Identity, Visibility and Representation: The Role of the Census
5:15pm - 6:45pm
Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Our closing plenary brings together Latin American and Latin@ scholars and activists to assess the role of the census in their respective countries. Among the issues we will address are the ideological and structural obstacles confronted in the process of bringing attention to racial discrimination? How have advocacy organizations encouraged afrodescendientes to identify as racially Black? To what extent does terminology, i.e., the classifications themselves matter? How much attention should be focused on educating the citizenry? What tangible changes can be attributed to the gathering of racially defined data?
Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Our closing plenary brings together Latin American and Latin@ scholars and activists to assess the role of the census in their respective countries. Among the issues we will address are the ideological and structural obstacles confronted in the process of bringing attention to racial discrimination? How have advocacy organizations encouraged afrodescendientes to identify as racially Black? To what extent does terminology, i.e., the classifications themselves matter? How much attention should be focused on educating the citizenry? What tangible changes can be attributed to the gathering of racially defined data?
Miriam Jimenez Roman is Executive Director of afrolatin@ forum. She was the research coordinator and curator of exhibitions at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where she also served as assistant director of the Scholars in Residence Program. A frequent speaker and consultant on African American and Latin@ issues, her essays on diasporic racial formations and inter-ethnic relations have appeared in a number of scholarly and popular publications. Miriam is co-editor, with Juan Flores, of The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, which received the American Book Award in 2011.
Nicholas A. Jones is Chief of the U.S. Census Bureau's Racial Statistics Branch in the Population Division, where he leads a research team that analyzes data on race and ethnicity and develops tables, reports, and presentations that yield insights to the country's changing racial and ethnic diversity. He was part of the team of Census Bureau experts who provided leadership and guidance for the 2010 Census Race and Hispanic Origin Alternative Questionnaire Experiment. Nicholas received a bachelor's degree in sociology and anthropology from St. Mary's College of Maryland and a master's degree in sociology from the University of Michigan.
Edward Telles teaches courses in race, ethnicity and immigration, with a special emphasis on Latin America and Latinos in the United States. Currently at Princeton University, he was Professor of Sociology at UCLA and worked for the Ford Foundation in Brazil. Edward’s award-winning books include Race in Another America: the Significance of Skin Color in Brazil; Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation and Race; and the co-edited Just Neighbors? Research on African American and Latino Relations in the United States. His most recent book is Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race and Color in Latin America, the product of the collaborative, multiyear Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America (PERLA).
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Epsy Campbell Barr is an economist, activist, and politician who currently is legislative representative for the Citizens Action Party (PAC). She previously served as president of PAC and has been the party’s candidate for vice-president and president of Costa Rica. She is the founder of the Black Parliament of the Americas and the Women’s Forum for Central American Integration and has served as executive officer in these and a number of other national and international organizations, including the Center for Afro-Costa Rican Women and the AfroDescendant Institute for Study, Research and Development Her research and publications have focused on development and the political participation of women and people of African descent.
Marcelo Paixão is a Professor of sociology and economics at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Economic Institute). He coordinates LAESER (Laboratory of Research on Racial inequality), one of Brazil’s principal academic spaces for the study of racial inequality. He was a Visiting Scholar at Princeton University in 2012-13 as part of PERLA (Project Race and Ethnicity in Latin America), a multi-country effort that empirically examines numerous dimensions of race and ethnicity across Latin America. His books include A lenda da modernidade encantada: por uma crítica ao pensamento social brasileiro sobre relações e projeto de Estado-Nação and 500 anos de solidão: estudos sobre as desigualdades raciais no Brasil.
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