Category: Metro Written by Rebecca Nuttall - Courier Staff Writer

In what has been touted as the largest conference on race ever, the Race in America: Restructuring Inequality National Conference brought speakers from across the country together to find solutions to some of the most pressing issues of our time.

Opening the conference on June 3 was Dean Larry E. Davis of the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work and director of the Center on Race and Social Problems. In front of a full house at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall, Davis shared a story of racial discrimination experienced by his mother and two siblings on a train in the 1950s.

FROM ALABAMA TO OBAMA—Julian Bond delights the crowd with an entertaining and inspiring keynote address.

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Category: Metro Written by Rebecca Nuttall - Courier Staff Writer

As part of the Race in America conference, hosted by the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work and Center on Race and Social Problems, a number of sessions and presenters were focused on economic disparities for minorities.

In her keynote speech on “Economic Justice,” Julianne Malveaux, a noted commentator and economist, presented startling statistics illustrating the dire economic status of African-Americans and other minorities.

JULIANNE MALVEAUX speaks at the conference.

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Category: Metro Written by Christian Morrow - Courier Staff Writer

Having the conversation about race as it applies to inequities in the criminal justice system will invariably lead to a discussion of politics. Because as Carnegie Mellon professor Alfred Blumstein told a packed conference room during the University of Pittsburgh’s Race In America summit, politics has introduced the vast majority of those inequities.

During his portion of the “Minority Majority: Imbalance in the Criminal Justice System” session, shared with Marc Mauer, Sentencing Project executive director, Blumstein presented data on a century of arrest and incarceration rates showing the current imbalance is largely the product of political decisions, and what appears to be obvious discrimination that may be due to various factors, of which bias is a small part.

NEW PARTNERS—Introducing David Kennedy at the Race in America conference, Pittsburgh Police Chief Nate Harper said reducing violence is not just police work, but everyone’s work.

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Category: Metro Written by Rebecca Nuttall - Courier Staff Writer

For the past 19 months since the election of President Barack Obama, America has been buzzing over whether or not we now live in a “post-racial America.” At the closing panel discussion of the Race in America conference June 5, the four panelists answered that question with a resounding “NO.”

“I had predicted that the election of Obama was not going to be this momentous issue that the media made it out to be,” said Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Ph.D., professor of sociology at Duke University. “If you look at the status of minorities nothing much has changed.”

RACE IN AMERICA PANEL—From left, back: Benjamin Jealous, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Alex Castellanos and Larry Davis. Front, from left: Tony Norman and Abigail Thernstrom.

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