Monday, October 23, 2017
5:00 PM 
Department of Africana Studies Rites and Reason Theatre
155 Angell Street

CSSJ Race, Medicine, and Social Justice Research Cluster presents
Kaleidoscope: Contested Identities and New Forms of Racial Membership

In recent years, public controversies over individuals' "true" racial identities have repeatedly erupted over news and social media. In this talk, Professor Ann Morning draws on instances of public identity contestation to argue that in the early 21st century, claims of race-group membership are being complicated by technological develpments in genetics  and in cosmetics, as well as by new respect for subjective self-identification. As a result, there are more paths than ever to claiming and demonstrating racial belonging. In particular, Professor Morning suggests that four new types of race-group members are emerging: genetic, cosmetic, emotive, and constructed. Should these types come to be widely accepted as genuine race members, racial groups will become more heterogenous, resembling kaleidoscopic arrays of core and peripheral members who differ in terms of how many qualifications for belonging they may legitimately claim.

This event is made possible thanks to the support of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, the C.P. Sisson Lectureship Fund, the Department of Africana Studies, and the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs in the Alpert Medical School.