Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell spoke about the current racial climate in America Wednesday night as part of ALST Day celebrations on campus.
Harris-Lacewell, a frequent contributor to MSNBC and other media outlets, tackled the broad topic by explaining race in four ways: racial context, race as a factor in candidate choice, race and governing, and race inequality and policy-making.
She explained how events such as September 11, the war in Iraq, and Hurricane Katrina are racialized, but how the effects are politicized.
"After Hurricane Katrina, the American sentiment was, 'How can we execute a war overseas if we cannot give water to an American city for three days?'"
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Melissa Harris-Lacewell speaks at Colgate on Wednesday about "Race and the Age of Obama." (Photo by Brooke Ousterhout '10)
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By identifying these trends, Harris-Lacewell explained how the 2008 election with its open-seat contest in both parties and emerging "youth technology" such as Facebook and Twitter crossed many borders, assisting Obama's rise to power.
"These new technologies created echo chambers so people could immediately see what was going on," said Harris-Lacewell. "It made it more democratic because people could rely less on external authority."
She explained that while America is not in a post-racialization era, it is in a different racial climate.
"There are new racial possibilities and they have everything to do with addressing something that at the turn of the 20th century was described by (W.E.) DuBois as a doublethink," she said. "It is a double conscience descent of two-ness within the American context that the African Americans would all somehow find a way to heal the double conscience of being both black and American."
Harris-Lacewell said that attending the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver was when she personally sensed the possibility of healing that double conscience.
Students seemed to appreciate Harris-Lacewell's clear dialogue. "She really addressed the issues of race in an organized and very honest way," said Lauren Lisbon '11.
"I think that as an African American woman academic she has a unique vantage point from which to analyze the politics of race in the current period," said sociology professor Rhonda Levine, who organized Harris-Lacewell's visit. "She has an ability to draw on multiple political meanings of important racial issues to provide a coherent explanation."
Harris-Lacewell's appearance was part of a celebration of Colgate's Africana and Latin American Studies (ALST) Program.
On Tuesday night, Rex Nettleford, a Caribbean scholar, cultural historian, and political analyst, delivered the W.E DuBois Lecture. An open house with music and food was held earlier the same day.