About:
Being Color Brave rather than Colorblind: Forming a Racially-inclusive Sociological Imagination
This presentation will focus on the mechanisms that manufacture and maintain racial and gender inequality. As institutionalized means for inclusion and exclusion, race and gender sustain status hierarchies, create distinct cultural environments, and enhance social and economic inequalities. Using critical race and Black feminism theories, this presentation will discuss how mainstream narratives about race and gender are meant to be divisive to obstruct social change. Through an interactive, audience-based participatory exercise, we will discuss how to form solidarity and build coalitions across our racial/ethnic and gender identities. Participants will leave with strategies to combat race and gender inequality in a socially-conscious manner.
Forging Alliances, Seeking Justice: How Relatively Privileged Young People Imagine and Build Solidarity across Difference
Drawing from data on a study of relatively privileged young people who see themselves as allies of marginalized populations, this presentation will discuss the strengths and struggles of people who are enacting various forms of solidarity. The youth included, for example, those who identify as able-bodied within the Disability Rights Movement, straight youth in Gay/Straight Alliances, American youth in the Immigrant Rights Movement, middle class and upper class youth addressing poverty, White youth engaged in anti-racism work, and young men addressing sexism in their schools and communities. The presentation will explore how various forms of solidarity are employed by young people, when solidarity is deemed successful, ethical, or sincere, and what the common pitfalls and possibilities of nurturing solidarity, as a social justice intervention, serves within educational communities. The presentation will discuss how habits of thinking, feeling, and associating limit or extend possibilities for diverse educational communities.
Speakers:
RAWSHAWN RAY
Rashawn Ray, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland
“Being Color Brave rather than Colorblind: Forming a Racially-inclusive Sociological Imagination”
BETH COHEN
Beth Cohen, Ph.D., Director of Education & Training, Office of Diversity & Inclusion, University of Maryland
“Forging Alliances, Seeking Justice: How Relatively Privileged Young People Imagine and Build Solidarity across Difference”