Category: Black Future Scholars
Fireside Chat: Black Futures, Race, Inequality, & Public Policy
This video involves a discussion or “fireside chat” between two Black Futures Scholars, Jacquelyn Ortiz and Maya McFarlane. In this presentation, they discuss their research, lessons they learned in Prof. Beeman’s Race, Inequality, and Public Policy course, their career goals, and how their work relates to Black Futures. Key quotes from the talk:
Continue reading “Fireside Chat: Black Futures, Race, Inequality, & Public Policy”Who is the MST? How They Manifest Black Futures
By Yuddy Fermin
On October 13, 2022, Cristina Sturmer, an activist, and researcher with Brazil’s Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), Landless Rural Workers Movement participated in Baruch College’s Black Studies Colloquium symposium “Black Futures: Black Ecologies.” The following post is a reflection of what I learned from her talk, from my research on the MST, and how I connected it to our class Afro-Latinidades taught by Dr. Rojo Robles.
Continue reading “Who is the MST? How They Manifest Black Futures”Mass Incarceration and Rikers Island
By Marc Cruz
In this paper for Race, Inequality, and Public Policy (PAF 3010), Black Futures Scholar, Marc Cruz, analyzes the history, current realities, and potential solutions to mass incarceration by analyzing key cases, including Weldon Angelos, Kalief Browder, and Erik Tavira. Click on the link below to read Marc’s research.
Continue reading “Mass Incarceration and Rikers Island”Mass Incarceration & the Attack on Black Communities
By Maya McFarlane
Maya McFarlane investigates enslavement, forced labor, and Black Futures in this final paper for Race, Inequality, and Public Policy. This paper examines the similarities and connections between the U.S. slavery system and the incarceration system and the role public racial discourse, policy, and politics play in challenging or justifying inequities. This paper draws on the works of Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” Barbara Ransby’s “Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century,” the Schomburg Center, and The Prison Policy Initiative to trace the history of inequity, potential modern-day solutions, and imagine more equitable futures.
Continue reading “Mass Incarceration & the Attack on Black Communities”Learning from the MST
By Riki Lorenzo Valdez
Brazil is one of the most racially diverse nations in Latin America and perhaps the world. Yet, there are a lot of racial inequalities and other forms of injustice in the country. As a result, groups such as Brazil’s Landless Workers Movements (MST) have started to fight those inequalities. Cristina Stumers, an activist and researcher, discussed in the “Black Futures, Black Ecologies” symposium what the movement is about, intergenerational struggles, ecological projects they have developed, and their Black Feminist social justice vision. I also learned how their ideas and actions could inspire and empower Afro-Latinxs in the US.
Continue reading “Learning from the MST”Hook, Line, & Sinker: The Food is Poisoned, The Overlap Between Environmental Racism and SCD
By Aissata Sow and Maya Samuel
In their podcast Black Futures Scholars, Aissata Sow and Maya Samuel, evaluate Black Futures and Ecologies in connection with their research for Race, Inequality, and Public Policy (PAF 3010). They discuss climate change and environmental racism, the impact on people who suffer from sickle cell disease, and the intersection with factory farming.
Continue reading “Hook, Line, & Sinker: The Food is Poisoned, The Overlap Between Environmental Racism and SCD”Black Futures Project: Education and Advocacy – Toward Equity
By Jacquelyn Ortiz
Jacquelyn Ortiz links education as a fundamental right and key to unlocking full human potential to Black futures in this final paper for Race, Inequality, and Public Policy with Professor Angie Beeman. This paper addresses the history and continuing legacy of racial inequity in education and how to better engage in efforts to create change through social justice advocacy. The paper takes a critical look at the role color-blind and post-racial ideologies play in maintaining structural inequities. Using works by Lindsay Perez Huber, Susana Muñoz, Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Curtis Ivery, Joshua Bassett, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Paolo Freire, this paper explores the disconnect between ideologies of equality and implementation of equity-based policies and practices.
Continue reading “Black Futures Project: Education and Advocacy – Toward Equity”Breaking Down Harmful Structures Through Ecological Relationships
By Alexandra Acevedo
The foundations of Brazilian society are racist, anti-LGBTQ, patriarchal, and capitalistic. The same could be said about all the Americas and the United States. The colonizer European powers built these societal structures in Latin America. As a result, many indigenous and enslaved people (and their descendants) lost their relationship with the land and their ancestral communities. They partially lost the knowledge they held and their culture. Now, these belief systems of racism and so on are embedded in the way we view the world. However, we can repair these relationships through reconnection between people and the land. Through both the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil and Khalil Haywood’s essay “Paraíso Negro” we can see how reconnection to the land is crucial for the Afro-Latinx diaspora. We must unlearn these harmful belief systems and gain new knowledge to deconstruct these systems through reconnection to nature; in doing so, we can become closer to ourselves, our culture, and our families and communities.
Continue reading “Breaking Down Harmful Structures Through Ecological Relationships”Black Futures and Environmental Racism
By Peter Balluffi-Fry
In spring semester 2023, Black Futures Scholar Peter Balluffi-Fry developed a research paper for PAF 3010 in response to Dr. Nisrin Elamin’s talk on land dispossession and corporate investment in Sudan. His paper, Environmental Racism: The Centuries-Long Exploitation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, examines policies to address climate justice on a global scale. Click on the link below to read Peter’s research.
Continue reading “Black Futures and Environmental Racism”