Anti-Black State Violence Across the Americas Symposium

It's been one year since this symposium which featured nearly 30 leading activists, scholars and scholar-activists from Brazil and the U.S.—homes to the two largest Black populations outside the African continent. CRSC was pleased to co-sponsor this event and is happy to announce that the LUTA Initiative’s website (https://lutainitiative.wordpress.com/) is now live! Here you will find more information about their ongoing initiatives and a comprehensive archive of the symposium – with info on individual events, photos, and panel videos.

VIDEO: Racism, Plutocracy, and the 2020 Election

Center for Research on Social Change Colloquia Series: Ian Haney López, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law, UC Berkeley

Watch the video on YouTube

Over the last half-century, the Republican Party has exploited social divisions—and racism in particular—to win power, and then has ruled primarily on behalf of the ultra-wealthy. No one better symbolizes the conjoined dynamics of racism and plutocracy than Donald Trump. In this lecture, Prof. Haney López lays out the history of dog whistle politics and Trump’s place within it. Then he suggests a clear way forward. Haney López recently co-led a national research project focused on developing the most effective political rejoinder to strategic racism as a class weapon. The research demonstrates dog whistle politics can be defeated.

Racial and Political Attitudes in California

Professors Cristina Mora and Tianna Paschel, CRSC affiliated faculty members, have received a second year of funding from the Russell Sage Foundation for their project, California Color Lines: Racial and Political Attitudes in the Age of Precariousness. This mixed method study was originally funded with an ISSI seed grant.  The project leverages the political and geographic diversity of California to analyze how Californians make sense of race and class in the present context of increasing economic precariousness and political polarization. Using survey data and interviews with Californians from different regions, Mora and Paschel also investigate how place shapes the economic and political experiences of belonging and exclusion.