Race Today: A Symposium on Race in America [VIDEO]

Pembroke Hall, Room 305

This day-long symposium brings a group of the nation’s most respected intellectuals on race, racial theory and racial inequality together to consider the troubling state of black life in America today.

What are the broader structural factors that shape race today? How do these factors work on the ground and institutionally and what are the consequences? What are the ideas about race, and racial identities that enable the normalcy of stark racial differences today? In particular, what role do key ideas such as “colorblindness” and “post race” play in shaping perception and outcomes? What can be done to challenge ideological and structural impediments to a racially egalitarian society?

Presented by the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (CSREA) and the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ). Co-sponsored by the Office of the President and the Office of Institutional Diversity.

Full Schedule:

8:15 - 8:45 a.m.: Breakfast

8:45 - 9:00 a.m.: Opening Comments 

Tony Bogues
Director of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice

Tricia Rose
Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (CSREA)

9:00 - 10:00 a.m.: On Whiteness

David Roediger
Foundation Professor of American Studies, University of Kansas 

Roediger has written extensively on whiteness, on race in the U.S. as well as on U.S. labor movements, the history of radicalism, and on the racial identities of white workers and of immigrants. His books include The Wages of Whiteness, Working Towards Whiteness, How Race Survived U.S. History, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, Colored White and Towards Whiteness. 

10:00 - 11:00 a.m. Black Wealth/White Wealth: Hidden Costs of Being Black

Tom Shapiro
Pokross Professor of Law and Social Policy and Director, Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University

Shapiro is a leader in the asset development field with a particular focus on closing the racial wealth gap. The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality, (Oxford University Press, 2004). And with Dr. Melvin Oliver, he wrote the multi award-winning Black Wealth/ White Wealth (1995)

11:00 - 11:15 a.m.: Break

11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.: The Culture of Educational Equality

Na'ilah Suad Nasir
Department Chair, Associate Professor, African American Studies; Chair in Educational Disparities in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley.

Na'ilah Suad Nasir's research centers on how issues of culture and race influence the learning, achievement, and educational trajectories of African American and other non-dominant students in urban school and community settings. Her work can be found in Anthropology and Education Quarterly, the American Educational Research Journal, and Educational Researcher.

12:15 - 1:00 p.m.: Lunch Break

1:00 - 2:00 p.m.: Colorblind Racism

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
Professor of Sociology at Duke University

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva speaks widely on race and ethnic matters nation wide. Hehas published four books: White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era (co-winner of the 2002 Oliver Cox Award given by the American Sociological Association), Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (2004 Choice Award; this book is now in a second expanded and revised edition that was published in 2006), White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism (with Ashley Doane), and (with Tukufu Zuberi) White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Social Science.   

2:00 - 3:00 p.m.: Race, Gender, Inequality and Intersectionality

 Kimberle Crenshaw
Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law

Kimberlé Crenshaw teaches Civil Rights and other courses in critical race studies and constitutional law. Her primary scholarly interests center around race and the law, and she was a founder and has been a leader in the intellectual movement called Critical Race Theory. She was elected Professor of the Year by the 1991 and 1994 graduating classes. She now splits her time each year between UCLA and the Columbia School of Law. Professor Crenshaw's publications include Critical Race Theory (edited by Crenshaw, et al., 1995) and Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment (with Matsuda, et al., 1993).

3:00 - 3:30 p.m.: Break

3:30 - 5:00 p.m.: Racial Formation in the U.S.: Conversation with Michael Omi and Howard Winant

Facilitated by Tricia Rose. On the 20th Anniversary of their seminal book, Racial Formation in the U.S.: From the 1960s to the 1990s (Routledge, 1994)

Michael Omi
Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies; Associate Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley.  

Professor Omi is a recipient of UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award --- an honor bestowed on only 240 Berkeley faculty members since the award’s inception in 1959. Selected publications include “’Slippin’ Into Darkness’: The (Re)Biologization of Race,” Journal of Asian American Studies (October 2010); “The Changing Meaning of Race,” in Neil Smelser, William Julius Wilson, and Faith Mitchell, editors, America Becoming:  Racial Trends and Their Consequences(National Academy Press, 2001); and “(E)racism:  Emerging Practices of Antiracist Organizations,” in Birgit Brander Rasmussen, Eric Klinenberg, Irene J. Nexica, and Matt Wray, editors, The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness  (Duke University Press, 2001).

Howard Winant
Professor of Sociology
 at University of California
, Santa Barbara

Winant is the founding director of the UC Center for New Racial Studies (UCCNRS), a MultiCampus Research Program active on all ten UC campuses. He is the author of The New Politics of Race: Globalism, Difference, Justice (University of Minnesota Press 2004); The World is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II (Basic Books 2001); Racial Conditions: Politics, Theory, Comparisons (University of Minnesota Press 1994); and Stalemate: Political Economic Origins of Supply-side Policy(Praeger 1988).

5:00 - 6:00 p.m.: Reception

Sponsored by the Office of the President

 

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Tom Shapiro, "Black Wealth/White Wealth..."
Na'ilah Suad Nasir, "The Culture of Educational Inequality"
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, "Why Can't We Just Get Along?..."
Kimberlé Crenshaw, "Race, Gender, Inequality and Intersectionality"
Racial Formation in the U.S.: Conversation with Michael Omi and Howard Winant