Race in 21st Century Americas, March 29th, 2022, 5pm-6:30pm
Michigan State University is pleased to welcome the return of a time-honored event to campus this year. Race in 21st Century Americas is a biennial event hosted by James Madison College that began in 1999 under the leadership of its founder Professor Emeritus Curtis Stokes, who retired from James Madison in 2019 after 36-years of scholarship and teaching.
This year’s conference is a hybrid event that will take place March 25 and 29-30 with an in-person student seminar day occurring from 11 a.m.-4 p.m., March 25 in the MSU Union. The keynote speaker and featured guests will present virtually for conference attendees on March 29 and 30.
The Race Conference brings together leading scholars and community activists from around the nation with diverse racial, ethnic and ideological approaches, in order to have important conversations about race. Under Stokes’ leadership, scholars, policy makers and activists such as Ronald Takaki, Cornel West, Michelle Alexander, Patricia Hill Collins, Charles Mills and Rashida Tlaib have visited campus to lend their expertise on important race-related issues.
To continue the conference’s legacy, Rashida Harrison, assistant professor of social relations and policy in James Madison, assumed the chairperson role in 2019 and quickly established a university-wide planning committee. In addition to articulating the conference’s vision and selecting the next conference theme, the group decided to broaden the scope of the conference to the Americas, rather than the singular America. The theme for the 2022 conference is “Race and Rights: Empowering Our Communities.”
“Madison is proud to have the Race Conference continue under Dr. Harrison’s leadership. She and Dr. Stokes worked together closely for many years; Dr. Harrison knows the conference’s history and has the vision to see its potential,” said Cameron Thies, dean and MSU Foundation Professor in James Madison.
True to the conference’s roots, this year’s theme will investigate systems of power that maintain racial stratification throughout the Americas. Since the last conference in 2019, many events have heightened public awareness and interest in state-sponsored brutality — from the murder of George Floyd and countless others to the aggravated health and economic disparities made evident during the COVID-19 pandemic to an increased awareness of voter suppression and other racial injustices.
With the call for change gaining momentum, public demand for social mobilization is at the forefront. Thus, this year’s theme engages speakers and participants to dialogue and strategize about creating conditions for sustainable actions.
This year’s featured speakers include Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research; Naima Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farms; Keisha-Khan Perry, Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; and shane bernardo, co-founder of Food as Healing.
Click here to watch a recording of the 2022 keynote discussion between Naima and shane.