Race & Ethnic Studies Institute

In this paper I try comprehend the killing of Amadou Diallo by situating this event between the two sets of decisions – the cops’ decisions to shoot, and the jurors’ decisions to acquit them – that constructed his existence as legally and morally irrelevant. My contention here is that both rehearse the symbolic moment of racial subjection, the operation of the analytics of raciality, as each indicates how representations of blackness – as refigured in the black body and urban spaces – (trans)form acts which would otherwise be defined as a crime, a particular, unbecoming subjectively (particular) determined act, into objectively (universal) determined events, i.e. as expressions of how "laws of nature" – as apprehended in social scientific signification – produce/regulate collective existence. Informed by the critique of the modern social subject I introduce in my book, Toward a Global Idea of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), this reading highlights how its writing as a transparent "I," the scene of nature addresses scientific signification as an instance of production of modern subjects, one which, unlike historical signification, institutes its objects as exterior/spatial things – as subjected to outer-determination of both the "laws of nature" and of other co-existing things. With this analytical device I revisit the thesis of law’s autonomy, its absolute universality and its openness, which is resolved anew in each decision. As such, this critique of modern ontology challenges the transparency thesis when it shows how scientific strategies configure the modern social landscape. My argument is that scientific universality mediates the subjective universality attributed to juridical subject (the 'individual' formulated in liberal social ontology and presupposed in the legal apparatus) and "true universality," the moment of transcendentality. As a social scientific signifier, I contend, the racial (trans)forms acts otherwise conceived as contingent into expressions universal (exterior) determinants, the "laws of nature" as apprehended in scientific signification, which always-already define how certain modern subjects appear before the law.

The Brazilian left in the post-World War used a language and ideology of class struggle. Thus, in spite of the large numbers of Japanese-Brazilians, Arab-Brazilians or Jewish-Brazilians in extreme leftist political activity, we find no Brazilian versions of the Black Panthers, the Jewish Defense League or the I Wor Kuan. Given this, scholars have ignored ethnicity as an important issue in the political struggles of the 1960's and 1970's. That class permeated the surface discourse of the left should not, I would like to suggest today, lead us to diminish the importance of ethnic factors. Indeed normative Brazilian ideas about race and ethnicity, and challenges to those dominant notions, were expressed on a daily basis on the most extreme ends of the political spectrum. In order to pursue this point I will focus on the political activity of Nikkei, or Japanese-Brazilians, in São Paulo based leftist movements. São Paulo has a Nikkei community of close to 800,000 and Brazil's total Nikkei population of 1.2 million represents a total larger than that of all other countries of the Japanese diaspora combined. I wil specificly discuss n the life of Shizuo Osawa, a well known guerilla who was known more widely as "Mario the Jap".

My talk will draw on my experience as an expert witness on a federal civil rights discrimination lawsuit, national survey data and media accounts of racial inequality to develop the idea of incidental racism. Incidental Racism operates within an ideological framework where the presumption of equal opportunity by whites means that factors other than race can be used to justify discrimination that are in fact race based. Unlike other explanations of racism (laissez-faire, color-blind, institutional) which views colorblindness as a dodge to maintain white privilege, incidental racism views non-racial explanations of discrimination as a deeply held belief that colorblindness in the new norm. This perspective is especially true among individuals under 30. Incidental racism allows the color line and white privilege to be maintained through a seemingly colorblind discourse.

France Winddance Twine is an American sociologist, feminist theorist and ethnographer who has conducted extensive field research in Brazil, Britain and the United States. Twine earned her BA from Northwestern University at the age of 20, and her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Her research is concerned with the intersections of racial, gender and class inequalities as an interlocking system. She has been widely published in European, North and South American journals in English and Brazilian Portuguese. Her research has received support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. She has taught at Duke University, Colorado College, and the University of Washington in Seattle. Professor Twine is the Deputy Editor of American Sociological Review, the journal of the American Sociological Association, and serves on the editorial boards of Ethnic and Racial Studies. She has also served on the boards of Feminist Studies and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Her areas of interest and teaching include gender, girlhood, racism and anti-racism, feminist theory, critical race theory, field research methods, whiteness studies, and multiracial and transracial families. She is also known for developing the concept of "racial literacy" and for expanding the use of photographs in sociological analysis (visual sociology).

A Documentary Film Produced by Dr. Jaime Chahin, Dean The College of Applied Arts Texas State University. Come see the film preview, talk to the producer, And decide for yourself!

Recruited to build the African - New World Studies Program at FIU, Dr. Boyce Davies served as its director for three successful three-year appointments, which moved the program to international recognition. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, she has degrees from the University of Maryland (BA, 1972); Howard University (M.A., 1974) and (University of Ibadan, Nigeria (Ph.D., 1978). She is the author of the forthcoming work The Politics and Poetics of a Black Communist Woman (Duke University Press). Previously published works include Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (Routledge, 1994) and Claudia Jones… Left of Karl Marx. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, Dr. Boyce Davies has also published numerous critical editions. Dr. Boyce Davies will join Cornell University in fall 2008 from the English and African-New World Studies at Florida International University (FIU).

An interdisciplinary artist - playwright, performer and director - rooted in the black avant-garde theatre movement, Daniel Alexander Jones creates gestural language, ritual movement and original music in the service of a multi-dimensioned theatre where the body, mind, emotions, voice, and spirit conjoin, shimmer and heal. Enlivened by collaborative process, Jones works with visual artists, poets, jazz musicians and DJs. American Theatre Magazine named Mr. Jones one of fifteen up-and-coming artists whose work will be transforming America’s stages for decades to come. His plays and performance pieces have been presented to critical acclaim, including Blood:Shock:Boogie, Earthbirths, Ambient Love Rites, Clayangels, and La Chanteuse Nubienne. Daniel developed his directorial style on productions of new plays by award-winning American writers and was resident director at Frontera @ Hyde Park Theatre in Austin. He has performed across the country, notably N.Y., Boston, Austin, Seattle and Minneapolis and abroad in London, Manchester and Dublin.

What is the real story behind the fight over affirmative action in college admissions? Veteran journalist Peter Schmidt reveals truths that will outrage readers and forever transform the debate. He exposes issues such as: (1) The hidden agendas of conservatives who preach admissions equality, yet gut programs that helped poor kids get in the running. (2) The higher education establishment attempts to squelch any talk about its own bias toward the children of privilege. (3) Higher education advocates feeding lies to the federal courts and the public while relying on raceconscious admissions policies to attract outside financial support. (4) The struggles of lower and middle class students of all races who are being lost in the chaos of affirmative action. The underlying premise is that African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American kids are being harmed the most. Unafraid to shine a harsh light on schools such as Harvard, the University of Michigan, Princeton, and the University of California, this is a startling and brave book that will inspire a national dialogue on class, race, and education.

This talk focuses on cows, cars and cycle-rickshaws as they navigate Delhi's roads, and on the people who own, use and seek to control them. All three have been the subject of strenuous efforts at regulation by courts, citizens' groups and traders' associations. These conflicts are instances of bourgeois environmentalism, the (mainly) middle-class pursuit of urban order, hygiene and safety, and ecological conservation. Collective action in the 'public interest' by citizens' concerned about congestion and the collapse of civic infrastructure constitutes a public that excludes the city's poorer sections. Claims to civic responsibility and environmentalism by bourgeois citizens are contradicted by the simultaneous rise of consumerism in the same social stratum, as expressed in the explosive growth of private car ownership. The talk examines state attempts to regulate the traffic between cars, cows and rickshaws, and concludes by arguing that complex interdependencies avert imminent collision and enable the republic of the street' to survive.

Colorism, the differential treatment of individuals in the same racial group on the basis of variations in skin complexion, is an important dimension of the racial stratification system that affects the life chances of African Americans, and colorism has been linked to physical and mental health. The continuing influence of colorism is investigated by comparing mental health outcomes for African American and White adolescents. The question we seek to answer is whether previous findings regarding racial differences in mental health hold for all African American teens or just some of them.

Kevin Willmott wrote and directed, C.S.A: Confederate States of America, a feature film about what would have happened if the South won the Civil War. After its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, IFC Films purchased the film for domestic theatrical distribution. CSA was released theatrically by IFC in late 2005, and is now available on DVD. The film is also being distributed theatrically internationally. Aside from C.S.A., Willmott has written and directed several works for television, film, and stage, including his latest works Bunker Hill, The 70s, and Ninth Street. Willmott grew up in Junction City, Kansas and attended Marymount College receiving his BA in Drama. After graduation, he returned home, working as a peace and civil rights activist, fighting for the rights of the poor, creating two Catholic Worker shelters for the homeless and forcing the integration of several long standing segregated institutions. He attended graduate studies at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.

Jennifer L. Bratter (PhD 2001, University of Texas at Austin) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rice University. Dr. Bratter research explores the implications of racial mixing (i.e. interracial family formation, multiracial identity) for current understanding of the salience of racial distinctions within three sociological domains: the family, health, and identity. In the realm of family, her work explores how interracial couples and multiracial adults navigate the color line in a post-civil rights America select spouses and partners, maintain relationships, parent their children. In the area of health, Dr. Bratter's has recently initiated a project examining how the realities of multiple-race reporting, and thus multiracial identity, complicate what is known about health disparities between racial groups. Finally, Dr. Bratter's research is exploring the meaning of blurred racial identity more broadly through drawing connections to blurred gender identity. A new project conducted with Dr. Kristen Shilt is identifying possible parallels between mixed race identities and transgender identities. Dr. Bratter has recently published works appearing in Social Forces, Family Relations, Population Research and Policy Review, as well as several upcoming book chapters.

The talk will focus on Visitor's Guide to Arivacaand La víctima, two recent productions about immigration staged at Teatro Vision in San Jose, CA. In the talk Dr. Rossini will discuss how the political and spatial environments in which they are produced shapes the ways that they engage with questions of immigration. You and your students are cordially invited to attend.

In Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, the word is that anyone who opposes the current incumbent – who has been in power for the past twenty-eight years – is a "witch" and a "puppet" of western governments. To that end, the president of that country has sought, again, to construct himself and those around him as the only legitimate heirs of Zimbabwe's struggles for freedom from colonial domination, both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By privatizing the legacy of Zimbabwe's two major anti-colonial wars, Mugabe has made sure to construct any opposition as rooted in the "outsider who made us a colony." The opposition, for its part, has not made any headway in reaching back to that same history and beyond to disown and challenge Mugabe's privatization of the country's history, and the legacy of those that stood against imperial domination before him. Similar patterns have emerged in other Southern African countries raising a concern in a region and continent rising out of its burdened past. Dr. Ruramisai Charumbira's talk will provide an historical perspective on the current situation in Zimbabwe, and offer a comparative analysis with two other countries in the region, Namibia and South Africa. Her major argument is that the gendered owing and privatization of history in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa spells disaster for the region.

Shay Youngblood is the author of the novels, Black Girl in Paris and Soul Kiss, and the collection, The Big Mama Stories, and the plays, Amazing Grace, Shakin’ the Mess outta Misery, Talking Bones, Black Power Barbie, and Communism Killed My Dog.She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the Pushcart Prize for fiction, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, and several NAACP Theater Awards. She is a board member of both the Yaddo artist’s colony and the Author Guild. For further information, please see www.shayyoungblood.com

The Center for European Studies is pleased to announce the date for our annual international conference "Making Europe/Making Europeans: The Ethnographic and the Everyday". The conference explores notions of European citizenship and identity in relation to key questions relating to Europe's changing borders, the politics of music and sport, and the importance of cities and landscapes to Europe's diverse and changing populations. With speakers from six European countries, as well experts from across the USA, the conference is set to be an important cross disciplinary event on the politics of Europe. The conference is free and open to faculty, students and all members of the wider community. For further details and to register for the conference please contact Sally Dickson at: ces@austin.utexas.edu Or visit or website for further details: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/european_studies/conferences/making-europe/index/

The Center for European Studies is pleased to announce the date for our annual international conference "Making Europe/Making Europeans: The Ethnographic and the Everyday". The conference explores notions of European citizenship and identity in relation to key questions relating to Europe's changing borders, the politics of music and sport, and the importance of cities and landscapes to Europe's diverse and changing populations. With speakers from six European countries, as well experts from across the USA, the conference is set to be an important cross disciplinary event on the politics of Europe. The conference is free and open to faculty, students and all members of the wider community. For further details and to register for the conference please contact Sally Dickson at: ces@austin.utexas.edu Or visit or website for further details: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/european_studies/conferences/making-europe/index/

As the organizers of the American Culture Reading Group's discussion series on "Recycling" this semester, we would like to invite interested faculty and graduate students from your department, program, or center to propose position papers for a one-day symposium, "Trash or Treasure: U.S. Cultures of Recycling," which will be held at the Forsyth Galleries on Saturday, April 12. Not exceeding ten minutes in length, these papers should consider and reconceptualize the conventional notions of recycling (waste, excess, reuse) while moving across disciplinary boundaries (i.e., literature, history, architecture, anthropology, visual art, folklore, music, and science) to provoke stimulating conversation. Topics might include: recycling the natural and cultural environment; aesthetics and the history of ideas; memory, pop culture, and performance; urban planning, architecture, and eco deco; heritage conservation, ecotourism, and house-flipping; genetic engineering, organ transplants, and cell recycling; plagiarism, biopiracy, and parody; political slogans, propaganda, and slang; Ebay, dumpster-diving, and garage sales; "grease cars," skateboards, and scooters; fashion, film, and plastic arts. Please send a 250-word abstracts by e-mail to Susan Stabile (stabile@tamu.edu) or Kim Cox (willow28@neo.tamu.edu) by Monday, February 18, 2008.

Abortion is one of the most hotly-debated and divisive issues in America, and has been so for more than thirty years. The conflict is revisited in every major election and with every Supreme Court appointment. Academics, journalists, and historians agree that this perennial conflict is about the meanings of motherhood and sexuality in American life. The consensus, in short, is that it is a debate about gender. This project examines how the quintessential "family values" issue is inflected through America's unique racial lens. America's racial history and politics have shaped arguments, coalitions, and policies about abortion. Most critically, the very questions we ask about the causes, effects, and social significance of abortion are shaped the politics of raced