The Roots of White Supremacy

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In the first part of this two-part episode, History Workshop’s Hannah Elias speaks with Professor Richard Drayton (King’s College London) and asks him to put white supremacy in historical perspective. What are the long term intellectual, social and political roots of white supremacy in Britain and the Americas? How has white supremacy factored in the political coalition that supports Donald Trump, and in the anti-immigrant sentiment that led to Brexit? What are the stories and cultural trends we need to know in order to understand how white supremacy operates in Anglo-American culture? Drayton offers historical context and explanation for these questions and more.

Hannah Elias

Dr Hannah Elias is a Lecturer in Black British History the Department of History at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is a cultural historian whose research is focused on histories of race, media, religion and postcolonialism in 20^th century Britain. She is currently serving as Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded Connected Curriculum Project which is investigating approaches to diversifying, decolonising and de-centring British history education in collaboration with the Institute of Historical Research, Royal Historical Society, Historical Association, Runnymede Trust, History Workshop and the Raphael Samuel History Centre.

Richard Drayton

Professor Richard Drayton is Professor of Imperial History at King’s College London. Richard Drayton was born in Guyana and grew up in Barbados, where he went to school at Harrison College. He left the Caribbean as a Barbados Scholar to Harvard University, going then to Yale, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation under the direction of Paul Kennedy and Frank Turner. He has taught history at Cambridge, Oxford, the University of Virginia and Harvard. In 2002, he was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for History. Read his full biography.

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