Rich Benjamin offers unique insight into the changing nature of politics and culture in his public talks, media appearances and books. His most recent book, Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History (2025), tells his family's harrowing story as refugees and doubles as a portrait of America. In his 14-year experience writing this book, he plumbs secrets — personal, familial and political. For Benjamin, excavating untold and silenced stories is critical to explaining the past and the present. For his previous book, Whitopia, he embarked on a 26,909-mile, two-year journey, immersing himself into the fastest-growing, whitest communities in America. Now in its second printing, this groundbreaking study is one of the first to have illuminated in advance the rise of white anxiety and white nationalism in current US life. His book asks America to imagine itself in 2042, when whites are no longer the majority. He is often interviewed about his insights in international and national media.
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We humans
Can a black man talk about white culture? An open letter to critics
August 27, 2015
African American writer Rich Benjamin spent two years living in -- and writing about -- America's whitest neighborhoods. The response to his book (and TED Talk) was honest, raw -- and sometimes misunderstood his purpose. Here, he responds to the response.
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Rethinking work, feminism, connection: The talks in Session 2 of TEDWomen 2015
May 28, 2015
Some ideas simmer below the surface. This session is dedicated to speakers who bubble them up, from a surprising management thinker to an Ebola researcher who found new inspiration in a song. Short recaps of the talks in this session… Work, the ultimate social experience. Margaret Heffernan is here to flip our thinking on what makes teams […]
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