Addressing the fallout of racial injustice and inequality requires difficult conversations that not only bring to light key issues, but also outline viable steps that can be taken in the pursuit of equity. On the 1st of July 2020, the Africa Graduate Club (AGC) of Notre Dame hosted a panel discussion to examine the complex interconnections between race, ethnicity and identity, and how they come to the fore in daily lived experiences, with the goal of proposing viable steps to eliminate racial bias. This virtual event had close to 200 participants on Zoom with several others following the discussion on the AGC’s social media platforms. Attendees included the Provost of the University of Notre Dame, the VP/Assoc. Provost & Dean of the Graduate School, the Associate Dean for the MBA program, the Program Director of Graduate Student Life, several notable alumni, graduate/undergraduate students, and members of the South Bend, Indiana community and beyond.
Helina Haile, a 2020 Master of Global Affairs alumna who has worked on racial equity issues with AmeriCorps VISTA and the city of Minneapolis, moderated the panel. The panelists included Hugh R. Page Jr., a Professor of Theology and Africana Studies and Vice President/Associate Provost at the University of Notre Dame, Agustín Fuentes, a renowned Professor of Anthropology, Emmanuel Cannady, Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist and Doctoral candidate in Sociology, as well as Micaiah Palmer, a Master of Global Affairs Student Advisory Council representative and former Ronald E. McNair scholar.
Opening the discussion, Ms. Haile took a few minutes to provide context and background for the conversation, pointing out how the subject of the discussion has been a constant theme in her personal and professional life. She recalled how her journey from her home country of Ethiopia to Egypt, the United States and back to Africa, on a visit to Rwanda in 2013, shed light on the nuances of race and ethnicity. According to her, no country has been left unaffected by the impacts of White supremacy, colonialism and imperialism. She noted how a single story narrative in Africa attempts to neglect the fact that the continent is not only home to Black Sub-Saharan Africans but the nuanced experiences of race in North Africa’s Arab countries, the history of Indian and Chinese immigrants, as well as migrant White descendants of Africans. Being at one time the only Black American in her cohort at graduate school, she struggled with a good immigrant narrative that seemed to prefer Blackness that is imported into the United States. This, she thought, was a divisive tool of White supremacy that pitted her against her Black brothers and sisters.
The discussion continued with Prof. Page highlighting that the religious communities have also been complicit in the construction of Whiteness, in the trafficking of Black bodies and in fostering racial segregation. He added that most of his days are spent trying to figure out how to deconstruct dehumanizing structures as well as anti-Black and racist practices in order to create room for the generations that follow to thrive and to breathe. However, he noted how his once buoyant enthusiasm about the capacity for change and the transformation of institutions has been tempered by disappointment given the harsh realities of recent experiences.
On his part, Prof. Fuentes highlighted the need to push against the racist misuse of science and the development of related lies in support of White supremacism. He asserted that race still does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. Humans, he said, are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. He referred to the concept of race as a Western concept which needs to be understood as a classification system that emerged from and in support of European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination, possessing no roots in biological reality, but in policies of discrimination and control. In his opinion, understanding the facts of what it means to be human is critical to push against the assertions of racist contexts, and to better understand where the world is right now, what structural measures are in place, and how to harness capacity to push against racial bias to change perspectives for the future.
Ms. Palmer expressed how anti-Blackness has been internalized and is reflected in how the U.S. health and education systems are run. She added that to have substantial and enduring change, it is necessary to share truth about history, to perpetuate justice, to reform institutions. and most importantly, for people to transform themselves.
Elaborating on the trauma associated with racism, Mr. Cannady highlighted how racial prejudice affects not only Black people, but also other races. He advocated for a model of defunding the police that would divert funds towards community interventions such as counselling, rehabilitation, education, better resources for community centers, and offerings that provide more direct help and support to traumatized groups. These solutions he anchored on his belief in the need to promote the trauma narrative not just the police narrative. “If we think of everything as criminal and deviant, then the natural solution to that problem is to lock up and criminalize people; however, if we think of these issues as traumatic, then the natural path will be healing and that is what we are really trying to do here,” he said.
Recommending ways institutions can ensure racial equity, Prof. Page stated that the first step is to acknowledge the existence of a racism problem. He stressed the need to consider concrete data and to subsequently ask really inconvenient questions, recognizing that there are no quick solutions, given that it has taken around 400 years to arrive at the status quo. To him, commencing the journey towards a new destination would require the acknowledgement of the realities from which the current situation originated.
Watch the recording here.
Suggested reading list
Fuentes, A. (2015). Race, monogamy, and other lies they told you: Busting myths about human nature. Univ of California Press.
Fuentes, A. (2019). Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being. Foundational Questions in Science.
DeGruy Leary, J. (2005). Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing.
Feagin, J. R. (2020). The white racial frame: Centuries of racial framing and counter-framing. Routledge.
McClintock, A. (2013). Imperial leather: Race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. Routledge.
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Thurman, H. (1996). Jesus and the Disinherited. Beacon Press.
Morrison, T. (2019). Mouth full of blood: essays, speeches, meditations. Random House.
Nelson, A. (2016). The social life of DNA: Race, reparations, and reconciliation after the genome. Beacon Press.
Roberts, D. (2011). Fatal invention: How science, politics, and big business re-create race in the twenty-first century. New Press/ORIM.
Marks, J. (2017). Is science racist?. John Wiley & Sons.
Saini, A. (2019). Superior: the return of race science. Beacon Press.
Graves Jr, J. L. (2015). Why the nonexistence of biological races does not mean the nonexistence of racism. American Behavioral Scientist, 59(11), 1474-1495.
Krieger, N. (2020). Measures of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and gender binarism for health equity research: From structural injustice to embodied harm—An ecosocial analysis. Annual Review of Public Health, 41, 37-62.
AAPA statement on race and racism
Feedback on the event
“Thank you so much for hosting this event. It was enlightening, challenging, and inspiring. Congratulations to your team for presenting on this vital topic so thoughtfully and successfully.” – Mimi Beck
“I watched, at least, the recorded panel discussion with great interest. It was very rich and touched on many important experiences and issues.” – Georges Enderle
“Thank you all so much for putting it on…it was truly excellent.” – Agustín Fuentes
“It was a great discussion. 1:30hrs was not enough. The turnout was great as well. Dr. Fuentes’ points on the conflict of science and the scientists is something I would like to explore.” – Faith Manuel
“Please pass along my deepest thanks to the panelists and the moderator. The program has been deeply moving and helpful for my own understanding of these issues and helped me to see directions for personal growth and action” – Mandy Havert
“I loved the realness of the conversation and how they put issues into perspectives” – Ephraim Emah
“Thank you for organizing this – such a rich discussion!” – Bronwyn Kaiser