When the news story broke that Governor Northam & other politicians wore blackface and Klan regalia while in school, institutions across the nation suddenly were confronted with their all too recent blackface past. Princeton Professor Rhae Lynn Barnes, the foremost expert on amateur blackface minstrelsy, has spent over a decade cataloging 10,000 minstrel plays and … Continued
The American West erupted in anti-Chinese violence in 1885. Following the massacre of Chinese miners in Wyoming Territory, communities throughout California and the Pacific Northwest harassed, assaulted, and expelled thousands of Chinese immigrants. In this webinar, we will examine how American immigration policies incited this violence and how the violence, in turn, provoked new exclusionary … Continued
Reckoning with the centuries-long toll of treating African Americans as less than their fellow citizens is a challenging task, requiring us to consider not only what has been extracted from and denied the mistreated but the costs borne by all of us. Though these three scholars focus on different periods and places in this country's history with quite different sources, approaches, and questions, their work illuminates the myriad ways that racism and systemic injustice affect us all.
By its very nature, institutional racism is elusive, hiding in plain sight under the guise of accepted traditions and through modes of professional behavior that cast a blind eye on the experiences of people of color. It is incumbent on us, therefore, to pay careful attention to those whose experiences of the academy have been shaped by encounters with racial bias if we are to have any hope of correcting them.
In front of the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta you’ll find this statue of Mohandas Gandhi. For years I have used a photograph of this statue to introduce our Indian Independence unit to my 7th graders with the prompt “Why is this statue of Gandhi in front of the King Center?” My students are … Continued
My moment was a culmination of two. The first was the image or video taken from Muhammad Ali’s comments regarding the Vietnam War. I have played this video many times in class to highlight the conflicting viewpoints and social implications of the Vietnam War. Considering the backlash experienced by Ali followed by his most recent … Continued
When I was in elementary school I didn’t know anything about racial conflict or even recognize there were racial differences between the kids at my school. My classmates were just friends or people I went to school with. Everyone looked different, some had freckles, some had red hair, and some were darker skinned. That all … Continued
In this video submission, Ken Burns recounts how formative experiences, both deeply personal and as a young person growing up in the midst of the Civil Rights era, have shaped his perspective on American history and have informed nearly all his documentary projects. Trying to make sense of his own individual story within the nation’s … Continued
July 15–August 19, 2020 | This installment in our virtual book club series features six gifted scholars whose work helps illuminate the long history, bitter realities, and complex dynamics surrounding racial oppression in the United States. Over these six events, we look to consider both the breadth of human suffering propagated by entrenched racial bias and the heroic efforts required to correct systemic injustice.