The Gospel & Race Workshop Series: The Backstory to Racism in America with Dr. Angela Simms

The Gospel & Race Workshop Series - Part 1

"The Backstory to Racism in America"

Dr. Angela M. Simms -- active participant of the Renaissance Church community and Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at Barnard College-Columbia University -- helps us examine the social construction of race and ethnicity in the U.S. from the colonial period to the present. Her lecture analyzes how capitalist interests, class differences, gender, immigration, and who “deserves” the full rights and privileges of citizenship, shape boundaries between and within racial and ethnic groups, and ultimately the racial hierarchy underpinning White domination. We will also consider how racism affects inequities between racial and ethnic groups in education, criminal justice, media, and other domains.

Attendees at this session were asked to read the following materials:

1. Dorothy Roberts, "Chapter 1: The Invention of Race," in Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-first Century (2011)

2. Matthew Desmond, "In Order to Understand the Brutality of American Capitalism, You Have to Start on the Plantation," in "The 1619 Project," The New York Times (2019) ("The 1619 Project is also available as a podcast):
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html

3. Interview of Khalil Gibran Muhammad: Anna North, "How Racist Policing Took Over American Cities, Explained by a Historian," Vox (2020)
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/6/21280643/police-brutality-violence-protests-racism-khalil-muhammad