The Importance of Being a Southerner

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Part six of our ongoing series, Seeing White. We're exploring what's up with white people and the idea of whiteness. This time we talk north and south, but this is not a dive into history like the last few episodes. Nobody you'll hear in this piece is trying to minimize or excuse the racial sins of white southerners past or present.

When it comes to America’s racial sins, past and present, a lot of us see people in one region of the country as guiltier than the rest. Host John Biewen spoke with some white Southern friends about that tendency. Part Six of our ongoing series, Seeing White. With recurring guest, Chenjerai Kumanyika.

Image: A lynching on Clarkson Street, New York City, during the Draft Riots of 1863. Credit: Greenwich Village Society of Historical Preservation.

Shannon Sullivan’s books, Revealing Whiteness and Good White People.

Thanks to Chris Julin, whose 1991 NPR report on the Wisconsin fishing rights dispute we featured.