A Conversation With Sociologist James Loewen About the Lies Our Teachers Told Us About American History and the Color Line

There are two guests on this week's podcast.

James Loewen is the author of the bestselling book Lies My Teacher Told Me. He has also written award-winning books such as Sundown Towns, Teaching What Really Happened, and The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader.

In his several decades of teaching and scholarship Professor Loewen has traveled around the United States and world giving lectures and offering training sessions to educators and activists and the general public. He has also won prestigious awards for his scholarship and other work from the American Sociological Association and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

Professor Loewen shares his thoughts on the resurrection of the Confederacy in the South and the Republican Party, the Charlottesville white supremacist riot, history memory, "sundown towns" and racial segregation, and resurgent anti-Semitism in the Age of Trump. In addition, Professor Loewen also reflects on the need to tell the truth about American history in the classroom and the struggles over how textbooks should discuss (or not) white on black chattel slavery and other crimes in the country's history.

Professor John Terrell is the second guest on this week's show.

He is the Regenstein curator of Pacific anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, an adjunct professor of anthropology at Northwestern University, and an honorary fellow in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Professor Terrell explains why so-called "DNA tests" such as "23 and Me" help to perpetuate incorrect and dangerously outdated ideas about "race", geography, and human ancestry, how new age eugenics and "race science" tries to erroneously connect "intelligence" to "heredity" and "populations", and why having these discussions with the public about science and society is so difficult

On this week's podcast Chauncey reviews how Donald Trump's assault on democracy and human dignity and even the survival of the human race continued over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

And Chauncey shares his thoughts about  the new movies Creed 2 (which was horrible) and Green Book (which was a pleasant surprise). Plus, Chauncey reminds all of the good, kind, and generous friends, listeners and other supporters that next month, December 2018, is fundraising month to support The Chauncey DeVega Show and his other projects and work.

This week's podcast with James Loewen and John Terrell can be listened to or downloaded here.