New Books Network

What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions

Apr 10, 2025

Susan Sturm, a leading scholar in law and social responsibility at Columbia Law School, shares her insights on confronting systemic racism in institutions. She discusses the challenges leaders face when pushing for anti-racism and reveals three paradoxes that often hinder progress. Sturm emphasizes the importance of creating 'microspaces of justice' and recounts successful community initiatives that engage youth and promote inclusivity. With her wealth of experience, she offers strategies to foster genuine transformation and build bridges across racial divides.

53:12

Episode guests

Susan Sturm

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

Navigating the paradoxes of racialized power and identity is crucial for white allies engaging in effective anti-racist institutional reform.

Microspaces of justice can catalyze broader institutional changes by fostering community support and participation within predominantly white environments.

Deep dives

The Call for Change in Institutional Dynamics

The discussion emphasizes the need for institutional reform to combat racism and promote inclusivity within predominantly white environments. It highlights the hesitance some individuals may feel when addressing racism, particularly among white academics writing about the topic, due to fears of backlash or disapproval from peers. Despite this, there is a strong call from students and change agents for white allies to engage in addressing these issues and to help facilitate change within institutions. This collaborative effort is crucial to creating spaces where marginalized voices are not only included but lead the discourse on racism and its effects.

Intro

2min

Navigating Racism in Academia

13min

Navigating the Contradictions of Racial Justice and Legal Institutions

6min

Microspaces of Justice: Transforming Inequality

15min

Transforming Institutional Dynamics: The Mall of America Example

2min

Mighty Moms: Community Empowerment in Policing

13min

Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions (Princeton UP, 2025), Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. Professor Sturm argues that although we cannot avoid the contradictions built into efforts to confront racism, we can make them into engines of cross-racial reflection, bridge building, and institutional reimagination, rather than falling into a Groundhog Day–like trap of repeated failures.

Drawing on her decades of experience researching and working with institutions to help them become more equitable and inclusive, she identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work. These are the paradox of racialized power, whereby anti-racism requires white people to lean into and yet step back from exercising power; the paradox of racial salience, which means that effective efforts must explicitly name and address race while also framing their goals in universal terms other than race; and the paradox of racialized institutions, which must drive anti-racism work while simultaneously being the target of it. Sturm shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddle these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long-term change. The book includes thoughtful and critical responses from Goodwin Liu, Freeman Hrabowski, and Anurima Bhargava.

Our guest is: Professor Susan Sturm, who is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and the Founding Director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She is the coauthor with Lani Guinier, of Who's Qualified? A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast.

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