Pembroke 305, 172 Meeting Street
The prevalence of coded racial appeals in American politics invites us to reconsider racism, racial ideologies, and the social construction of race. In this seminar we'll talk about strategic and routine racism, colorblindness, and the interplay between dog whistle politics and a racially stratified society. Looking toward the future, we'll also consider whether demography will save us, or whether instead whiteness as an organizing principle in politics and society is likely to expand, for instance to incorporate many Hispanics and Asian Americans.
See also:
Third Rail Series Lecture: Ian Haney López
Dog Whistle Politics: Coded Racism and Inequality for All
Thursday, April 2, 2015 • 4:00 PM
Pembroke 305, 172 Meeting Street
speaker
Ian Haney López is one of the nation’s leading thinkers on racism’s evolution since the civil rights era. He holds an endowed chair as the John H. Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches in the areas of race and constitutional law; he is also a Senior Fellow at Demos. Ian has been a visiting law professor at Yale, New York University, and Harvard, and is a past recipient of the Alphonse Fletcher Fellowship, awarded to scholars whose work furthers the integration goals of Brown v. Board of Education. His most recent book, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, lays bare how over the last half century politicians have exploited racial pandering to build resentment toward government that in turn leads many voters to support policies that favor the very wealthiest while hurting everyone else.