Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: From #BlackLivesMatter to the White Power Presidency

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016), an examination of the history and politics of Black America and the development of the social movement Black Lives Matter in response to police violence in the United States. Taylor’s research examines race and public policy including American housing policies. Dr. Taylor is currently working on a manuscript titled Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis of the 1970s, which looks at the federal government’s promotion of single-family homeownership in Black communities after the urban rebellions of the 1960s. Taylor looks at how the federal government’s turn to market-based solutions in its low-income housing programs in the 1970s impacted Black neighborhoods, Black women on welfare, and emergent discourses on the urban “underclass.” Taylor is interested in the role of private sector forces, typically hidden in public policy making and execution, in the “urban crisis” of the 1970s.

This talk took place during a public event in BCRW’s Poverty and Housing Working Group series, recorded on March 1, 2018 at Barnard College.