Duke to Hold 'Still Two Nations?' Race Conference March 20-21
Thursday, March 12, 2009
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Forty years after the federal Kerner Report labeled the United States a nation divided by race, a two-day Duke University conference will ask whether that conclusion still holds true following the election of President Obama.
“Still Two Nations? The Resilience of the Color Line,” will bring together journalists and scholars to discuss how race intersects with politics, gender, sexuality and health. Panelists from several universities, including Harvard, Cornell, MIT and the University of Michigan, will address how modern racial prejudice shapes policy.
The conference, to be held in Goodson Chapel on Duke’s West Campus, will begin at 9 a.m. Friday, March 20, with a series of panels, concluding with a reception at 5 p.m. It will resume the following day from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Cost for attendees is $10 and includes a continental breakfast both days and lunch on Friday.
The conference honors John Hope Franklin, emeritus professor of history at Duke and a preeminent scholar in the field of African American studies. He will not be in attendance.
Notable panelists include Lani Guinier, the first black female tenured professor at Harvard Law School; Melissa Nobles, associate professor of political science at MIT; Michel Martin, host of NPR’s “Tell Me More”; and CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante. Click here for a schedule and a complete list of panelists.
Organizers intend to go beyond the subject of a “black/white” divide to examine topics that were largely unexplored in the Kerner Report 40 years ago.
“It’s impossible to talk about race solely as a black/white dynamic these days,” said Kerry Haynie, associate chair of Duke’s political science department, one of the conference organizers. “(America) is at least three nations if we look at racial demographics of the country. The Latino population is larger than the black population. … There’s been great progress over the last 40 years and there’s still work to be done.”
