The Trouble with Unity

Enjoyed an hourlong chat about Cruelty as Citizenship with Carroll University professor Lilly J. Goren for the New Books Network podcast series!

For NYU's Latinx Project, I got to talk with the brilliant Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz about his new book, Figures of the Future: Latino Civil Rights and the Politics of Demographic Change. One of the upsides of Zoom life is the ability to make connections otherwise reliant on our ability to travel!

Good to be back on MSNBC with the great Ali Velshi—technical glitches wrecked my first appear-from-home attempt some months back. Everything went much more smoothly this time, and Professor Christina Greer and I managed to say a few provocative things about Georgia's efforts to disenfranchise Democrats. Check out the clip.

Had the opportunity to chat about the issues in Cruelty as Citizenship with radio host Sonali Kolhatkar for her provocative show Rising Up with Sonali. A terrific talk.

In the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and seeing FBI wanted posters featuring the occasional nonwhite rioter, I wrote an op-ed-length essay on multiracial whiteness, an idea I've been mulling over for some time, and sent it to the Washington Post, which not only accepted it but ran it in print, on the front page of the Sunday opinion section! (Here's a link to the article; click on the picture below to read just the text as published.) A week later, Lulu Garcia-Navarro reached out to do a quick interview on the subject, and that aired shortly afterward—my first NPR appearance. (Here's a link to the audio.)

In between the two, I was reminded of what happens when one talks in the public sphere about the concept of "whiteness" (which is NOT the same as white people, BTW) or tries to discuss how the legacy of white supremacy has distorted our collective understanding of democracy: A bunch of right-wing pundits and their followers freak out! First, they post a bunch of outraged tweets. Then they write faux-news articles about the outraged tweets they've just written. It's a big dumb circle of silly, but it was far more negative attention than I've ever gotten from an MSNBC appearance—even the one time when Bill O'Reilly put a clip of me on his Fox News show. Fortunately, the insults and ugliness quickly peter out as the online mob moves on to a new outrage. The good news: A whole lot of people read real newspapers like the Washington Post. And that strikes me as a very good sign!

UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies invited me to join Harvard professor Theda Skocpol and the Lincoln Project's Steve Schmidt for a post-election Zoom chat.

In the aftermath of the election, the Guardian asked me and several colleagues for a few thoughts on Latino voters. Check out the article here.

Great to talk with Natasha Iskander about Cruelty as Citizenship for NYU's Latinx Project! A terrific conversation.

Had the pleasure of a long in-person interview with Mark Leviton of The Sun in June 2019, and the result is finally in print! Headlined, "Many Voices: Cristina Beltrán on What Unites and Divides Latinos," it's the lead article in the magazine's October 2020 issue. Was tickled to see copies on the newsstand at the nearby McNally Jackson bookstore, with a cover flap highlighting the story. Check it out—you can read me opining on Latino politics, my family history, and more.

As a UC Santa Cruz alum, was an honor to join professors Dean Mathiowetz, Deborah Gould, and Chris Benner for a Zoom chat on "Hope, Fear, and Desire for Democracy on the Eve of an Election." A lively conversation with no major technical glitches—check it out!