Racism in Liberal Societies with Debra Thompson

Debra Thompson, a McGill professor and political scholar on the comparative politics of race, joins host Sanjay Ruparelia for a conversation on racism and democracy in Canada and the U.S. In this episode, Thompson discusses the way racist policies and systems of oppression operate differently in the two countries, resulting in a complicated relationship between Black citizens and their national identity.

In this episode of On The Frontlines of Democracy, host Sanjay Ruparelia talks to Debra Thompson, the Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies at McGill University. The pair talk about the way systems of oppression operate in both the American and the Canadian contexts—how they’re similar, and how they’re different.

Host: Sanjay Ruparelia, Jarislowsky Democracy Chair and Associate Professor of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Guest: Debra Thompson, Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies at McGill University. 

Background Reading: 

Debra Thompson’s  The Long Road Home: On Blackness and Belonging

W. E. B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk

Joel Olson’s  The Abolition of White Democracy

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness

Debra Thompson’s  The Puzzling Persistence of Racial Inequality in Canada

Debra Thompson’s  “Is this what democracy looks like?” 

Debra Thompson’s  “What, to the descendants of the enslaved, is Canada Day?” 

Sean Mills’  The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal

Ta-Nehesi Coates’  Between the World and Me