For our next Edited Volume Read Along Series, I will cover “The Changing Ethos of Human Rights,” edited by Hoda Mahmoudi, Alison Brysk, and Kate Seaman. This volume explores how the discussion surrounding human rights has changed in recent years and the resulting ethical, moral, and intellectual shifts. It also particularly highlights Ethics-of-Care theories and the idea that human life has inherent value and dignity.

The final chapter of this volume is called “Forming a Racially Inclusive Sociological Imagination: Becoming a Racial Equity learner, Racial Equity Advocate, and Racial Equity Broker.” In it, Professor Rashawn Ray discusses the impact racism still has in our society and begins to propose actions and solutions we can take to move forward. He points out the vitality of Critical Race Theory and suggests three main ways individuals can work toward racial equity.

In her chapter "Forging Alliances, Seeking Justice: How Relatively Privileged Young People Imagine and Build Solidarity across Differences," author Dr. Beth Douthirt Cohen discusses student agency in interrupting racism and other forms of oppression. She talks about how young people, especially in a school context, can perpetuate or break structures that maintain systems of inequality. She describes how fighting for justice in a way that does not immediately benefit you, like white youth interrupting white supremacy in themselves and others, makes you feel connected to movements for justice.

The fate of our democracy is at the forefront of our minds as we head into midterm season. In this year’s annual lecture, “Democracy, Voting Rights and Black Women as the Vanguard,” Professor Martha S. Jones discusses a new way to look at American democracy through the lens of history. She addresses major questions, including how we have arrived here in 2022 and what has changed in the 102 years since the ratification of the 19th amendment. 

In “Black Lives Matter in Polarized News Media: Politics, Policing, Prejudice, and Protest,” author Dr. Simone N. Durham analyses news content about BLM, which is mainly out of the control of the people within the movement. BLM was founded by three black women Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. However, unlike the civil rights movement of the 1960s, BLM is a decentralized network without official leaders. Support for the Black Lives Matter movement is polarized along several lines, with black people, democrats, and young people more likely to endorse it. 

The roundtable on systemic racism that the Chair held on the 8th of September was my first in-person event—seeing more than just the heads and shoulders of the speakers felt strange and exciting. Rather than staring at a zoom screen, I sat in my fancy clothes and listened to our panelists speak openly and powerfully about how racism is woven throughout our education systems.

The next chapter serves as the opening for Part III: Systemic Racism and Social Change. Dr. Chandra V. Reyna’s contribution titled “Pursuing Racial Justice on Predominantly White Campuses: Divergent Institutional Responses to Racially Palatable and Racially Conscious Students,” examines the campus culture and administration of a predominantly white university through interviews with undergraduate students. Her findings indicate that using diversity as a talking point does little to change the behavior and climate of the student body or administration. Indeed, using equity as marketing without committing to meaningful action can bring more students of color to an academic institution where they are treated poorly, feel excluded, and are unsafe.

In their chapter “Seeing Our Most Vulnerable Homeless Students: The Impact of Systemic Racism on the Education of Black Homeless Youth in the United States,” authors Dr. Earl J. Edwards and Dr. Pedro Noguera seek to rectify the ways in which the racial dynamics of homelessness have been overlooked in social policy and research on homelessness, youth development, and education. Since 1980, black people have made up around 40 percent of the homeless population, yet they are only 12.5 percent of the total American population. Despite the disproportionate impact of homelessness on black Americans, scholarship and society tend to ignore how homelessness is intertwined with systemic racism.

The next chapter by Dr. Odis Johnson Jr. is titled “Why did the Convergence of the Achievement Gap Stop? Macroeconomic Change, Policy, and Racial Avoidance.” It discusses the seemingly contradictory phenomena of the brief period in the 1970s and 80s of reduced educational inequality and increased spatial disequilibrium. He argues that we must look beyond the most popular explanation, which lies solely in economic change. While macroeconomic transformation did play a significant role in shaping education during this period, the analysis must include desegregation measures and reactions by the population to and against these policies.

Beginning Part II, the section titled “Systemic Racism and Education Inequality,” author Prudence L. Carter discusses the many challenges in addressing educational inequality. Her chapter called “Systemic Racism in Education Requires Multidimensional Solutions” analyses the multitude of sources of the “achievement gap” as well as offering a global approach to considering solutions. 

Students of color across the country do not have the same access to the same opportunities, resources, or securities. Interventions, therefore, cannot exist in only one area of their lives. Steps towards equity need to be taken in their school and extra-school environments, addressing everything from housing, community, wages, and healthcare, to underfunded schools, disproportionate suspensions and expulsions, and student and teacher discrimination. 

“Make America White Again: The Racial Reasoning of American Nationalism” by Matthew W. Hughey and Michael L. Rosino explores why white people are so enamored with Trump and his racial reasoning. In 2016 he received 58 percent of the white vote. Despite this, there are many who deny the relationship between Trump’s election and racially based backlash against the Obama presidency.

Dr. Aldon Morris highlights W.E.B. Du Bois’s often overlooked contributions to the foundations of scientific sociology in his chapter “W.E.B. Du Bois at the Center: From Science, Civil Rights Movement, to Black Lives Matter.” He argues that it was Du Bois who founded the first school of American Scientific Sociology at Atlanta University. Morris demonstrates the ways that denying Du Bois’s work and influence in favor of a white narrative has impoverished the practice and teaching of sociology from the beginning. 

The next chapter in the edited volume is titled “The Problem of Racism in “Post-Racial” America” and is written by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Liann Yamashita. They address the current systemic nature of racism and how it differs both from past forms of racism and from white people’s current false perceptions of racism.