Psychology Colloquium

Professor James M. Jones, PhD, Trustees' Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Studies Africana Studies, Director, Center for the Study of Diversity, University of Delaware

Title: “Toward a Science of Antiracism: Disrupting the Multiple Levels of Persistent Racism”

In the first edition of Prejudice and Racism, which I wrote fifty years ago, I delineated three levels of racism: Individual, Institutional and Cultural.  We now label the intersection of these levels “Systemic Racism.”  I will briefly describe the societal and scientific context in 1970, and then comment on the societal and scientific changes that have occurred over the past 50 years, what they mean for a conception of antiracism.  Racism is a complex, multi-leveled, multi-layered set of ideas and relationships whose influences travel, from brain to culture and back, and emerge from a historical process.  I will lay out some important features of an antiracism science, and how it can disrupt how we think about race and racism, and its persistent influence on the psyche and culture of the country.