Jazz Vs. Racism with Greg Thomas - Ep. 35

Our guest this week is Greg Thomas. Greg is a writer, teacher, entrepreneur, and CEO of the Jazz Leadership Project, which uses a creative methodology to frame leadership and team development through the lens of jazz. Greg has written about culture, race, and democratic life in publications ranging from the Village Voice, Integral Life, New Republic, Salon, UPTOWN, The Root, the Guardian Observer, and the New York Daily News—as jazz columnist.

We discuss jazz and its ability to serve as a foundation for learning leadership and connection, the power and importance of art and storytelling in our culture, race and the idea of transcending race in our society and personal lives, Greg’s use of the term “Black American” and the tensions of trying to adopt it without racialization, whether “American” is an ethnicity, how to disentangle culture and ethnicity from race, and more.