RaceClass | Episode 8, Part B

2022 08 24

Outline

Race Matters Before Admissions

UNC’s Legacy of Racial Exclusion | A Conversation with Dr. William Sturkey

1. Arnie Open Legislation restricting the teaching of race and racismin public schools and government entities has spread across the country. In an effort to respond, Boston University Law Professor Jonathan Feingold and The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen (a radio show that airs on the Pacifica Network and on wnhnfm.org) are offering "Race Class" - a once a month course/conversation where listeners can hear what it is like to approach race and racism from a place of curiosity and history rather than fear and anxiety....In describing the foundational purpose of "Race Class," Arnesen and Feingold note, "We know race matters. Part of this project is to make sense of what that means."
2. Summer review: 6-part Affirmative Action mini-series
   1. Our angle: how “race matters” before Affirmative Action arrives. IOW, what is the racial baseline against which Affirmative Action intervenes.
      1. June & July: how race matters during & after admissions
      2. August: how race matters before admissions – IOW: how the past shapes the present.
         1. Last episode: UNC’s legacy of racial exclusion.
            1. Our upshot: over its history, UNC has invested more in racial exclusion than racial inclusion. Not even close.
         2. Today: UNC historian Dr. William Sturkey is here to help us dive deeper into the convo.
         3. Dr. Sturkey bio: William Sturkey is an associate professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he teaches classes on Modern American History. He is the author of Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White, and a variety of public writing that has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, and other venues
3. Qs for Dr. Sturkey
   1. You’re a historian. Professionally and personally, how do you think about the relationship between the past and the present?
4. As an historical matter, what are two or three moments, events, or pieces of UNC’s racial history that we should know about but probably don’t?
5. Can you place those moments into the broader historical / social context. Put differently, was UNC’s troubled history with racial exclusion unique or consistent with a broader societal pattern/phenomenon?
6. In past #RaceClass episodes, we’ve asked the provocative question: In what year was the United States no longer a racist society? Rather than generate a specific answer, the question pushes us to not simply take for granted that we are somehow post-racial. I’ll ask a similar question but shift the focus UNC. In what year did UNC become a post-racial campus? Put differently, when did UNC overcome its history of racial exclusion and racial hostility to people of color?
7. Assuming UNC still has work to do, what is necessary for the university to become a truly racially inclusive institution?
8. One thing we discuss on #RaceClass is that often, as a society, we’re not even asking the right question when it comes to issues of race and racism. Returning to UNC’s relationship with race and racism today, are there questions we should be asking but we often overlook?

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