Who Gets to Be an American with Historian Mae Ngai

Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips

For the first episode of our special How We Win series, award-winning author and historian Mae Ngai places the existential crisis of our time into historical context as she highlights the pervasive nature of the question: who gets to be an American and who is deserving of dignity and equality? Our conversation with Mae lays the foundation for our series’ deep dive into the parallels between our present moment and the not-so-distant past. She reveals the history of a partnership between the South and West to perpetuate white supremacy, and describes just how intertwined the “Chinese Question” and the “Negro Question” have been since the founding of America. REFERENCES: Mae Ngai, Professor of History and Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies, Columbia University - https://history.columbia.edu/person/ngai-mae