Voice of Consciousness

As a health disparities researcher, I conduct theory-engaged, policy-relevant analyses of the political economy of ethnoracial inequality. — Abigail A. Sewell (@aasewell) May 24, 2017 Hi folks! I am hosting a poll on Twitter @aasewell as I prepare my materials for my re-appointment review. Can you help me out? Does the above description of my academic self best represent my research? What do you think? What needs to be modified or better specified? Check out this poll and let me know what you think in the reply comments.

It is my delight to return to the blogosphere with news from The Race and Policing Project. In the first week of April 2017, we will host our first public event ! We are still rounding up co-sponsors (feel to volunteer!), so the flyer may be updated closer to the event. Just wanted to get the word out there! Please visit our Facebook Event page and share the word widely!  The State of Orange: Policing Practices Impacting People of Color An Interactive Panel Thursday, April 6, 2017 5:30-7:00pm PAIS 290 On Thursday, April 6, 2017 from 5:30-7pm, The Race and Policing Project will present "The State of Orange: Policing Practices Impacting People of Color” in PAIS 290. “The State of Orange” is an interactive panel that will address surveillance practices shaping ethnoracially-marginalized communities through immigration, deportation, national security, and mass incarceration policies. In particular, we will highlight pedagogical approaches to addressi...

This clip of #DEMSinPHL provides an insight on Hillary Clinton's thinking regarding the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The entire time of the #DNC, Hillary Clinton's connection to people as a mother. This was no exception. Honestly, Sandra Bland's and Jordan Davis's mother said very touching words; my heart was stirred. However, I wondered the entire time as I watched and re-watched this clip if these Mothers really understood what it would take to bring justice to this nation, as this nation condones, invites, rationalizes, and excuses police violence. The difficulty to attaining transformative justice that these Mothers did not address is that police violence is a form of state-sanctioned oppression. Police are protectors of the State. They are gatekeepers of the criminal justice that enforce the laws of the nation-state and its derivatives. Attaining transformative justice in this nation-state will require more than God's favor. It will require more than ...

Researchers! We are looking for manuscripts at the intersection of race and policing. Authors must contribute themselves to the Race and Policing Research Repository ("opting-in"). To contribute to the Repository as an author, please send a publicly shareable version of an article you have written to theraceandpolicingproject@gmail.com  using the Send Email button at the top of our Facebook Page . PDFs preferred.  For guidelines on what formats of your manuscripts are shareable, see your journal or distributor at SHERPA/RoMEO . Note, the few journals/distributors allow the sharing of the final, formatted draft of the manuscripts. Please check with SHERPA/RoMEO to be clear about what version of your manuscript (e.g., peer-reviewed vs. pre-peer-reviewed; personal copies; open-access) you can share with us. By sending us this email, you are acknowledging that the version of the manuscript that we receive does not violate copyright infringement laws.  

Update 2016-07-17 10:49  We are working on making #RxPRL a repository that authors can opt-into to share their manuscripts. For now, we have made the bibliography available via a CSV file, an ENDNOTE library, and a Zotero library. We have also made PDFs of manuscripts available from authors who have opted-into the library (now, repository) that were received in one of the formats approved for self-distribution. What an author can self-distribute varies by journal and publisher. See the guidelines set forth by SHERPA/RoMEO . If you are interested in posting content you created to the Repository (#RxPRR), please post a comment on the "Opt-In-To-Posting.docx" document on the base folder of the library that indicates: 1) the link to where you have self-distributed the document; and 2) whether the publication is a peer-reviewed scholarly article, non-peer-reviewed scholarly article, policy statement, report, or blog post. These represent the only documents we are considering ri...

Thank you for your interest in the Race and Policing Research Library. The link and mechanism to access the Race and Policing Research Library have been updated due to concerns about fair use and copyright infringement. If you are looking for immediate access to the library, see this post at Voice of Consciousness . [ View the story "Publicly-Accessible Race and Policing Research Library" on Storify ] [ View the story "Updated Link to Race and Policing Research Library" on Storify ] Update 2016-07-13 08:27 You may also leave a comment on this blog post with a hyperlink to your email address, so that I can send you the password. My apologies, and definitely the Editorial Board would agree, for the inconvenience this has caused. Best, Abigail A. Sewell, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Sociology Emory University Update 2016-07-13 12:33 Due to concerns regarding the legality of posting ready-access PDFs of scholarship, the original ...

There was a time I thought this paper would never be published. As the rejections piled on, I grew more emotionally detached from the paper. I also grew more frustrated: Where would this paper find a home? At least six anonymous peer reviewers said that this paper should not be published. I am guessing six, which reflects one from every journal to which I sent the paper, including the journal that finally accepted the paper. In due time, however, after seven years, five journal rejections, and countless revisions, a portion of my M.A. thesis -- "Race and Trust: The Case of Medicine" -- is finally published in Social Science Research  (SSR). The journal released the online first version of the article  --  Disaggregating Ethnoracial Disparities in Physician Trust  -- on Monday, July 13, 2015. I am unsure of when the printed article is set for publication. Aside from a few Facebook updates, I've been fairly quiet about this final leg of the peer-revi...

after reading Adolph Reed Jr.'s eloquently-written  recent piece on #RachelDolezal  and continuing to see people (including Reed) trip themselves all up in making (in)comparisons between transgender and transrace people, i felt the need to rehash -- in a more cohesive manner -- some comments i recently made to my inner circle on the identity politics of #RachelDolezal. the ascriptive/achieved dichotomization, and the fluidity between the two, is too simplistic to make to gain clarity on the complex problematics of #RachelDolezal's identity politics. race and gender are both sociopolitical constructs. but, unlike gender’s corollary to sex, there is no precise biological language for talking about race. and that is the conceptual incongruence with comparing transgender with transrace identities. the race concept encompasses both biological and sociopolitical meanings in everyday society, whereas the women’s movement has been (mostly) successful at divorcing gender from sex. t...

I went to Bloomington's Consciousness Raising Rally for Trayvon Martin in "celebration" of my successful dissertation proposal oral defense. I have always tried to draw a distinct line between my scholarship and whatever activist voice that I have. The events of Trayvon Martin, however, capture a timeless problem of intersectionality to which even standard progressive politics may be blind. The poem I presented, and its precedent, draw from the thesis that the hate-crime of Trayvon Martin bespeaks the fatalizing stigmas at the nexus of race and gender.

NPR on Post-Racial America Some of the themes touched on include, but are not limited to: the social construction of race and racial disparities race, power, and institutions the racialization of opportunity structures in the stimulus packages of the 1930s and the new millenium colorblind ideology language that bridges the color divide Here is a more detailed description of the 20 minute segment: Description President Barack Obama is the country's first African-American president. For some, his victory has ushered in a post racial era in which there is less need for Americans to talk about race. But not everyone agrees. Professor and commentator Boyce Watkins, author Shelby Steele and John Powell, of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, discuss whether a post-racial America really exists. Some Notable Quotes (chosen at my discretion) Shelby Steele : "what it means to me, a post-racial society, is a society where race is no longer ...

Note: On December 10, 2008, The Herald Times published a guest column written by me titled, "Despite transformative moments, racism still common in America." This is a shortened version of the blog I posted online in November under the title of "Transformative Moments: Election 2008 and The Continued Saliency of Race." If you have a subscription to HeraldTimesOnline.com, you can follow the online commentary about the editorial (see link above). I have reproduced the original column at the end of this blog. Over the past week, I have received noticed that bloggers were concerned that I omitted the fact that 95% of blacks voted for Obama when highlighting the following: ...Today, the symbolic meaning of race is changing again: some whites look beyond race (44 percent of whites voted for Obama), some blacks garner... Bloggers felt that the 95% figure was relevant to my discussion of transformative moments and racism. The discussion that ensued has allowed me to hone in...

The willingness to believe in the possibilities of America is the social ideology underlying an Obama win. This is my generation's transformative moment—just as MLK and JFK assassinations were transformative for the generation of the 60s, the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Depression for the generation of the 20s, and the Civil War and the end of slavery for the generation of the 1860s. I take this moment to pay homage to my elders who uprooted their families from various parts of the Caribbean under the banner of this hope, to my father who since becoming an American citizen stood in a line for the first time to cast his vote in 2008, and to the generations of Americans—black, white, and in between—who have given their lives to the possibility my generation would see this moment. My deepest gratitude is owed to you. America has taken a definitive step towards racial equality in politics. The symbolic implications of race are transforming with this election, just as the symbolic ...

Acts of Omission I am typically not one to speak of anything political publicly. However, in the back rooms, I have been privy to a conversation that sympathizes with the highly-publicized fight for gay marriage but finds itself unable to overlook the acts of omission that have come with it. As a person who has lived the predominant part of her adulthood in rural areas as a triple minority, I find several things lacking in the modern gay rights movement that if addressed would assert a more inclusive and progressive agenda. First , I would like someone to take more seriously the prosecution of hate crime statutes that already exist, statutes that have been unable to cease the physical brutality enacted against gay bodies, particularly racialized ones. Second , it would also be nice if someone attended to the spread of AIDS to previously-uninfected communities, an epidemic spread that is exacerbated by the inadequate screening practices of prisons, the patronizing attitudes of scient...