3B. Connecting Stories: The Practice of Racial Dialogues
2:00pm-3:30pm
Talking about race is always difficult, and particularly so across racial and ethnic lines. How do we structure conversations so as to best address cultural complexities while also identifying common sources of oppression and unifying lines of struggle? How do we best talk about and across borders of ethnicity and nationality in order to heighten understanding and solidarity between Latin@s and African Americans, and among other communities of color? How do we navigate unities and divergences among the diverse national backgrounds of Afro-Latin@s? What role can public programs play in building bridges between Afro-Latin@ movements in the US and those in Latin America and the Caribbean? How do we define themes in an inclusive and mutually supportive way, so as to open up practical paths toward solid coalitions and alliances?
Talking about race is always difficult, and particularly so across racial and ethnic lines. How do we structure conversations so as to best address cultural complexities while also identifying common sources of oppression and unifying lines of struggle? How do we best talk about and across borders of ethnicity and nationality in order to heighten understanding and solidarity between Latin@s and African Americans, and among other communities of color? How do we navigate unities and divergences among the diverse national backgrounds of Afro-Latin@s? What role can public programs play in building bridges between Afro-Latin@ movements in the US and those in Latin America and the Caribbean? How do we define themes in an inclusive and mutually supportive way, so as to open up practical paths toward solid coalitions and alliances?
Presenters
Stephanie Alvarez is Director of Mexican American Studies and Assistant Professor of Spanish at The University of Texas-Pan American. The recipient of awards for teaching excellence from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (2011) and the University of Texas Board of Regents (2009), she is the author of several essays on Latin@ identity, language, culture, and education. She is co-founder with Tato Laviera and José Martínez of “Cosecha Voices”: Documenting the Lives of Migrant Farmworker Students, where she emphasizes the importance of Afro-Latin@ perspectives.
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Eduardo Bonilla-Silva is a professor of sociology at Duke University. He was born in Pennsylvania but raised in Puerto Rico, where he received his BA in sociology and economics in 1984. He received his MA (1987) and PhD (1993) in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, he is the author of White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era (co-winner of the 2002 Oliver Cox Award of the American Sociological Association) and Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (2004 Choice Award), and co-author of White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism and co-editor of White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Social Science. His most recent book, with Moon Kie Jung and João H. Costa Vargas, is State of White Supremacy: Racism, Governance, and the United States (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).
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Tanya K. Hernández is a Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, where she teaches Comparative Employment Discrimination, Critical Race Theory, and Trusts & Estates. In 2011, Hernandez was named a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and in 2009 she was elected to the American Law Institute. Her scholarly interest is in the study of comparative race relations and anti-discrimination law, and her work in that area has been published in the California Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Harvard Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal amongst other publications. Her forthcoming book Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law and the New Civil Rights Response is currently under contract with Cambridge University Press.
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Joseph Jordan is Director of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at UNC at Chapel Hill and adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of African/African-American Studies. Recent publications include “Afro-Colombia: A Case for Pan-African Analysis” in Transnational Blackness: Navigating the Global Color-Line,” (2009). He has served as curator for over 20 art and historical exhibits that examine Afro-Latinidades, Black and Latino radical movements, and diaspora art and cultural politics. He currently serves as co-chair of the Scholars Council at TransAfrica Forum, and as a board member of the National Council for Black Studies, for The Future of Minority Studies Research Project. He is a founding member of the Afro-Colombian Solidarity Network.
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Moderator
Ricardo Millett is currently the principal of his company Millett & Associates providing program evaluation and strategic planning consultant services to foundations and non-profits. Previously he served as President of the Woods Fund of Chicago. Since receiving his doctoral degree in policy planning and research from Brandeis University, Millett has carried out extensive community development and social services work in Boston, Atlanta and Chicago among African Americans and Hispanics. As an Afro-Panamanian, he has used his professional opportunities as an academic, social policy researcher and program evaluator and his career in philanthropy to advance greater awareness and solutions to “bridge-making” in communities here in the U.S and in Latin American and the Caribbean.
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