Racial Justice and Reparations
“Especially in recent history, more often than not, one form of oppression has been replaced with another, different form that is similar or even more unjust than the one that preceded it… If we want to do more than alter the color of our children’s chains, we will have to successfully oppose more than isolated instances of oppression. ― Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics
Image credit: Toyin Ojih Odutola. (2018). Picnic on the Grounds. [Charcoal, pastel and pencil on paper 74 1/2 × 50]. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Dates:
Wednesday, February 5, 2025 | Newark Express, 54 Halsey Street, 2nd Floor, Room 213, Newark, NJ 07102
Thursday, February 6, 2025 | Newark Express, 54 Halsey Street, 2nd Floor, Room 213, Newark, NJ 07102
Time(s): 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Cost: Free and open to the public.
Accommodations: Please submit accommodation requests to sawyerseminar@newark.rutgers.edu by Friday, April 18, 2025.
Overview: Recent conversations about reparations in the United States have drawn on both history and analyses of current economic, social, and political perspectives to propose reparative practices that range from monetary compensation to targeted policies that address racial disparities in wealth, housing discrimination, and education access, among others. At a wider scale, scholars like Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò have offered a constructivist view of reparations that proposes a historically informed project of distributive justice that serves a larger and broader world-making process. The project of reparations, therefore, has a forward-facing orientation that by necessity is anchored in the past.
Wednesday, February 5, 2025:
Program coming soon!
Thursday, February 6, 2025:
Program coming soon!