Joel Edward Goza is a writer, speaker, and community advocate. He is professor of ethics at the HBCU Simmons College and teaches in Kentucky prisons. Before focusing on writing and teaching, Joel worked in urban redevelopment and community activism for over a decade in Houston’s Fifth Ward. He is also the author of America’s Unholy Ghosts: The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Politics, and contributes to The Hill, Salon, and Religion News Service.

Joel and I discuss the following during this reflective conversation on race, class, religion and reparations.

- How historical figures like Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan perpetuated racial myths that still justify systemic oppression today.

- The harmful narratives around Blackness in America, such as the myth of Black laziness and criminality, and their continued influence on society and policy.

- His views on reparations evolved, moving from scepticism to support, as he recognised the need for both financial and moral reparations for Black Americans.

- The interconnectedness of race and class and the rationale for why they should be addressed differently. We also touch on the modern narrative that focuses on class over race, noting how some people believe solving class issues will solve racial inequality, a perspective we both find problematic.

- And finally our views on why reparations is needed for both the US and the UK

About Joels latest book

Joel Edward Goza dismantles the deep-seated myths that perpetuate white supremacy—and makes the case that reparations are necessary to heal America’s racial wounds and live up to our democratic ideals.

Like many well-intentioned white people, Goza once believed that he could support Black America’s struggle for equality without supporting reparations. Reparations, he thought, were altogether irrelevant to the real work of racial justice.

This is a book about why he was wrong. In fact, any effort to heal our nation’s wounds will fail without reparations.

In Rebirth of a Nation, Goza exposes lesser-known aspects of racism in American history and how Black people have consistently been depicted as responsible for their own oppression to justify slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration and gross inequality. Goza’s iconoclastic and incisive account exposes how revered figures like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln embedded white supremacy deep into our nation’s consciousness—and how Ronald Reagan manipulated this ideology so that society cheered as he advanced a set of policies that wounded our nation and intensified Black America’s suffering.

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