Please join us for a “What I Am Thinking About Now” presentation by Jonathan Collins, an Assistant Professor of Education at Brown University, titled “The Community Decides: Towards A Participatory Theory of Equity-Centered Redistribution.”
Abstract: Can we disrupt the deepening racial equality in the U.S. by empowering the communities of low-income Black and Latinx students? When organizations and governments undergo projects to promote racial equity, they tend to focus on individual-level protections like civil rights or anti-discrimination policies. Far less often have institutions engaged in resource redistribution to promote racial equity. Moreover, the few efforts that we have seen rarely empower members of low-income communities of color to decide how government resources are to be used. But, what if the route to community improvement is through civic empowerment? As a result, Professor Collins offers a new theory for community-level group decision-making in low-income minoritized communities; a theory he calls “Participatory Redistribution” (PR). Building off of the literature in political science on participatory democracy and deliberation, Collins argues that a participatory model of allocating supplemental funds to low-income minoritized public schools should lead to upward shifts in civic and political engagement as well as school and community improvement.
“What I Am Thinking About Now” is an on-going informal workshop/seminar series to which faculty and graduate students are invited to present and discuss recently published work and work in progress. All are invited to attend and participate.