Podcasts about hajar yazdiha

00:08 Hajar Yazdiha, Assistant Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California; now author of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement [re-broadcast] 00:34 Martin Luther King Jr., recorded December 7, 1964 (days before he received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo) giving an address in London on segregation, the fight for civil rights and his support for Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Because of the holiday, Corona Calls is delayed until Tuesday. Send questions to: coronacalls@kpfa.org   The post Hajar Yazdiha on the Struggle for the People's King appeared first on KPFA.

A diverse panel of experts will shed light on how individuals and communities have stood against oppression and persecution during World War II, the civil rights movement, and in struggles for social justice today. Wolf Gruner is the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, a professor of History, and Founding Director of the Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research at USC. He is an appointed member of the Academic Committee at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum since 2017. He is the author of eleven books, among them the prize-winning The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia. Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses. His new book, Resisters. How Ordinary Jews fought Hitler's Persecution, is a National Jewish Book Award finalist. Susan H. Kamei, the managing director of the Spatial Sciences Institute, a professor of History, and author of When Can We Go Back to America? Voices of Japanese American Incarceration during World War II, is recognized as a leading scholar and educator on our country's unjustified wartime imprisonment of more than 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, solely on the basis of their race. A descendant of incarcerees, she draws upon personal and community stories to convey the continuing relevance of this tragic episode in our history to contemporary issues of racial identity, immigration, and citizenship, and today's threat to civil liberties. Hajar Yazdiha is an assistant professor of Sociology at USC, faculty affiliate of the USC Equity Research Institute, and author of the book, The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. A public scholar whose writing and research has been featured in the New York Times, TIME Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Hill, and The Grio, Hajar researches the politics of inclusion and exclusion, examining the forces that bring us together and keep us apart as we work to forge collective futures.  Moderator: Allissa V. Richardson is an associate professor of journalism at USC's Annenberg School and the founding director of the USC Charlotta Bass Journalism & Justice Lab. The award-winning journalism instructor, scholar, and author studies how marginalized communities use mobile and social media to produce innovative forms of journalism, especially in times of crisis. Richardson's best-selling book, Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism, explores the lives of 15 mobile journalist-activists who documented the Black Lives Matter movement using only smartphones and Twitter.

How can the past be turned against its memory keepers?  How can the successes and accomplishments of a person or movement be undone by intentionally misremembering and distorting the past?   University of Southern California sociologist Hajar Yazdiha argues that this is precisely what's been happening with the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.  Since the Reagan era the memory of this past has been used by diverse actors on the right to roll back the gains of the civil rights movement.  The memory of Dr. King has been exploited to further the goals of a wide array of conservative groups.  For more, listen to a conversation with Hajar Yazdiha about her book, The Struggle for the People's King:  How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.

From Latinos and women to the disabled and the LGBTQ community, a wide range of disadvantaged groups have achieved significant legal gains in the United States since the 1960s.  This minority rights revolution inevitably sparked a backlash among white conservatives who felt threatened by change.  In this fierce struggle over the values and character of the nation, University of Southern California sociologist Hajar Yazdiha argues that all sides have sought advantage by laying claim to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.  To learn more listen to Hajar Yazdiha discuss her recent book, The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.  Next on the August 6th episode of Realms of Memory.

As we prepare for the Nationly and Sportly podcasts launch and Immigrantly's newest episodes, we are sharing an episode by our friends at the Future Hindsight episode. In this Future Hindsight episode, host Mila Atmos is joined by Hajar Yazdiha for a conversation on the role of collective memory in the myth-making of American exceptionalism.  Collective memory is how we remember history and becomes central to our idea of who we are as a people. It's a storytelling process and the most central story to who we are as a people. The civil rights movement has become one of the central collective memories in America's story of both who it is and who it wants to be. However, careful examination of the record reveals that the civil rights movement was a political project meant to dismantle multicultural democracy. Further, as the collective memory of Dr. King became sanitized and whitewashed, his legacy carried a lot of moral legitimacy, and his moral symbolic authority became ripe for manipulation. Hajar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the author of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. Please tune in to Future Hindsight every Thursday whenever you get your podcasts.  https://www.futurehindsight.com/ Credits: Host: Mila Atmos  Guest: Hajar Yazdiha Executive Producer: Mila Atmos Senior Producer: Zack Travis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At this week's Round Table, Hannah, Heba, and Inyoo spoke with Hajar Yazdiha, a sociologist and author of The Struggle for the People's King. Our conversation with Hajar explores the ways right-wing movements manipulate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights figures.  Drawing on Hajar's research, we discuss how these groups use the same historical sources to develop contrasting agendas, leading to polarized debates on issues like LGBTQ rights, immigrant and Muslim rights, and other areas of contention. Hajar sheds light on the complex relationship between public memory, history, and social justice, emphasizing the ongoing struggle over the narratives we tell ourselves about the past. By examining how sanitized histories perpetuate racial inequality, she underscores the importance of critically evaluating the stories we accept as true and questioning whose interests they serve. Our discussion also covers the impact of revisionist narratives on our multicultural democracy and the ways progressive and conservative movements come to drastically different conclusions about civil rights history. Hajar's insights reveal how the distortion of history continues to shape contemporary discourse and deepen societal divides. We challenge you, our listeners, to take action in a meaningful way. Start by reading Hajar Yazdiha's book, The Struggle for the People's King, and consider sharing it with your community. Look into organizations that advocate for civil rights and get involved in supporting their work. Attend town halls and community meetings to stay informed and make your voice heard. By actively seeking knowledge and engaging with local advocacy groups, you can play a role in reshaping our understanding of history and championing social justice. Thank you for listening! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nextgenpolitics/message

Since 9/11, Muslims have occupied the U.S. public and political spheres as threats to national security, as victims of hate crimes, as targets of torture and war, and as a community to be included in diversity initiatives. This insightful panel will explore Muslim inclusion and representation in a variety of contexts, including education, politics, and the entertainment industry. Shafiqa Ahmadi is an associate professor of Clinical Education at the Rossier School of Education and the co-director for USC's Center for Education, Identity, and Social Justice. She is an expert on diversity and legal protection of underrepresented students, including female Muslims, and is the co-editor of Islamophobia in Higher Education: Combating Discrimination and Creating Understanding. Maytha Alhassen holds a PhD in American Studies and Ethnicity from USC. She is the writer of the report, Haqq and Hollywood: Illuminating 100 Years of Muslim Tropes and How to Transform Them, and producer and writer of the Golden Globe and Peabody­–winning Hulu series Ramy. Evelyn Alsultany is the author of Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion and Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11. She is an associate professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC, has served as a consultant for Hollywood studios, and co-authored the Obeidi-Alsultany Test with criteria to help Hollywood improve representations of Muslims. Hajar Yazdiha is an assistant professor of Sociology, faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute, and a 2022–23 Ford Foundation Fellow at the USC Dornsife School of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. She is an expert on the racial politics of inclusion and exclusion and is the author of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. Moderator: Varun Soni is the Dean of Religious Life at USC, University Fellow at USC Annenberg's Center on Public Diplomacy, and an adjunct professor at the USC School of Religion. His writings have appeared in the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Crosscurrents, Jewish Journal, and Harvard Divinity Bulletin.

In a world of co-optation, violent othering and systemic oppression, how can tracing the histories of resistance and collective resilience of communities (including those we are not from) liberate and expand imaginations beyond the confines of sociopolitical structures? What can life look like if we, as humans, abide again by nature's laws of interconnectedness, cyclical healing and symbiotic living? In this month's episode, we are joined by Hajar Yazdiha, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California and faculty affiliate of the USC Equity Research Institute. Hajar researches the politics of inclusion and exclusion, examining the forces that bring us together and keep us apart as we work to forge collective futures. She is author of the book, The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement with Princeton University Press. She is also a public scholar whose writing and research has been featured in outlets including The New York Times, Time Magazine, LA Times, ABC News, The Hill, and The Grio. In this wonderfully inspiring conversation, Hajar dismantles the politics of togetherness and othering by interweaving her lived experiences, the collective memory of the Civil Rights Movement and the innate creative abilities of the human being to illustrate how systems have historically oppressed and violated certain groups, but also how these groups have resisted and transformed these systems of harm. It is in these stories of struggle and resilience that hope emerges, a sense of shared hope and relief that we can remake the liberation created and experienced by generations before us. Visit mindfullofeverything.com for all episode resources and archives. Follow the podcast on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

In this episode Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Hajar Yazdiha about history, memory, and identity. Williams is the current director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture at University of Massachusetts Boston. Yazdiha is Assistant Professor of sociology and affiliate faculty of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. She is also the author of the recent book The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement recently published by Princeton University Press in 2023. Yazdiha uses a myriad of sources to elaborate on her thesis in this book about how the story and image of Martin Luther King, Jr. is used and abused by contemporary Americans to serve a political or social agenda. This is an important work squarely within the current expansion of King Studies (or studies of MLK one of America's greatest activist moralists). In this text she argues that “wide ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s” including those on the far right. The right, in particular, she claims especially white, right wing social movements such as the family values advocates and the alt-right misuse the memory of King to redefine themselves “as the newly oppressed minorities.” These efforts ultimately work to distort history and undermine the move toward multicultural democracy Yazdiha argues. For more about Dr. Yazdiha click here Dr. Hajar Yazdiha and to secure a copy of her book click here: The Struggle for the People's King 

Martin Luther King Jr. was relatively unpopular when he was assassinated. But the way Americans of all political stripes invoke his memory today, you'd think he was held up as a hero. In this episode, we talk about the cooptation of King's legacy with Hajar Yazdiha, author of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.Listen to more Code Switch at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, NPR.org, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers University. Her research examines the mechanisms underlying the politics of inclusion and exclusion as they shape intergroup boundaries, ethno-racial identities, and intergroup relations. This work crosses subfields of race and ethnicity, migration, social movements, culture, and law using mixed methods including interview, survey, historical, and computational text analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers University. Her research examines the mechanisms underlying the politics of inclusion and exclusion as they shape intergroup boundaries, ethno-racial identities, and intergroup relations. This work crosses subfields of race and ethnicity, migration, social movements, culture, and law using mixed methods including interview, survey, historical, and computational text analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers University. Her research examines the mechanisms underlying the politics of inclusion and exclusion as they shape intergroup boundaries, ethno-racial identities, and intergroup relations. This work crosses subfields of race and ethnicity, migration, social movements, culture, and law using mixed methods including interview, survey, historical, and computational text analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers University. Her research examines the mechanisms underlying the politics of inclusion and exclusion as they shape intergroup boundaries, ethno-racial identities, and intergroup relations. This work crosses subfields of race and ethnicity, migration, social movements, culture, and law using mixed methods including interview, survey, historical, and computational text analysis.

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers University. Her research examines the mechanisms underlying the politics of inclusion and exclusion as they shape intergroup boundaries, ethno-racial identities, and intergroup relations. This work crosses subfields of race and ethnicity, migration, social movements, culture, and law using mixed methods including interview, survey, historical, and computational text analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers University. Her research examines the mechanisms underlying the politics of inclusion and exclusion as they shape intergroup boundaries, ethno-racial identities, and intergroup relations. This work crosses subfields of race and ethnicity, migration, social movements, culture, and law using mixed methods including interview, survey, historical, and computational text analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers University. Her research examines the mechanisms underlying the politics of inclusion and exclusion as they shape intergroup boundaries, ethno-racial identities, and intergroup relations. This work crosses subfields of race and ethnicity, migration, social movements, culture, and law using mixed methods including interview, survey, historical, and computational text analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Hajar Yazdiha – Hajar Yazdiha, Asst. Professor of Sociology at USC, joins Tavis to discuss the hijacking of civil rights heroes to fuel today's culture wars. She examines how right-wing movements have manipulated the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

How distorted memories of the Civil Rights Movement fuel today's divisionsIn this bonus episode for MLK Day, host David Beckmeyer interviews Hajar Yazdiha, an assistant professor of sociology and author of "The Struggle for the People's King." They discuss the hidden narratives and complexities of the civil rights movement, the misperceptions surrounding Martin Luther King Jr., and how the memory of the movement has been distorted to fuel outrage and political agendas. They also explore the role of race in American society, the importance of critical and spiritual education, and the need for a deeper understanding of our shared humanity.Support the showShow Notes:https://outrageoverload.net/ Follow me, David Beckemeyer, on Twitter @mrblog. Follow the show on Twitter @OutrageOverload or Instagram @OutrageOverload. We are also on Facebook /OutrageOverload.HOTLINE: 925-552-7885Got a Question, comment or just thoughts you'd like to share? Call the OO hotline and leave a message and you could be featured in an upcoming episodeIf you would like to help the show, you can contribute here. Tell everyone you know about the show. That's the best way to support it.Rate and Review the show on Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/OutrageOverloadMany thanks to my co-editor and co-director, Austin Chen.

Welcome to our first episode of 2024! Joining us in the Greenhouse for an MLK Day special, we have Professor Hajar Yazdiha to discuss her book The Struggle for The People's King, a book that seems to have captured the entire spirit of everything we try to talk about here on Greenhouse Gaslighting when it comes to the strategic use of political rhetoric and social iconography, as well as the manipulation and distortion of collective memory when it comes to our shared history. Plugs from today's episode https://www.zinnedproject.org/ https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/ Follow Hajar's work at: https://www.hajaryazdiha.com/ Check out The Struggle for The People's King: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691246475/the-struggle-for-the-peoples-king Referenced Books/Articles/Media from the episode: Robert Bellah's Civil Religion in America - http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm Hajar's piece in the LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-08-28/march-on-washington-martin-luther-king-racial-progress-black-americans Civil Racism by Lynn Mie Itagaki Prophet of Discontent by Jared A. Loggins and Andrew J. Douglas As always - our links available at https://linktr.ee/greenhousegaslighting End: Excerpt from MartinLuther King Jr.'s speech titled The Three Evils of Society (1987): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8d-IYSM-08

Episode Notes How is it that seemingly everyone – from liberals to conservatives, to celebrities, social media trolls, and your least favorite family member – has a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr quote or Civil Rights Movement reference at the ready? How is it that such disparate groups with various interests find meaning and support for their causes in Dr. King's words? How is it that they can lay claim to his dream for their own visions of the future? Today I'm joined by Dr. Hajar Yazdiha to dig into how the Civil Rights Movement has become a readily available collective memory. She shares how groups reshape memory to make and contest political claims and the consequences of this reshaping. She also talks about how collective memory can be reworked to restore pieces of the past through processes of truth and reconciliation.   Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, faculty affiliate of the USC Equity Research Institute, and a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar (2023-2025). Hajar researches the politics of inclusion and exclusion, examining the forces that bring us together and keep us apart as we work to forge collective futures. In addition to being the author of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement, she is also a public scholar whose writing and research has been featured in outlets including The New York Times, LA Times, ABC News, The Hill, and The Grio.   Other episodes mentioned: Episode 112 Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement with Bobby J. Smith II

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Hajar Yazdiha – Hajar Yazdiha, Asst. Professor of Sociology at USC, joins Tavis in studio to discuss the hijacking of civil rights heroes to fuel today's culture wars. She examines how right-wing movements have manipulated the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

7:08 Oliver Millman, environment correspondent for The Guardian, now author of The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run The World [repeat from 2022]   7:33  Hajar Yazdiha   is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California; now author of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement The post Hajar Yazdiha on The Struggle for the People's King appeared first on KPFA.

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next.

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton UP, 2023) reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. In the revisionist memories of white conservatives, gun rights activists are the new Rosa Parks, antiabortion activists are freedom riders, and antigay groups are the defenders of Martin Luther King's Christian vision. Drawing on a wealth of evidence ranging from newspaper articles and organizational documents to television transcripts, press releases, and focus groups, Hajar Yazdiha documents the consequential reimagining of the civil rights movement in American political culture from 1980 to today. She shows how the public memory of King and civil rights has transformed into a vacated, sanitized collective memory that evades social reality and perpetuates racial inequality. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People's King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Martin Luther King Jr. was relatively unpopular when he was assassinated. But the way Americans of all political stripes invoke his memory today, you'd think he was held up as a hero. In this episode, we talk about the cooptation of King's legacy with Hajar Yazdiha, author of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.

Sociologist Dr. Hajar Yazdiha discusses immigration, social movements and the mechanisms underlying the politics of inclusion and exclusion as they shape ethno-racial identities, intergroup relations, and political culture.The Curious Professor is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

More than 300 Black faith leaders have called for a cease-fire in Israel in a full page ad in the NYT. Pastor Michael McBride of Black Church PAC joins Tavis to describe the effort. Also, USC Professor Hajar Yazdiha is the author of “The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement”. She joins Tavis in studio to unravel how some right wing groups try to exploit King's legacy to further their agenda.

If you know me, you know I love substantive conversation. So when I was given the opportunity to read a book and talk to the author of said book, I jumped at the chance.I talk to Dr. Hajar Yazdiha, Professor of Sociology at University of Southern California and author of "The Struggle For The People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement". We talk her beginnings, radicalisation; the many levels of societal memory and how King gets distorted; and a Top 5 that she'll definitely want to change once she reads this.Thank you for listening! If you want to contribute to the show, whether it be sending me questions or voicing your opinion in any way, peep the contact links below and I'll respond accordingly. Let me know "What's Good?"Rate & ReviewE-Mail: the5thelelmentpub@gmail.comTwitter: @The5thElementUKWebsite: https://medium.com/@the5thelementIntro Music - "Baxter" By Brock BerriganInterlude - "New Beginnings" By KuplaChillHop MusicOther Podcasts Under The 5EPN:Diggin' In The Digits5EPN RadioBlack Women Watch...In Search of SauceThe Beauty Of Independence

Thursday, November 2nd, 2023   Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the author of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. We discuss the role of collective memory in the myth-making of American exceptionalism.    Collective memory is the way that we remember history and that becomes central to our idea of who we are as a people. It's a process of storytelling and the most central stories to who we are as a people. The civil rights movement has become one of the central collective memories in America's story of both who it is and who it wants to be. However, careful examination of the record reveals that the civil rights movement was a political project that was meant to actually dismantle multicultural democracy. Further, as the collective memory of Dr. King became sanitized and whitewashed, his legacy carried a lot of moral legitimacy, and his moral symbolic authority became ripe for manipulation.   Follow Hajar on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/HajYazdiha    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/   Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey!  http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=6tI0Zi1e78vq&ver=standard    Take the Democracy Group's Listener Survey! https://www.democracygroup.org/survey   Want to support the show and get it early?  https://patreon.com/futurehindsight    Check out the Future Hindsight website!  www.futurehindsight.com   Read the transcript here:  https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/shaping-collective-memory-hajar-yazdiha      Credits:  Host: Mila Atmos  Guests: Hajar Yazdiha Executive Producer: Mila Atmos Producer: Zack Travis

Joined by guest host Hajar Yazdiha, Assistant Professor of Sociology and author of “The Struggle For The People's King” (27:44), Adam and Hajar converse over inclusive language, and its impact on space-themed RPGs, the misremembered legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, and self-expression through natural hair. First, Adam and Hajar blast off into “wokeness” as a loud gaming minority critique Starfield's character pronoun options, emphasizing the importance of language evolving in sync with social change (04:56). Then, they discuss a high schooler's suspension over wearing his natural hair, shedding light on how systems, such as dress codes, perpetuate subtle mechanisms of racial and economic control (50:09). Tune in now and enjoy the type of conversations you wish you had around the workplace water cooler!   [Episode Stories] Nexus Mods Boots Starfield Mod That Removed Pronoun Options Black Student Suspended Twice For Hairstyle, School Says It Isn't Discrimination   [Episode Links] Hajar Yazdiha (www.HajarYazdiha.com) Zinn Education Project (Website) Instagram (@WaterCoolerTalkPod) Artwork (www.Kohney.com)   Water Cooler Talk Podcast | Episode 088

NoorJehan Tourte and Hajar Yazdiha visit friends and discuss the misuse of Dr. Kings Words , immigrant communities indebted to the Civil Rights movement, Hasan Minhaj and more with host Marina Franklin. Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute, and a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar (2023-2025). Dr. Yazdiha received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is a former Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and Turpanjian Postdoctoral Fellow of the Chair in Civil Society and Social Change. Dr. Yazdiha's research examines the mechanisms underlying the politics of inclusion and exclusion as they shape ethno-racial identities, intergroup relations, and political culture.In addition to award-winning articles, she is the author of the new book, The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton University Press). Through her research, Dr. Yazdiha works to understand how systems of inequality become entrenched and how groups develop strategies to resist, contest, and manifest alternative futures. NooJehan Tourte After unexpectedly making it to the semi-finals of the 2022 Sports Illustrated Swim Search Competition,NoorJehan Tourte has made it her mission to get women excited about the prospect of falling on their faces, over and over, if it means they are making their one life on this earth count. She believed that becoming a Sports Illustrated model would represent the culmination of a lifetime spent searching for her true identity, but the experience helped her realize that her childhood dream was not only to be a cover model, but also a role model, one who empowers ladies to show the world every side, from every angle, unapologetically. Amidst the multitude of societal pressures put on women to conform, she wants to reassure her fellow females that living the life you painstakingly cultivated for yourself is worth even the worst of days, the worst of moments. Because wouldn't you rather stumble living life, than squander it standing still?  NoorJehan is currently a Group Senior Vice President Brand Strategist at healthcare advertising agency AREA 23. Prior to working in advertising, she was a U.S. Brand Marketer at Pfizer and a healthcare consultant at PwC. She holds an MBA from Columbia University and an MPH from UCLA. She has a passion for storytelling that is universal, and believes this can be done if we all lead with empathy. Always hosted by Marina Franklin - One Hour Comedy Special: Single Black Female ( Amazon Prime, CW Network), TBS's The Last O.G, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Hysterical on FX, The Movie Trainwreck, Louie Season V, The Jim Gaffigan Show, Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert, HBO's Crashing, and The Breaks with Michelle Wolf.  

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Hajar Yazdiha about collective memory and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They discuss how we can accruately understand Dr. King's message and legacy, how we reckon with history, and what a multicultural coalition looks like today. They discuss collective memory, creating culture, primary audience of Dr. King's message, various groups using Dr. King's message, and many more topics. Hajar Yazdiha is a sociologist and writer. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. She has her PhD in Sociology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her main research areas are on social movements, race and ethnicity, immigration, and collective memory. She is the author of, The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. Website: https://www.hajaryazdiha.com/Twitter: @hajyazdiha This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit convergingdialogues.substack.com

Hajar cares deeply about humanity. She believes in humanity and that we can figure out ways to stop finding reasons to divide ourselves, causing suffering, and hating one another. She is also knowledgable enough to know that it won't be easy. That's why she's dedicated her life as a professor and author to try to better understand humanity and figure this thing out. This thing is messy though. If I have learned nothing else from doing this show it is that. So we dove into the messiness of it and tried to understand together. We talked about civil rights, American Exceptionalism, poverty, human dignity, and other topics that should be front and center in all of our dialogue but often gets pushed to the side. What I appreciated most in this conversation, was Hajar's humility and willingness to try to understand those she doesn't agree with. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did. More complete bio from Hajar- Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute, and a 2023-2025 CIFAR Global Azrieli Scholar. Dr. Yazdiha received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is a former Ford Postdoctoral Fellow and Turpanjian Postdoctoral Fellow of the Chair in Civil Society and Social Change. Dr. Yazdiha's new book entitled, The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton University Press) examines how a wide range of rivaling social movements across the political spectrum deploy competing interpretations of the Civil Rights Movement to make claims around national identity and inclusion. Comparing how rival movements constituted by minority and majority groups with a range of identities — racial, gender, sexuality, religious, moral, political — battle over collective memory, the book documents how the misuses of the racial past erode multicultural democracy.

Over the last 40 years, different political groups have sought to politically appropriate the mantle of legitimacy of the Civil Rights Movement. What effect does that have on our collective memory ? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/james-herlihy/message

Our celebration of Juneteenth is a direct result of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. The battles led by Martin Luther King Jr. and many others created an enduring legacy on which the continued fight for civil rights rests. But what happens when this legacy is manipulated, distorted, and appropriated to further agendas far removed from the original purpose? What does it mean when various causes are labeled the “civil rights struggle of our time?” Does it dilute the impact of the original battle? When wielded in the wrong hands, could it even be seen as an affront to 50 years of civil rights progress? These questions form the central theme of my conversation today with Hajar Yazdiha. Hajar is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, and she has critically examined how various movements, including those on the far right, have appropriated the symbols and rhetoric of the civil rights era to advance their cause. She examines this in her new book  The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.  My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Hajar Yazdiha: