KINGSTON, R.I. –September 29, 2010 –-Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a professor of sociology at Duke University, will speak at the University of Rhode Island Tuesday, Oct. 12 at 7 p.m. His lecture, “The Invisible Weight of Whiteness: The Racial Grammar of Everyday Life in Contemporary America,” will be delivered in Edwards Auditorium, 64 Upper College Road, Kingston. The talk, free and open to the public, is part of URI’s ongoing Honors Colloquium on race. Those unable to attend the lecture can watch it live by going to www.uri.edu.
Considered one of the most prolific academics writing about race today, Bonilla-Silva is one of the leading sociologists examining the new forms of racial inequality, stratification, and discrimination produced in post-civil rights America.
Bonilla-Silva’s novel research agenda is empirically based, data driven, and theoretically innovative and imaginative. His work is resolute in challenging the public’s common sense ideas about race, racism, and white privilege, as well as, the blind spots, silences, and orthodoxies of contemporary theories of race, racisms, and white privilege. His ideas about colorblind racism operating as the dominant form of racism within post civil rights America, and the Latin Americanization of race in the U.S. over the next 40 years–how racial ideologies in America will share much in common with the racial ideologies of many Latin American countries–are unique, iconoclastic, and thought-provoking whether one agrees or disagrees with them. His ideas often provide key insights for helping people understand the ever-changing ways in which racism and white privilege operate in contemporary American society.
Bonilla-Silva is writing two books entitled Anything but Racism: How Social Analysts Limit the Significance of Race with Gianpaolo Baicocchi and Hayward Horton) and White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology with Tukufu Zubert. He is also working on a project called We are All Americans! The Latin Americanization of Race Relations in the USA in which he explores the changing dynamics of racial stratification in America.
For a complete, up-to-date schedule of the colloquium, visit www.uri.edu/hc. For further information contact Deborah Gardiner at 401.874.2303 or deg@uri.edu. For information about ways to support the Honors Colloquium, contact Tom Zorabedian at 401.874.2853 or zman@foundation.uri.edu.
Major Sponsors:
Honors Program, Office of the Provost, College of Arts and Sciences, Richard and Jean Harrington and the Harrington School of Communication and Media, Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies, College of Engineering, College of the Environment and Life Sciences, College of Human Science and Services, Office of the President.
Sustaining Sponsors:
The Mark and Donna Ross Honors Colloquium Humanities Endowment, The Thomas Silvia and Shannon Chandley Honors Colloquium Endowment.
Sponsors:
Division of University Advancement, College of Business Administration, College of Pharmacy, Department of Communication Studies, Center for Student Leadership Development, Office of the Dean of Students, Women’s Studies Program, Athletics, Multicultural Center, Office of the Vice President of Administration and Finance, Office of the Vice President of Student Affairs, University College–Phi Eta Sigma, Department of Kinesiology.