Circumscription - Episodes Tagged with “#Race”

Episode 17: Entangled: Race, Politics, and Post-Callais America

Michael Sargent — Thu, 21 May 2026 16:30:00 -0400

Guy-Uriel Charles is the Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he also directs the Charles Hamilton Institute for Race and Justice. Along with a coauthor, he’s also working on a book that focuses on the past and future of voting rights. He was appointed by President Joe Biden to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Rick Hasen is Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, and he also directs the Safeguarding Democracy Project. He is an expert on election law, and is the author of A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy.

We discuss Section 2 of the Voting Rights, and the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais decision.

OTHER LINKS
--"House Majority Leader William Lamberth cannot answer several questions from Rep. Jesse Chism (D)," from YouTube
--Louisiana v. Callais (et al.), Supreme Court opinion, decided April 29, 2026
--"Pathological racism, chronic racism, & targeted universalism," (2021) by Guy-Uriel Charles and Luis Fuentes Rohwer, in the California Law Review
--Social dominance, (1999) by Jim Sidanius & Felicia Pratto, Cambridge University Press
--Wikipedia summary of Rucho v. Common Cause
--"Callais confusion, power-sharing, and the inevitability of proportional representation," (2026) by Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Michael Latner & Carlos Algara, in the Yale Law Journal
--Wikipedia summary of proportional representation
--A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy, (2024) by Rick Hasen, Princeton University Press
--the Safeguarding Democracy Project website

MUSIC CREDITS (all songs from Free Music Archive, and each song carries the "cc by" license)
--"The Trail," by Unheard Music Concepts
--"Monsters of the past," by Pawel Feszczuk
--"Funky end," by Pawel Feszczuk
--"Caress me to sleep," by rui

Special Guests: Guy-Uriel Charles and Rick Hasen.

Episode 13: Exile

Michael Sargent — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 05:00:00 -0500

Danieli Evans is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law. She holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, and later earned a Ph.D. from Yale Law, completing a dissertation titled, “Belonging, Equality, and the Law.” Her work investigates how people's experiences with government institutions influence their sense of belonging, and how levels of belonging influence their wellbeing and social opportunities.

OTHER LINKS
--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "The Other America," 1967 speech at Stanford University
--"The Fourteenth Amendment," at Constitution Annotated: Analysis and Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution
--Dred Scott v. Sandford Wikipedia entry
--The Cyberball game (hosted at Purdue University)
--"Institutionalized ostracism," by Danieli Evans (2025), Michigan Journal of Race and Law
--Plyler v. Doe Wikipedia entry
--"The new Equal Protection," by Kenji Yoshino (2011), Harvard Law Review
--Democracy and distrust: A Theory of judicial review (1980), by John Hart Ely
--"The id, the ego, and equal protection: Reckoning with unconscious racism," by Charles R. Lawrence III (1987), Stanford Law Review
--"A quantitative meta-analysis of functional imaging studies of social rejection," by Stephanie Cacioppo et al. (2013), Nature: Scientific Reports
--"Social pain and the brain: Controversies, questions, and where to go from here," by Naomi I. Eisenberger (2015) Annual Review of Psychology

MUSIC CREDITS (all songs from Free Music Archive, and each song carries the "cc by" license)
--"The Trail," by Unheard Music Concepts
--"Imprecation," by Kevin Hartnell
--"Pleasure," by Haunted Me
--"Caress me to sleep," by rui Special Guest: Danieli Evans.

Episode 9: Triggered

Michael Sargent — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 05:00:00 -0400

Gerald Higginbotham is an assistant professor in the Frank Batten School of Leadership & Public Policy at the University of Virginia. He holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from UCLA, and also a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Stanford University. He studies (in his words) “the imprint of history on people’s modern social perceptions and policy attitudes, and the psychological underpinnings of how people perceive history and its consequences.”

OTHER LINKS
--Ronald Reagan's 1983 address before the National Rifle Association
--"The lasting legacy of 1967 Black Panther gun control protest at California Capitol" (article at CBS News, by Steve Large)
--Wikipedia entry on Ida B. Wells-Barnett
--"Historian uncovers the racist roots of the 2nd Amendment" (interview at National Public Radio)

MUSIC CREDITS (all songs from Free Music Archive, and each song carries the "cc by" license)
--"The Trail," by Unheard Music Concepts
--"Breath," by Kirk Osamayo
--"Cello," by Ketsa
--"Caress me to sleep," by rui Special Guest: Gerald Higginbotham.

Episode 8: Unreconstructed

Michael Sargent — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 05:00:00 -0400

Julia Azari is Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University, and she studies the American presidency, American political parties, political communication and American political development. She's the author of the 2014 book, Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate. Her newest book (and the focus of this podast episode) is Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History published in 2025.

OTHER LINKS
--President Johnson's remarks on the signing of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 (July 2, 1964)
--Bright Line Watch
--"Bill Clinton on being called 'first Black president': 'I took it as a great compliment'" (article at The Hill, by Cheyanne M. Daniels)
--"'George Bush doesn't care about Black people' 20 years later" (NPR interview with Rodney Carmichael and Leah Donnella)
--Wikipedia entry on fainting goats
--The Bulwark
--"Weak parties and strong partisanship are a bad combination" (article at Vox, by Julia Azari)

MUSIC CREDITS (all songs from Free Music Archive, and each song carries the "cc by" license)
--"The Trail," by Unheard Music Concepts
--"Breath," by Kirk Osamayo
--"Monsters of the past," by Pawel Feszczuk
--"Caress me to sleep," by rui Special Guest: Julia Azari.

Episode 7: But What About Us?

Michael Sargent — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 05:00:00 -0400

Clara Wilkins is Associate Professor and Earl R. Carlson Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington. Trained as a social psychologist, she leads the Social Perceptions and Intergroup Attiudes Lab (SPIA Lab). Along with her collaborators, she studies such topics as (a) the causes and consequences of dominant group members' perceptions of group-based victimization, and (b) how variation in racial and ethnic minorities’ physical appearance shapes the perceptions and experiences of disadvantaged group members.

OTHER LINKS
--Catherine Herridge 2020 interview of Donald Trump
--"Exclusive: Trump says "anti-White feeling" is a problem in the U.S." (article at Time Magazine, by Nik Popli & Eric Coretellessa)
--"Religious 'Nones' are now the largest single group in the U.S." (report at National Public Radio, by Jason DeRose)
--Wikipedia entry on the "tradwife" phenomenon
--"Just Theory" (podcast interview from Tatter, featuring John Jost and the late Jim Sidanius, interviewed by Michael Sargent)

MUSIC CREDITS (all songs from Free Music Archive, and each song carries the "cc by" license)
--"The Trail," by Unheard Music Concepts
--"Electric Silence," by Unheard Music Concepts
--"Pleasure," by Haunted Me
--"Post Drone," by Uuriter
--"Caress me to sleep," by rui Special Guest: Clara Wilkins.