Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

While US society has been confronting, coming to terms, and finding ways to overcome its long history of racism, arguably more than many other societies, racism persists. It persists in its institutions, it persists in economy, culture, and in everyday life. Despite the growing discourses of inclusion and diversity that aim to create spaces for historically marginalized members of the society, there is much work to be done. What is also apparent is the persistence of racial attitudes, individual racisms that seem to erupt despite the more hegemonic discourses of racism as an unwelcome ideology. This study is about one institutional setting in particular, a small college campus, where such eruptions took place in the form of hate crimes targeting black and brown students. It focuses on the faculty organized response to racism and creative forms of building anti-racist community, and evaluate the counter-narrative produced via such interventions. The US colleges have been witnessing such racist events increasingly since Trump came to power and elevated the racializing discourses, misogynist, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant attitudes to the highest public office. Many scholars and public intellectuals have pinpointed to the link between such presidential hate speech and the growing violence against marginalized and racialized populations. Thus the racist events this particular institution have faced should be seen as a part of these larger trends, even beyond the US context, and so a critical evaluation of the anti-racist actions in this setting could provide an example for others which are facing similar situations.