The Chauncey DeVega Show: Ep. 215: How the Podcast "Serial" Crafts a Narrative About Inequality, Race, Class and America's Criminal Justice System

Ep. 215: How the Podcast "Serial" Crafts a Narrative About Inequality, Race, Class and America's Criminal Justice System

Dec 6, 2018

There are three guests on this week's special December fundraising month episode of the podcast.

Julie Snyder is the co-creator and producer of the hit podcast series Serial. Emmanuel Dzotsi is the co-host and reporter for Serial's most recent season which focused on crime and punishment in America as revealed through what happens at the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas in Cleveland.

To support The Chauncey DeVega Show during this fundraising month you can make a donation via Paypal at chaunceydevega.com or at Patreon.

Julie and Emmanuel reflect on what they learned about justice and inequality in season 3 of Serial, the challenges of balancing truth-telling and narrative, and how race and class--especially white privilege--complicates the ways that different audiences respond to the "shocking" unfairness that Serial "exposed" about the country's criminal justice system.

Criminal justice reporter George Joseph is the third guest on this week's show.

George's work has appeared at The Appeal, ProPublica, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and The Verge. His most recent story IBM Used NYPD Surveillance Footage To Develop Technology That Lets Police Search by Skin Color warns the public about how major cities such as New York are deploying facial recognition and other "artificial intelligence" programs which "learn" about the "races" of different groups in order to "teach" cameras and other surveillance technology to search and follow their human targets on command.

This is Orwellian-level racial profiling enabled by "big data" and algorithms.

George also shares his reporting on police brutality and how plain clothes and other undercover cops are running amok in America and what this reveals about a larger police culture of racism and discrimination and violence.

On this week's podcast Chauncey explains how Michael Flynn's deal with Special Counsel Mueller is just one more sign that the Trump mafia crime family is encircled. The question now becomes how will Trump and his cabal lash out against the rule of law to stay in power by expanding their authoritarian regime.

And Chauncey reviews the story about how a black private school-academy in Louisiana was able to use black pathology porn and other stereotypes to hustle Ivy League and other almost all-white elite colleges and universities.

Of course, Chauncey "connects the dots" by calling out how the real issue is the ways that elite universities function as gatekeepers of privilege and social capital which will do anything to punish those individuals who dare to expose the real con job that is elite higher education and a corrupt ruling class in America.

SELECTED LINKS OF INTEREST FOR THIS EPISODE OF THE CHAUNCEY DEVEGA SHOW