Currents in Conversation: Race, Racism, and Immigration
Currents in Conversation Series event brought together Woodson Professors to discuss and contextualize President Trump's 2018 immigration ban
Currents in Conversation Series event brought together Woodson Professors to discuss and contextualize President Trump's 2018 immigration ban
Since the beginning of his tenure, President Trump has actively targeted immigrants through executive orders, calls to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and, most recently, incendiary comments referring to nations in the African diaspora as “s***hole countries.” Amid the bombastic rhetoric and unconstitutional executive orders, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have detained immigrants in record numbers. According to The New York Times, “the agency arrested more than 28,000 ‘non-criminal immigration violators’ between Jan. 22 and Sept.
The creeping re-segregation of public schools. Consequences of recent changes to voting rights laws. The widening gap between the wealthy and the poor. The effects of incarceration on families. Charlottesville’s history of race relations.
These are just a few examples of topics to which the academic discipline of African-American studies brings valuable, necessary perspectives, according to University of Virginia English professor Deborah McDowell, director of UVA’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies.
The Woodson will present a screening of the documentary video, “The Hunted and the Haunted: An Inside Look at the New York Police Department’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy,” followed by a panel discussion
So-called “digital humanities” have become a major focus of scholarly research these days. The Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies and the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia will host two visiting speakers who will discuss what race and black studies bring to digital humanities during a session to be held Oct. 7 at 4 p.m. in Bryan Hall, room 229.
A screening of the recent film “Sugarcoated Arsenic” will take place on June 20 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and of “Juneteenth,” the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery. Sponsored by the University of Virginia Library’s “Common Ground Community,” the film, which explores African-American life during the 1970s at the University, will be shown at 3 p.m. in the Clemons Library’s Viz Lounge.
Charles M. Blow, the New York Times’ visual op-ed columnist whose articles appear on Saturdays, will talk about “Demographics and Destiny: How America’s Rapidly Changing Demographics are Changing our Politics” on Oct. 25 at 4 p.m. in the Garrett Hall Great Room at the University of Virginia.
September 3, 2008 — The Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts III, civil rights activist and pastor of the nationally renowned Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, will visit the University of Virginia Sept. 16 and 17 to participate in the Explorations in Black Leadership series. He will speak on "Integrity and Leadership" Sept. 16 at 6 p.m. in the Newcomb Hall Art Gallery.
March 1, 2012 — Maria Stewart, a free black woman born in Hartford, Conn., in 1803, is thought to be the first American woman to give a political speech before a "promiscuous" audience, in 1832.
March 28, 2011 — A list of the titans of the Civil Rights Movement includes Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King Jr. But the list should include Ella Baker, an unsung heroine of the movement who worked closely, but quietly, with those titans over her long career.