Current rhetoric on race supposedly embraces the principles of racial equality and multiculturalism; yet old and new forms of racial violence, inequality and discrimination persist. The popular language of “color-blindness,” “post-racialism,” “reverse racism,” “hard work,” “personal responsibility,” and “cultural pathology,” conceals how liberal and conservative forces have appropriated or delegitimated language originally used by racial justice movements. By popularizing the idea that race and ethnicity no longer limit people’s access to opportunity, these political forces have obscured the persistence of racial injustices.
This Discussion Series considers the challenges of organizing and theorizing racial justice movements in a milieu in which racial and ethnic injustices are increasingly expressed through color-blind terms like “criminality,” “illegal immigration,” “terrorism,” “undeserving welfare recipients,” “unqualified applicants,” and “model minorities.”
Spring 2014:
Crisis, Opportunity, and Antiracism
Phuong Nguyen
Assistant Professor, Ithaca College
Thursday, March 6
Emerson Suites, 7-9 pm
HECHO FARM
Cruz Ortiz
Artist, San Antonio, TX
Tuesday, April 8
Handwerker Gallery, 7-9 pm
-and-
Open Studio/Pop-Up Print Shop
Tue/Wed, April 8 & 9
Handwerker Gallery, 12-1 pm
Organized Abandonment and the Infrastructure of Feeling
Ruth Gilmore
Professor, City University of New York
Thursday, April 24
Emerson Suites, 7-9 pm
Just Cause? Just Language? Just Us?
Martin Luther King Scholars' Presentation
Ithaca College
Tuesday, April 29
Clark Lounge, 12-1 pm
Fall 2013:
8 Conversations about Race and Ethnicity
Paula M.L. Moya
Associate Professor, Stanford University
Tuesday, September 17
Emerson Suites, 7-9 pm
Repoliticizing Racial Justice in the Age of Obama
Daniel HoSang
Associate Professor, University of Oregon
Monday, October 14
Emerson Suites, 7-9 pm
Faculty/Student Open Round-table
Monday, November 11
Clark Lounge, 7-9 pm