Advocate, Writer Tackle Race Issues

Campus dialogue to focus on institutionalized racism, white privilege

Humboldt Sentinel
News 10/22/08
By Sentinel Staff

ARCATA -- Diversity activist Frances Kendall and award-winning author Nalo Hopkinson will headline Humboldt State University’s 2008 Campus Dialogue on Race, Friday, Oct. 31 to Nov. 9.

Kendall, a long-time organizer against institutionalized racism, will discuss “Leading Whites to Challenge Whiteness” on Saturday, Nov. 1, at 10 a.m. in the Behavioral and Social Sciences Forum 162. Her theme is “taking responsibility for our white privilege.”

Kendall is a nationally known consultant who has pursued communication and systemic change across racial divides for 30 years.

“Whites sometimes think racism isn’t present until a person of color walks into the room,” Kendall told a Northampton Community College audience in 2007.

In fact, race shapes every experience a person has, but they aren’t always aware of it, Kendall explained.

“We need to internalize that racism is about us, as white people, and to understand the depths of white privilege,” she said.

Jamaica-born Hopkinson has written four novels and a short story collection and is the editor and co-editor of fiction anthologies. She will make the Book of the Year presentation for the late Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and discuss the new voices of black women authors in futuristic fiction.

The presentation will take place in the University Library Lobby on Thursday, Nov. 6, at 7 p.m. The program will include a question and answer session and a book signing sponsored by the HSU Bookstore.

HSU’s annual Campus Dialogue on Race offers a full roster of events that will kick off on Friday, Oct. 31, at 8 p.m. with “The Colored Museum,” a theater production that explores different facets of African-American life and culture. It will be presented in Gist Theater, Gist Hall.

Subsequent discussions and workshops will delve into race and the November elections, the history of hate in the United States, crime policy and Native American efforts to achieve civil and religious rights.