Race Matters: Continuing the Conversation

In this section

The Race & Pedagogy Institute presented a series of online discussions for the Puget Sound community and our neighbors, allowing for courageous conversations about race, supported by the expertise and guidance of Race & Pedagogy Institute leaders.

Who

This series was proposed by RPI leadership team member, LaToya Brackett, as a concrete suggestion to provide the community with spaces to engage with a most important issue: Race in America. This undertaking was also carried out with the support of Adrianna Flores, MLIS, Archivist and Special Collections Librarian and Sam Kigar, PhD, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies.

Mission

To answer the call of "What's next?"

The Race Matters: Continuing the Conversation series grew out of the RPI-guided, and campus collaborated, teach-in on June 3, 2020: "We Can't Breathe: 400 Years of Institutionalized Violence." More than 500 members of our community participated virtually in the teach-in, many of whom asked "What's next?"

Outcome

The community joined us at 6pm on Wednesdays from June - August 2020 for one-hour sessions led by various faculty and staff members from across campus, supported by the RPI leadership, utilizing interdisciplinary approaches to discussing race.

Creators of the Series

Race & Pedagogy Institute

To inquire about this series please contact the RPI Program Coordinator to get in touch with the creators

253.879.2435

raceandpedagogy@pugetsound.edu

African American Studies

LaToya Brackett, PhD, MA
Associate Professor of African American Studies
Leadership Team, Race & Pedagogy Institute

Religion, Spirituality & Society

Sam Kigar, PhD
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

Collins Memorial Library

Adriana Flores, MLIS
Archivist and Special Collections Librarian

Read the Report on the 2020 Race Matters Series

Report produced by LaToya Brackett's students in AFAM 398 Research Methods Course in Fall of 2020:

Moose Abdirahman '22,
Erland Cain '21
Kalina Cordero '22
Leona DeRango '22
Jade Herbert '21
Sodia McLaren '22

Emma Piorier '21
Serena Sevasin '22
Isabele Riser '22
Isaac Sims-Foster '21
Eliza Tesch '22
Sharon Whitaker '23

Please give grace to this final product, as it was a pedagogical tool for teaching and fulfilling a need for documentation.

Click Here to Read the Report

Sessions of the Race Matters: Continuing the Conversation Series

June 10 | Remembering to Breathe: Coping With Seeing Trauma on Film

June 17 | Let’s Talk: Black Space for Black Lives

June 24 | Policing Citizenship

Andrew Gomez began this conversation by explaining the duplicity of citizenship as a legal process as well as a process of belonging, membership, and solidarity. By viewing certain groups as cultural outsiders to the US identity, we reduce their ability to exercise legal and political citizenship. Historically in the US, the legal citizenship of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans, specifically has been rebuked and met with violence, police brutality, lynching, voter suppression etc. which evidences the chasm between citizenship and inclusion. Robin Jacobson discussed broadly the carceral state: a summation of the web of systems like incarceration, policing, immigration, surveillance, parole etc. and the way that interactions with these systems of punishment and management affect civic citizenship: political participation, trust in community and government, sense of belonging or obligation, etc. This oppressive process works in combination with formal disenfranchisement: losing the right to vote post-incarceration, as well as in relationship to the socio-political narrative of ‘getting tough on’ immigration. There are clear patterns of deterioration in political engagement among these groups as the carceral state grows. Monica DeHart examined the way cultural citizenship is racialized to privilege whiteness. Cultural citizenship and national belonging can be mapped out and negotiated in cities and public spaces, centered around personal culture, (how individuals speak, act, dress, practice religion etc.), and how we associate with different communities. All of these factors which we currently use to define citizenship function to decide who can claim nationality, participate in public life, exist in public spaces, and conversely how violence towards and exclusion of Black and brown people is legitimized. DeHart proposes that we redefine citizenship so that cultural difference is a condition of inclusion, rather than adapting to whiteness in order to be considered a citizen.

A conversation led by:
Monica DeHart, PhD, (Professor, Sociology and Anthropology)
Robin Jacobson, PhD, (Professor, Government and Politics)
Andrew Gomez, PhD, (Associate Professor, History)

Moderated by Nancy Bristow, PhD, (Professor, History)

July 1 | #SayHerName: Black Feminism and Black Liberation

July 8 | Politicizing the "Apolitical": Unsettling the Universal in the Performing Arts

July 15 | Blackness in Latinx Communities

July 22 | "Model Minorities" and Confronting Anti-Blackness: An Asian and APIDA Space

July 29 | Overdue: Towards a Praxis of Anti-Racism and Liberation in Libraries

This session explored the ways in which both public and private libraries can be allies to their community through their work in obtaining and distributing resources. In conjunction with this, this session also discussed how this allyship between communities and libraries can and should be improved to promote an even more inclusive institution. Each of the three panelists acknowledged that libraries as institutions are predominantly white dominated spaces and each addressed different ways in which this affects the materials and resources libraries have available. Angela Weaver, addressed issues she has found with narratives being excluded, marginalized, or even erased completely from library collections. Amita Lonial addressed how lack of adequate resources and staffing affects public libraries’ ability to increase racial literacy and competency. Ben Tucker discussed the university’s retention issues with “minoritized” library staff and recurring issues he had found with former staff feeling as if the university has repeatedly failed to address issues of race. At the end of this session, a question came about from a viewer asking the librarians if they had any radical visions for the future of libraries. Each panelist agreed that more engagement with the public is a major idea that they would like to see come into fruition. Along with that, they agreed that in a system that is oppressive, they would like to see more allowance, space, and access to assist in community engagement.

A conversation led by:
Angela Weaver, MFA (Fine and Performing Arts Librarian)
Ben Tucker, MLIS (Digital Services and Outreach & Reference Librarian)
Amita Lonial, (Tacoma Public Library Assistant Director)

Moderated by Lori Ricigliano, MLIS (retired Associate Director, Collins Memorial Library)

August 5 | Marginalized: Students of Color at UPS: Where Do We Belong?

August 12 | There’s No White Flight in the Fight Against Racism: UPS Faculty and Staff Speak About Anti-Racist Work in Higher Ed

Jonathan Stockdale opened the discussion with an explanation of why such a conspicuously white panel was part of the Race Matters series, saying, “Let’s be accountable as white faculty and staff for initiating and holding some of these conversations. Or to go a bit further, if white supremacy was created by white folx and continues to sustain white folx, it shouldn’t be the burden of people of color to have to dismantle that. It should be on the white folx to work to dismantle that.” Geoff Proehl, Lori Ricigliano, and Mary Boer all provided examples of their experiences with anti-racist work in higher education. Proehl described his work with Dr. Livingston in the production of multiple plays by C. Rosalind Bell. He acknowledged that Livingston and Bell had to do extra work to compensate for his own lack of expertise, as well as that of his white colleagues. He ended with a reading from Bell’s work, “The New Orleans Monologues.” Former librarian, Ricigliano, shared her personal progression through awareness of her white identity to antiracist action and discussed multiple endeavors to incorporate anti-racist work into her career at Puget Sound. She described her work creating library exhibits and events, including the Black Panther Party exhibit; her work teaching with historical university records in the archives; and her work producing the open access Race & Pedagogy Journal. Lastly, Boer described her anti-racist work as a part of the School of Education over the past three years. She recounted how Education and African American Studies worked together on shared grants in a mutually beneficial way. This process prompted Education to examine their racist history, reevaluate their goals, and fully rethink their curriculum.

A conversation led by:
Geoffrey Proehl, PhD, (Professor Emeritus, Theatre Arts)
Mary Boer, MAT, (Clinical Instructor, School of Education)
Lori Ricigliano, MLIS (retired Associate Director, Collins Memorial Library)

Moderated by Jonathan Stockdale PhD, (Professor, Religious Studies).

Race Matters: Continuing the Conversation

In this section

Who

Mission