contemporary Social Structures that seek to oppress and restrict human possibilities. Juneteenth is a powerful, living ritual of African self-determination that remembers and reiterates freedom as a Ways of Knowing rooted in self-governance and collective m
S E1275: In Class with Carr, Ep. 275: “Parades of Harm, Principles of Repair”
As global crises and US domestic reckonings intensify, the New York Community Commission on Reparations Remedies met this week at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, drawing attention to the urgent need to reimagine repair—not merely as restitution, but as a process of decolonization and rehumanization in a fractured United States and world. Reparations is not simply (or e
S E1274: In Class with Carr, Ep. 274: "The Ballot, The Book and The Buck”
Black self-determination and liberation requires a holistic and strategic integration of political power, cultural memory, and economic self-determination. Across a week of reflection, convenings, and engagement, from Birmingham’s Civil Rights Historical District to Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn Avenue to Daytona’s Paul Laurence Dunbar House and Wilberforce Ohio’s National Afro American Museum a
S E1273: In Class with Carr, Ep. 273: Governance by Gaslight: Black Politics at the End of Empire
“Gaslighting” is the psychological manipulation of individuals or groups into questioning their reality, memory, or sanity—often to maintain control. In a week of continuing mounting chaos in US politics marked by the meeting of the National Organization of Black County Officials in Birmingham, we can recognize that both colonialism and American institutions have gaslit Black communities
S E1272: In Class with Carr, Ep. 272: "The People vs. The State: Compromise, Confront, Contain, or Control?”
In today’s turbulent global political landscape, relationships between the people, organized groups and the state is shaped by interactions frought with compromise, confrontation, containment, and control. This week’s moment of confrontation between state representatives of South Africa and the United States provide opportunities to examine where unresolved historical trauma, structural i
S E1271: In Class with Carr, Ep. 271: “Malcolm X at 100: Clarity, Not Chaos, to Create a New World”
On Monday, May 19, 2025, we mark the 100th birthday of Malcolm X—a centennial honoring a life shaped by self-transformation, Black self-determination, and an unwavering commitment to global liberation. His words and actions continue to challenge systems rooted in white supremacy, now desperately clinging to power through international self-dealing, global realignments, and domestic attack
S E1270: In Class with Carr, Ep. 270: "We Have Been Believers”
Across political, social, and spiritual spheres, humanity faces a reckoning with the structures of power that shape our world—and the urgent need to turn from putting our faith in unreliable actors in favor of putting our faith in ourselves and responding to oppression with collective action.The recent acquittal of the police officer killers of Tyre Nichols, Donald Trump’s continued assau
S E1269: In Class with Carr, Ep. 269: “Executive Orders vs Ancestral Orders: The Next 100 Days”
The first one hundred days of the second Donald Trump presidency saw an unprecedented campaign to dismantle institutional norms and accelerate structural transformation, evoking the spirit of the earliest days of American settler colonialism. Each executive order, policy decision and rhetorical outburst worked to normalize a vision rooted in theocracy, white nationalist fascism, and xenop
S E1268: In Class with Carr, Ep. 268: We're All Sinners!
The rapid success of Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners provides an ideal text for analysis through the Africana Studies Disciplinary Framework. As we explore some of the film’s central themes, it becomes clear how both the film itself and responses to it reflect intersections of the Social Structure and Governance Disciplinary Conceptual Categories. Rooted in self-determination—both as a cinema
S E1267: In Class with Carr, Ep. 267: “Fighting Black: Liberation Beyond the Nation”
In a week when Harvard University marked the first full-throated act of resistance in U.S. higher education against the rising tide of institutionalized Trumpism, we are also reminded—through annual rituals of remembrance—of our enduring struggle for liberation. From the commemoration of Jackie Robinson’s debut in Major League Baseball to the District of Columbia's observance of Compensat
S E1266: In Class with Carr, Ep. 266: "New World A'Coming"!
This week, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch offered expansive public remarks that help reframe how we think about nationhood, identity, and responsibility to the group. While we often see ourselves bound by narratives tied to constructs like “nations,” Bunch’s assertion that there is no single U.S. narrative—that there are many stories—reminds us that our existence is both local and glo
S E1265: In Class with Carr, Ep. 265: “DEI Gone Wild!”
In a week when the imposition of US tariffs by an increasingly unstable federal government weaponized by white nationalism pushes the US and global economies towards global recession and depression, the University of South Carolina Women’s Basketball Team highlights ongoing tensions between race, power, and control in U.S. society.While Black students make up only 10% of USC’s student bod
Recommended
Busted Open
Deadline: White House
Crickets Corner
History of the Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco
Fox news
K-Drama Obsessed Mamas | Beyond “Just One More Episode!”
True Crime Classics
The Healer Revolution
Becoming: HER with Nikki Spoelstra
Booked, Blonde & Busy w/ Olivia Ponton
McKinsey on Consumer and Retail
megahired.com
