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Donald Trump's presidency has been widely criticised for race-baiting violating democratic norms. But America was a slave state for more than 200 years, an apartheid state for a century and was only a non-racial democracy for just over 50 years. Gary Younge asks how robust were those norms? And to what extent were those norms undermined by its racial history?

Gary Younge joined The University of Manchester in 2020 from The Guardian, where he was appointed US correspondent in 2003, before becoming their editor-at-large in 2015. He has won several prizes for his journalism, including the David Nyhan Prize for political journalism from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center.

Prof Younge has written extensively on inequality, race, immigration, identity and politics in the US, with titles including- Another Day in the Death of America, A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives; The Speech - The Story Behind Martin Luther King’s Dream and No Place Like Home - A Black Briton’s Journey Through the Deep South. His books have received considerable acclaim, with several of his titles either winning or being shortlisted for major literary awards. In 2017, Another Day in the Death of America won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from Columbia Journalism School and Nieman Foundation.

Angelia Wilson is a Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester where she specialises in American Politics. She is the Chair of the Political Studies Association of the UK, having previously served on the Council of the American Political Science Association.

Wilson is an experienced political commentator on American politics having appeared on, for example, BBC Worlds Service, BBC Breakfast, The Big Question and various BBC Radio programmes.

Professor Sociology and Head of the School of Social Sciences, Brian Heaphy, will introduce the evening.

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