"Critical Race Theory, Part 2" - w/UC Berkely Professor Ian Haney López

In the second episode of our series on Critical Race Theory, Will (Political Host) talks with one of the foremost experts on CRT, Professor Ian Lopez. Professor Lopez is more than just a academic who teaches it, but is also an understudy of Derrick Bell who often is credited as one of the originators of critical race theory. Unlike the first in the series, where we speak with Yale Professor Daniel Hosang, and break down some of the basic principles of CRT, Professor Lopez goes into the weeds a little bit deeper and talks about the significance of Dog Whistle Politics and how it is being used as a tool to manipulate voters, and is used by both Republicans and Democrats alike. The conversation then turns to the work he's done to research aspects of CRT in our national discourse with the Race-Class Narrative Project.

For more information about Professor Ian Lopez, please visit his website

If you want to learn more about the RaceClass Narrative Project visit

If you'd like to take the free RaceClass Academy course mentioned in the show visit

Guest Bio:

Ian Haney López is a law professor at UC Berkeley who studies racism. His focus for the last decade has been on the use of racism as a class weapon in electoral politics, and how to respond. In Dog Whistle Politics (2014), he detailed the fifty-year history of coded racism in American politics. Ian has since actively promoted the idea of a race-class fusion as the basis for a multi-racial progressive majority. He co-chaired the AFL-CIO’s Advisory Council on Racial and Economic Justice, along with Dorian Warren and Ana Avendaño, and founded the Race-Class Narrative Project, along with Anat Shenker-Osorio and Heather McGhee. In his latest book, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America (2019), Ian explains Trump’s complex relationship with dog whistling and further develops the race-class response.

Ian is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published four books and two anthologies, and has been a visiting professor at Yale, New York University, and Harvard. He lives in Richmond, California.

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