Working Hard Ain’t Enough for Black Americans

In this Race and Difference Colloquium lecture, Dr. Darrick Hamilton (Assoc. Prof. of Public Policy, The New School) will present on the topic: “The (Economist’s) Burden: Why Studying Hard and Working Hard Ain’t Enough for Black Americans.”

Description: High achieving black Americans, as measured by education, still exhibit large economic and health disparities relative to their white peers, especially in the domain of wealth. I will discuss how the post-racial, politics of personal responsibility and “neoliberal paternalism” tropes discourage a public responsibility for the conditions of the poor and black Americans, and, instead, encourage punitive measures to “manage these “surplus populations.”

I will present an alternative frame, stratification economics, to better understand the paradox above. Ultimately, I will explore how the potential physical and psychological costs of stigma and, ironically, exerting individual agency, which in the context of racist or stigmatized environment, limit the role of education and income as protective factors for blacks relative to whites. (Feb. 19, 2018)

The James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference supports research, teaching, and public dialogue that examine race and intersecting dimensions of human difference including but not limited to class, gender, religion, and sexuality.

http://jamesweldonjohnson.emory.edu