In this episode of Art of Authenticity I had a thoughtful conversation with Dr. Beth Richie, the Director of the Institute of Research on Race and Public Policy.Welcome to this week’s episode of the Art of Authenticity. Today is a really special day for me because I have one of my dear friends, Dr. Beth Richie, joining us. She is the Director of the Institute of Research on Race and Public Policy and a professor of African American study’s criminology, sociology, gender and women studies and criminal law and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She’s also a senior advisor for the NFL on gender violence.Beth is somebody who, if you met her, you would love her as much as I do. She’s just this warm, amazing, charismatic human being. Plus, she’s just brilliant. She is also somebody who has been an activist for her entire career and shares with us stories from early days in New York where she was one of the original six women who started the idea of women shelters, how that experience shaped her career and her focus in trying to bridge the gap between the women who were under privileged, experiencing domestic violence, and domestic violence as a whole for privileged white culture.Beth has been instrumental in moving this conversation forward but she is also honest, candid, open, and shares with us many ways in which she feels the system is still struggling today, as most of us are aware, with the movements like Black Lives Matter. Tune in, listen to this show. She’s just got so much insight and I feel like every point she made, I could have dove into for an hour. She’s got such depth of experience and knowledge, so I hope you enjoy today’s show.

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Show Notes

  • Why Beth landed in the field of teaching and writing about African American studies, women and violence, and the criminal system. [3:34]

  • Understand the gap that Beth discovered between women in the white communities and the experiences of the African American communities [8:38]

  • Hear how the disparity of what protection and safety looks like if you’re from one neighborhood to another is still profoundly unchanged. [12:57]

  • Why women who were underprivileged end up being criminalized for not reaching out to services that will not work for them in the first place. [14:37]

  • Learn why in fact we’ve got a country that is organized around the criminalization of things where people actually in fact need help. [19:17]

  • Hear the story of when Beth was uninvited to her own cause. [23:31]

  • Discover Beth’s view on prisons and their value, or lack their of, in society. [36:00]

  • Understand what an authentic life means to Beth and her daily practices. [40:29]

More About Beth

Episode Resources