Critical Race Theory and the Interest Divergence Dilemma
Thursday, March 7 | 7 p.m.
Warch Campus Cinema
The Division of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism, and Sustainability Services at Lawrence University presents the 2023-24 Community Conversations Series: Tales of Challenge, Resistance, and Persistence.
In this talk, Dr. Victor Ray draws on two central critical race theory concepts: racial progress narratives and interest convergence to explain the current backlash. Ideas from critical race theory can explain the recent uproar over this insurgent body of knowledge, in opposition to mainstream notion of inevitable progress, critical race theorists see racial progress as fragile and contingent. And some political actors are pushing the United States toward a period of interest divergence. As some white Americans increasingly see their interests as fundamentally different from those of their nonwhite fellow citizens.
Dr. Ray is the F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Criminology and African American Studies at the University of Iowa and a Nonresident Fellow in Government Studies at The Brooklyn Institution, and a Carr Center Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
