Ruha BenjaminEvery podcast appearance, updated as new ones drop

This week, we talk to sociologist Ruha Benjamin about finding imagination in unexpected places, and harnessing its power to disrupt the status quo. For more content, subscribe to our Youtube and Patreon ! Keep up with my releases and appearances! Subscribe to my newsletter for free at AmandaSeales.com Support the work here: //Join the #sealessquad at Patreon.com/AmandaSeales //Stop by my lickle shop! AmandaLandExports.com atforms. This is a Smart Funny & Black Production

Trevor and Christiana speak with professor, sociologist, and MacArthur Fellowship winner Ruha Benjamin about some of the pressing political and social issues of the day. The three discuss whether DEI initiatives are in fact valuable and how the world will look without them, why universities honor people whose voices they’ve previously tried to silence, and how best to navigate a world that was not built for us. Can the three collectively imagine a better world order? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week’s guest is Dr. Ruha Benjamin , Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and Founding Director of the IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab . Benjamin was recently named a 2024 MacArthur Fellow , and she’s written and edited multiple books, including 2019’s Race After Technology and 2022’s Viral Justice . Last week she joined Justin Hendrix to discuss her latest book, Imagination: A Manifesto , published this year by WW Norton & Company.

Social and technology critic Ruha Benjamin examines the power of our imagination to challenge systems of oppression and to create a world in which everyone can thrive.

In this kickoff episode for the Justice for All season of The Inclusion Solution LIVE podcast, host Mary-Frances Winters, founder and CEO of The Winters Group, Inc., sits down with Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of the new book Imagination: A Manifesto. Listen in as they discuss the hard questions that we all need to ask in order to achieve justice in our technology-driven world, from who’s benefitting from so-called advances to who is being left behind and why. Inviting deeper reflection, Dr. Benjamin also previews her keynote for the Racial Justice at Work Summit: Justice for All.

According to Ruha Benjamin, we’re living inside someone else’s imagination. An imagination that limits our ability to build a more just, liberated world. So, how do we take back our agency and begin to seed something different? Baratunde talks with Princeton professor and founding director of the Just Data Lab , Ruha Benjamin to find out. SHOW ACTIONS Internally Reflect - Bear witness and create a ripple This one is inspired from Ruha’s book Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want which says: “…bear witness to the weight of individual and communal protective acts and consider how all of us can be involved in sheltering one another from the rain and sun by cultivating relationships, skills, accountability, and healing.” Think about when you witnessed someone near you perform an act of justice or kindness or protection for another. Was it a big or small act? Did it require courage? How did witnessing that make you feel about the world? Is it something you could repeat and further the impact? Become More Informed - Learn about racial justice Ruha recommends Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey and The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander both of which you can find on our Bookshop page . Publicly Participate - Invest in your community using your time & skills Check out ways to invest and get to know your community using your existing skills and experience. If you’re 60+ check out Thirdact.org and Cogenerate.org . If you’re 25-59 check out Volunteermatch.org and Catchafire.org . If you're 16-24 check out Civicsunplugged.org and Youthclimatelobby.org . SHOW NOTES Walk through Breonna’s Garden and check out Lady Phoenix’s IG for more. Find How To Citizen on Instagram or visit howtocitizen.com to join our mailing list and find ways to citizen besides listening to this podcast! Please show your support for the show by reviewing and rating. It makes a huge difference with the algorithmic overlords and helps others like you find the show! How To Citizen is hosted by Baratunde Thurston. He’s also host and executive producer of the PBS series, America Outdoors as well as a founding partner and writer at Puck . You can find him all over the internet . CREDITS How To Citizen with Baratunde is a production of iHeartRadio Podcasts and Rowhome Productions. Our Executive Producers are Baratunde Thurston and Elizabeth Stewart. Allie Graham is our Lead Producer and Danya AbdelHameid is our Associate Producer. Alex Lewis is our Managing Producer. John Myers is our Executive Editor and Mix Engineer. Original Music by Andrew Eapen and Blue Dot Sessions. Our Audience Engagement Fellows are Jasmine Lewis and Gabby Rodriguez. Special thanks to Joelle Smith from iHeartRadio. See omnystudio.com

When the problems facing us are so massive and systemic, how can we ever hope to address them as individuals? This week’s guest, Ruha Benjamin, joins Adam to explain how small actions for justice can become contagious and create change on a larger scale. Pick up a copy of Ruha’s book at http://factuallypod.com/books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I am so thrilled and honored to be in conversation with Ruha Benjamin , a Professor of African American studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells JUST Data Lab and author of three books, Viral Justice (2022), Race After Technology (2019), and People’s Science (2013), and editor of Captivating Technology (2019). Today, we discuss her incredible latest book, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want . I am completely obsessed with this book. I feel it is an urgent read for all of us who want to integrate the structural and the individual, the academic and the poetic, the political and the personal, knowing that each of these things are necessarily interlinked and interdependent: just like us. Ruha writes, teaches, and speaks widely about the relationship between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, race and citizenship, health and justice. Long before the pandemic, she was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. “Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within." — Ruha Benjamin I hope you enjoy our conversation! ADVICE COLUMN: ☎️ seeking advice and want to PHONE IN with a question? ⁠⁠⁠⁠submit a voicemail here⁠⁠⁠⁠ . 📩 OR WRITE IN an advice question anonymously at the ⁠ ⁠ASK Ayanda form⁠ here⁠ . Highlights: (01:20) Get to Know Ruha Benjamin (02:51 ) What is viral justice? (04:45) The three types of plotting (09:44) Ruha's journey shaping this work (22:40) How can we be vulnerable but not exposed? (27:38) The power of poetry (36:16) Mutual aid and other life forms (41:20) The Doula Effect and how we can bring it to our daily lives Ruha's Links: Website: https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/ Instagram: Ruha Benjamin (@ruha9) Twitter: Ruha Benjamin (@ruha9) LinkTree to all her work: https://linktr.ee/ruhabenjamin Links Mentioned: Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want by Ruha Benjamin Toni Cade Bambara Mia Mingus blog & Twitter @miamingus Erik Olin Wright My links: Substack: ayandastood.substack.com | Subscribe to my newsletter!!! Book club launching soon! Tiktok: @ayandastood Podcast Instagram: @reimaginingwithayandastood My Instagram: @ayandast

Can the choices you make on a daily basis transform society? Sociologist and Princeton professor Dr. Ruha Benjamin thinks so, and has the research to support the idea. Dr. Benjamin’s groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice spanned years and focused primarily on larger, structural changes. But the scourges of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired Dr. Benjamin to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Her new book Viral Justice offers a sweeping, deeply personal exploration of how we can shape our world through the choices we make on a daily basis. Part memoir, part manifesto, Dr. Benjamin vividly recounts her personal experiences and those of her family, showing how decisions that might otherwise go unnoticed can have great impact — even on an exponential scale. Through stories about her father’s premature death, her brother’s experience with the criminal justice system, and her own challenges as a young mother navigating an inequitable healthcare system, Dr. Benjamin shines a light on both the devastating impacts of chronic racism and the passions and strengths of communities driven to demand justice. Born of a stubborn hopefulness, Viral Justice offers a powerful and practical vision of how small changes can add up to large ones, transforming people’s relationships and communities while inspiring them to build a more just and joyful world. Ruha Benjamin is an internationally recognized writer, speaker, and professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she is the founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. She is the award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code and editor of Captivating Technology , among many other publications. Her work has been featured widely in the media, including the New York Times , the Washington Post, CNN, The Root, and The Guardian . Vivian Phillips , Founder and President of the non-profit organization ARTE NOIR, is a communications professional and arts leader. Vivian’s professional history includes service as the Director of Communications for a Seattle Mayor, Director of Marketing and Communications for Seattle Theatre Group, Seattle University Adjunct Professor (MFA Arts Leadership), television, radio, and live performance producing, public speaking, and numerous arts and strategic communications projects. She served as the Chair for both the Seattle Arts Commission and 4Culture, and co-founded The Hansberry Project and the Historic Central Area Arts and Cultural District. Jazmyn Scott, ARTE NOIR Executive Director, comes to Arte Noir as a long-time advisor and community organizer. For the past six years, she led programming and community partnerships for LANGSTON Seattle, where she was the organization’s first employee. Her leadership at LANGSTON catalyzed the development of new programs that engaged a wide range of local and national performing artists. Jazmyn is also the co-curator of 50 NEXT: Seattle Hip-Hop Worldwide interactive experience, which includes music from Seattle and Northwest Hip-Hop artists displayed at the Museum of History and Industry. Jazmyn’s community connections are extensive, and she currently serves as board vice president for Earshot Jazz and The Residency and sits on several community arts advisory boards. Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (Hardcover) Third Place Books

SICKENING is a book that examines the unconscionable disparity in health outcomes between Black and white Americans. Author Anne Pollock of King’s College London takes readers through anti-Black racism operating in healthcare: from the spike in chronic disease after Hurricane Katrina to the lack of protection for Black residents during the Flint water crisis—and even the life-threatening childbirth experience for tennis star Serena Williams. Ruha Benjamin of Princeton University joins Pollock in conversation. Pollock is professor of global health and social medicine at King’s College London. She is author of ‘Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States’; ‘Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference’; and ‘Synthesizing Hope: Matter, Knowledge, and Place in South African Drug Discovery.’ Ruha Benjamin is professor of African American studies at Princeton University, founding director of the IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab, author of two books: ‘People Science’ and ‘Race After Technology,’ and editor of ‘Captivating Technology.’ "A crucial guided analysis of anti-Blackness and its impact on Black people’s ability to live as fully entitled citizens, Pollock’s scholarship is essential medicine for a society in denial about its sickness." — Foreword

Race is coded into every aspect of our technological lives, from automatic soap dispensers to Zoom calls. In this episode, host Christen Smith sits down with Prof. Ruha Benjamin of Princeton University to her work on racial coding, how racism and technology work hand in hand, and what we can do to create abolitionist futures despite this racism. Ruha Benjamin is Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, author of the award-winning book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019), and founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, which brings together students, activists, artists, and educators to develop a critical and creative approach to data justice. Ruha is also the author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (2013) and editor of Captivating Technology: Race, Technology, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life (2019), among numerous other publications. Ruha Benjamin's website: https://www.ruhabenjamin.com Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab: https://www.thejustdatalab.com/about-the-lab

Princeton University professor Ruha Benjamin joins Adam to reveal the issues at play at the intersection of technology and race, her concept of the “New Jim Code", digital redlining and and how the technology can’t be relied on to solve what are ultimately social problems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ruha Benjamin studies the social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine. In books like “Race After Technology”, and “People’s Science”, Benjamin examines how racial inequality plays out in every corner of civic, scientific, and social life. Meredith Whittaker co-founded the AI Now Institute, a research center examining the social implications of artificial intelligence in criminal justice, law enforcement, housing, and education. On June 1, 2020, Ruha Benjamin and Meredith Whittaker spoke via video conference. The two talked about biases built into every day technologies, how COVID-19 disproportionately harms marginalized communities, and ethical concerns over the increased power tech elites now have over our educational systems.

How is racism embedded in technological systems? How do we address the root causes of discrimination? How do we as designers and consumers of AI technology reclaim our agency and create a world of equity for all? To answer these questions and more The Radical AI Podcast welcomes Dr. Ruha Benjamin to the show. Dr. Benjamin is Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and founder of the Just Data Lab. She is author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (2013) and Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019) among other publications. Her work investigates the social dimensions of science, medicine, and technology with a focus on the relationship between innovation and inequity, health and justice, knowledge, and power. Full show notes for this episode can be found at Radicalai.org If you enjoy this episode please make sure to subscribe, submit a rating and review, and connect with us on twitter at twitter.com/radicalaipod

In Episode 141, Dan, Michael, and Dan’s doctoral students chat with Dr. Ruha Benjamin of Princeton University about her scholarship and new book, “Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code.”

Ruha Benjamin, associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, is the author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. She discusses how new technologies encode old forms of segregation and gives some examples of bias in technology. Benjamin explains why humanists and social scientists should be integral participants in the tech industry. Benjamin gave a talk titled "Beyond Buzzwords: Reimagining the Default Settings of Technology and Society" on February 4, 2020 as the Oregon Humanities Center's 2019-20 Cressman Lecturer. Her talk was part of the "Convergence: intersections between the sciences and humanities" series.