Mike Wirth talks with April Powers, a leading voice in Black-Jewish identity, inclusion and belonging, contemporary antisemitism education, and a pioneer in DEI practice.
April shares her journey as a Black Jewish inclusion strategist, educator, and bridge-builder. Together, Mike and April discuss Black Jewish and multiracial Jewish identity, Jewish representation in media, the forthcoming A Different World revival, April’s DEI work across corporate and Jewish communal spaces, and the work of Jewbian Princess and Project Shema. Mike also shares his own Black Jewish family story.
They also explore Afrofuturism and Jewish futurism as traditions of memory, imagination, survival, and liberation. This is a conversation about the future of a global Jewish people that has always existed across many lineages, places, and shades, even when our inherited images of Jewishness have failed to show it.
Links and mentions
Connect with April Powers on LinkedIn.
Learn more about Project Shema
This episode also references PBS’s Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History Forthcoming Netflix revival of A Different World
