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The Red Scare — perhaps most well known through the era of McCarthyism that dominated the social, political, and legal spheres of the U.S. in the 1950s — is actually much more than just a brief window of time where communists in the United States were vilified, criminalized, and blacklisted. The Red Scare is actually much more pervasive and longstanding, originating decades before McCarthyism and stretching well into the present. And, when combined with the Black Scare — the fear and hatred of Black people in the United States — it really forms an entire mode of governance that has shaped the character, policies, and collective consciousness of much of U.S.’s 20th and 21st centuries.  To talk about the Black Scare, the Red Scare, and how they work together to create a specific hegemonic atmosphere and policy landscape in the U.S., we’ve brought on Charisse Burden-Stelly, an Associate Professor of African American studies at Wayne State University, a fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American