Steven W. Thrasher — The Overseer Class
Steven W. Thrasher examines how minority group members in positions of power can perpetuate the systems that oppress them, at Politics and Prose.
Why we picked this
The paradox Thrasher is investigating is genuinely uncomfortable: how people from marginalized groups can become enforcers of the structures that marginalize others. Hard to look away from.
Steven W. Thrasher’s The Overseer Class is a follow-up to his acclaimed previous work and examines a difficult paradox: the ways in which people from oppressed groups, when elevated to positions of institutional power, can become instruments of those same systems of oppression. It is a work about structural power rather than individual character—but it doesn’t let individuals off the hook.
Thrasher is a journalist, academic, and cultural critic whose previous book examined how power operates across race, medicine, and the state. His analysis of the “overseer class” draws on history, contemporary politics, and his own reporting to trace how the dynamic has functioned and continues to function.
The event is free and open to the public. Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW.