|
Welcome
Major
Courses
Faculty
Resources
Links
Contact
News
Forms
Alumnae
|
Spring
2008 lecture
Colorblind:
The Contradictions of Racial Classification
Michael Omi
Thursday,
May 1, 2008
4:15 pm in 101 Dwight
reception to follow
The
reigning racial ideology of colorblindness in the United States exhorts
us to “get beyond race” and subscribes to the belief
that the most effective anti-racist gesture --- in policy and practice
--- is simply to ignore race. This presentation surveys emergent
issues that present a set of contradictions for colorblind ideology
--- issues that threaten to destabilize it as hegemonic “common
sense.” Debates surrounding California’s “Racial
Privacy Initiative,” the use of racial profiling as a national
security measure, and the “rebiologization” of race in
biomedical research and DNA sampling all illustrate, in varying ways,
the inherently
problematic character of racial classification. What links
the topics is a question that both informs and haunts the framing
of social policies and social identities. When and under
what circumstances do we want to be colorblind, and when do we
want to be color conscious?
Michael
Omi is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California,
Berkeley. His research focuses on US racial formation, racial classification,
anti-racism, and Asian American history and politics. Professor Omi
is co-author with Howard Winant of Racial Formation in the United
States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (2nd Ed, Routledge, 1994),
a work that has become definitive in its analysis of the historical
development of race as a dynamic and evolving social construction.
His forthcoming publication with Howard Winant is Racial Formation
in the New Millennium (Routledge, 2008), which builds upon their
original text by examining further the interplay of racial politics
and modernity.
This lecture is made possible by the generous support of the Office of
the Dean of the College, the Office of the Dean of Faculty, the Department
of English and the American Studies Program at Mount Holyoke, and the
American Studies Program at Smith College.
|
