The Sociology Podcast returns and we are proud to start with an episode featuring Rashwan Ray, Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland. For the past year, Rashawn has also been the David M. Rubenstein Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. The mission of the institutes is to conduct research that results in new ideas for solving societal problems. Rashawn´s research has particularly focused on racial inequality, for example by looking at the Black Lives Matter Movement, its origin and impact. He has also examined police violence against black people and cooperated with police in Maryland to develop methods to tackle the implicit biases that may exist within the police. Since the beginning of COVID-19, he has focused on inequality related to the pandemic and pointed out that blacks are more likely to die of COVID-19 than their white counterparts. Finally, during these times, it is impossible to leave the recent elections and protest related to them out of the conversation, in particular how they highlight the position of blacks and whites in U.S. society and reveal attempts to maintain the inequality that has existed for hundreds of years.
