Voice of Consciousness

“If I didn't  define myself  for  myself , I  would  be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.” -- Audre Lorde Tamika Mallory's speech provides an important lesson and warning about letting other people define what the nationwide #GeorgeFloyd protests means for us and why you should not allow people to write our story of our actions. See my full transcription of the speech below. View this post on Instagram A post shared by matthewacherry (@matthewacherry) on May 29, 2020 at 3:13pm PDT My transcription of Tamika Mallory's Speech on Nationwide #GeorgeFloyd Protests This is a coordinated activity happening across this nation,  And so we  are in  a state of emergency. Black people are dying,  in a state of emergency. We cannot look at this  as an isolated incident. The reason why buildings are burning are n...

People will try to rewrite Atlanta's protest history. When they do so, remember this. This is where it began.   The is Atlanta right now. Worth a million words. #GeorgeFloydprotest pic.twitter.com/O8S5X0nvAD — Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) May 29, 2020

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.

This blog is a call to attention and solidarity. Has anyone considered boycotting the Chronicle of Higher Education? The Chronicle is feeding off of the sensationalizing effects of racially-tinged arguments. Their response is opportunistic and irresponsible. I reject the invitation to have a positivistic debate about the validity of Black Studies. The grounds for this position are multiple, including the hollow grounds of Schaefer Riley's original position, the dismissive nature of Schaefer Riley's reply, and the noncommittal response of the editorial staff of the Chronicle of Higher Education. There is bias present against the existence of Black Studies, and fields like it. The bias is institutionalized through blogs like Schaefer Riley's and through the deployment of positivistic arguments about debate used by the Chronicle's editorial staff. Given that the Chronicle is benefitting from our concern in terms of web traffic, I wonder whether the best response is no...

A response to how sociologists "deal" with race launched a heated exchange on Scatterplot at the end of February regarding attributions of racism. I was disappointed at the defensiveness present in the Scatterplot response to the “trauma” post and at the dismissiveness present in their response to the NY Post picture overall (not to say that all bloggers were defensive or dismissive, respectively, at one or all issues presented). In response to a healthy discussion already in place at Scatterplot , Skinny Malinky 's original "trauma" post states: I mean to pause and remember the force of the accumulated and collective traumas of racism, and to think about what sort of failure it is for sociology to refuse a consideration of that force, and to what new traumas that failure contributes. As a POC who grew up in the Deep South ( not to say this identity is definitively linked to the subsequent clause, but to provide sociological context to me saying that: Upon se...