PROGRAM

Roosevelt House is pleased to present a discussion of the book Nice White Ladies: The Truth about White Supremacy, Our Role in It, and How We Can Help Dismantle It by Hunter College Professor of Sociology Jessie Daniels. In this provocative and challenging work, Daniels begins with the premise that the protection of white women is central to American culture, and argues that such privilege for a single group directly results in the stoking of racial divisions. The author will be in conversation with writer, critic, and editor Maud Newton.

Please join us for a discussion that will explore what Daniels sees as the unintended complicity of even well-meaning white women in the continuation of racial inequity. In addition, Nice White Ladies considers the historical roots of contemporary racial animosity in the documented cruelty by white women slave owners in the antebellum South and theirsubsequent efforts to establish monuments to the Confederacy. Finally, Daniels, a white woman herself, thoroughly excavates her own life for deeply personal stories of failing, learning, and evolving—demonstrating how Americans of all racial and ethnic backgrounds can become trusted partners in a shared mission of liberation for all.

Jessie Daniels is a faculty affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University; a research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute; and professor of sociology, critical social psychology, and Africana studies at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. An internationally recognized expert on internet manifestations of racism, her work has appeared in the New York Times, NPR, Forbes, and Newsweek. She lives in New York City.

Maud Newton is a writer, critic, and editor. Her first book, Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation (Random House, March 2022), has been called “a literary feat” by the New York Times Book Review and a “brilliant mix of personal memoir and cultural observation” by the Boston Globe. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, the Guardian, Esquire, and many other publications and anthologies, including Best American Travel Writing 2015.