Celebrated Author and Anthropologist Rich Benjamin Will Speak At Raue Center

Celebrated author, speaker, and cultural anthropologist, Rich Benjamin, joins Raue Center on May 22, 2022, at 3 pm for "The Divided States of America: Big National Transformations, Small Towns", a special presentation and moderated Q&A discussing his personal experiences engaging with communities in small-town America and his deft observations of modern society, culture, and politics with a goal toward building understanding and openness.

" It's important for us to have honest conversations on Race," explains Raue Center's executive director, Richard Kuranda. "It helps us move forward. Over the last 5 years, we have opened our eyes to the power of a community wanting to confront the ugly truth that racism does exist here. Hopefully, this discussion will help further that conversation in McHenry County."

Rich Benjamin is a political analyst, a cultural anthropologist, a speaker, an author. Benjamin's cultural and political analysis appears regularly in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, and National Public Radio (NPR).

He is the author of "Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America" selected as an Editor's Choice by Booklist and The American Library Association (2009). This groundbreaking study is one of few to have illuminated in advance the rise of white anxiety and white nationalism in contemporary public US life. Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, calls Searching for Whitopia, "A daring feat of the 21st Century exploration that will have you laughing and shuddering at the same time." The book is now in its second printing. He is currently at work on a new book, Talk to Me.