On the 5th of March 2020, Professor Leah Wright Rigueur joined the LSE US Centre for the event “African Americans in a ‘White’ House: Presidential Politics, Race, and The Pursuit of Power.” At the event, using one of the most outrageous scandals in modern American political history as a case study – the Housing and Urban Development Scandal (HUD) of the 1980s and 1990s which saw political officials steal billions in federal funding set aside for low-income housing residents – Professor Leah Wright Rigueur told the complex story of the transformation of Black politics and the astonishing racial politics of presidential administrations that have paved the way for patterns of political misconduct that have continued into the present.
This seminar was chaired by Professor Imaobong Umoren, Assistant Professor at the Department of International History at LSE.
The event was part of the ‘Race and Gender in US Politics in Historical and Contemporary Perspective’ seminar series organized by the LSE United States Centre.
Professor Leah Wright Rigueur is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Harry S. Truman Associate Professor of American History at Brandeis University. She is the author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power and is currently working on the book manuscript Mourning in America: Black Men in a White House.
Listen on Soundcloud
There are lots of ways to catch-up with upcoming episodes of The Ballpark podcast: visit the website, or visit our SoundCloud page, subscribe on iTunes or iTunesU, or add this RSS feed to your podcast app.
We’d love to hear what you think – you can send us a message on Twitter @LSE_US, or email us at uscentre@lse.ac.uk._
The Ballpark was produced with help of the Phelan Family Foundation. Our theme tune is by Ranger and the “Re-Arrangers”, a Seattle based gypsy jazz band.
- Featured image credit: Jeff Fillmore (Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0)
Note: This podcast gives the views of the interviewee and host, and is not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, the LSE US Centre, nor the London School of Economics.
Shortened URL for this post: https://bit.ly/2VRCQzy