The Lasting Legacy of the Civil War; Institutional Racism in Law Enforcement Agencies

On this week's podcast:

We're bringing you a pair of important panel discussions touching on civil rights, history and race relations. 

First, we'll look back to the Civil War, which ended 150 years ago but lingers in disputes over the meaning of the Confederate battle flag and the state of race relations in America. We asked three distinguished historians to examine the causes of the war and explore its lasting consequences: Dr. Daina Ramey Berry, associate professor of history and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin; Dr. Eric Walther, professor of U.S. history at the University of Houston; and Dr. Allyson Hobbs, assistant professor of American history at Stanford.

In our second panel, we examine the extent of institutional racism in police departments, and whether police culture perpetuates the problem. Our panelists are three retired Los Angeles Police Department officers: Sgt. Cheryl Dorsey, a 20-year LAPD veteran whose assignments included vice, narcotics, patrol, and the controversial gang unit known as CRASH, and the author of an autobiography,  “Black and Blue: The Creation of a Manifesto”; Capt. John Mutz, a 25-year LAPD veteran now working as an executive coach;; and Officer Alex Salazar, a private investigator specializing in civil rights and police abuse cases who spent nine years with the LAPD, working in the notorious Rampart Division, which served as the basis for the hit 2001 film “Training Day.”