A Los Angeles Times reporter recently asked me and a couple of others which two books or essays students should read regarding race and racism in the Ferguson era. Whittling it down to only two was almost impossible, but I managed–it was an interesting exercise. I pared it down to James Cone’s A Black Theology of Liberation and a Harper’s Magazine interview between Cornel West and Jorge Klor de Alva. You can read more about these two texts in the L.A. Times article that came out yesterday.
Teaching/In the Classroom
Racial Diversity and its Limits: What One Experience with Asian American Students Might Tell Us About Teaching Race
The following was posted recently on the Race Matters in the Classroom Blog of the Wabash Center.
I was horrified to discover that Dylann Roof regarded Asians as inherently racist and thus possible allies to white supremacist causes. That opinion received little media attention, except for spotty clusters throughout social networking sites. And while Roof’s assessment of Asians is nothing short of galling, I also found them disquieting; it was the words of a white supremacist mad man that had uncomfortably recalled a specific set of experiences in my course “Race, Politics, and Theology.” Read more…
My So-Called Race 