Ben & Jerry’s is launching a podcast about white supremacy in America

“Each week we’ll explore how racism has shaped every facet of our lives and who we might become if we finally address this country’s racist history,” stated writer Carvell Wallace, who hosts the podcast.

“We now sit at a critical inflection point in our nation’s history,” Ben & Jerry’s US activism supervisor, Jabari Paul, stated in a assertion. “If we are to seize the opening that this moment presents, we must be willing to acknowledge the sins of our past so that we move together toward a future of justice and equity.”

Ben & Jerry’s stated its work with Who We Are is “entirely different” from earlier work sponsoring or promoting on podcasts. The model labored with Vox Media to assist handle the manufacturing of the podcast, in line with Chris Miller, its head of world activism technique.

“Our company has been centering our activism and advocacy work in the US on issues of racial justice and equity for the last five years and specifically on the need to reform our nation’s criminal justice system for the last two years,” stated world head of built-in advertising Jay Curley. “This podcast is part of our larger body of work on these issues.”

The Who We Are podcast, produced by Vox Media’s model studio Vox Creative, is the media firm’s first authentic sequence produced in partnership with a model, in line with a spokesperson. The collaboration resembles General Electric’s 2015 podcast “The Message,” which was co-produced with Slate journal’s podcast community, Megaphone.

Confronting racism in America

The Who We Are podcast is based mostly on a presentation by Jeffery Robinson, deputy authorized director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is additionally on account of be launched as a documentary.

Robinson gave a model of the presentation to some Ben & Jerry’s workers final yr. “We were so moved by both the content and Jeffery’s delivery that we felt it important that everyone have access to this important telling of America’s history that has been hiding in plain sight,” stated Curley.

Ben & Jerry’s is based mostly in Vermont, the place it has a headquarters and two manufacturing crops. The racial make-up of its workforce in the state displays that of the overall inhabitants, which is 94% White. According to the corporate, the workforce at its 600 retail places extra carefully represents the racial range of the United States.

“We realize we are a company with a primarily white employee base in Vermont, and we understand we must commit to specific internal action to create racial equity and address the lack of diversity within our company,” a spokesperson stated on Tuesday.

Ben & Jerry’s stated its plan contains working with suppliers, cultural change and increasing its presence in communities of shade via its franchise community. The firm stated it will make its racial fairness objectives public so it may be held accountable.

Robinson, a legal protection lawyer and Harvard Law School graduate, spent 9 years researching the presentation that led to the podcast. The venture started in 2011 when a nephew moved to Seattle to reside with Robinson and his spouse.

“I found myself saying to him the exact same things that my father had said to me about how to survive as a black man in America. And they were the exact same things that my father’s father had said to him,” Robinson informed CNN Business. “This was tearing me apart, as I thought when does this end?”

“Who We Are is dedicated to making sure that whichever way we go, we go in that direction with knowledge of exactly what we’ve done in the past,” he added.