Taking Measures: AfroLatin@s and Economic Inequities
11:00am - 12:30pm
Graduate Center of The City University of New York
This panel will discuss the rampant economic disparities among Latin@s as they correspond to racial differences. We will examine how patterns of colorism and other forms of discrimination underlie and generate gaping differences in terms of many socio-economic variables, including levels of poverty, depressed wages and labor conditions, unemployment, and housing. The panel will also critically explore available and purported mechanisms for accruing wealth, such as entrepreneurship and higher education, and consider possible advocacy, policy initiatives and community activism to address these many unexamined sources of economic injustice.
Graduate Center of The City University of New York
This panel will discuss the rampant economic disparities among Latin@s as they correspond to racial differences. We will examine how patterns of colorism and other forms of discrimination underlie and generate gaping differences in terms of many socio-economic variables, including levels of poverty, depressed wages and labor conditions, unemployment, and housing. The panel will also critically explore available and purported mechanisms for accruing wealth, such as entrepreneurship and higher education, and consider possible advocacy, policy initiatives and community activism to address these many unexamined sources of economic injustice.
Zaire Dinzey-Flores is Associate Professor in Sociology and Latino & Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on understanding how urban space mediates community life and social inequality. Her book, Locked In, Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City, winner of the 2014 Robert E. Park Award for best book in urban and community sociology, investigates race and class inequality as negotiated through community gates in private and public housing. Her new project examines race and class as enacted in the production of housing built environments in a gentrifying neighborhood.
Epsy Campbell Barr is an economist, activist, and politician who is currently 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. Epsy 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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José Francisco Ávila is Managing Partner of Garifuna Afro-Latino Entertainment LLC, a full-service entertainment company for culturally relevant Garífuna and Afro-Latino content and events. He is cofounder of the New Horizon Investment Club and also serves as the Chairman of the Board of the Garifuna Coalition USA, Inc. a New York based nonprofit. A speaker in various national and international forums and conferences around the world, José has written extensively on his vision for the economic development of the Garifuna and Afro-Latino community. In 2005 he served as financial advisor in negotiations with the Honduran Government that granted Garifuna communities equity participation in the largest tourism project in Central America.
William “Sandy” Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at Duke University. He has served as chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and is the founding director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality. His research and numerous publications focus on inequality by race, class and ethnicity, stratification economics, schooling and the racial achievement gap, North-South theories of trade and development, skin shade and labor market outcomes, the economics of reparations, the Atlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution, the history of economics, and the social psychological effects of exposure to unemployment.
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