Decolonizing Race: Perspectives from Latin America and beyond

The last event in the framework of the event series "Racism in Academia" was a panel discussion on "Decolonizing Race..."

The panel discussion on "Decolonizing Race: Perspectives from Latin America and beyond" took place on Wednesday, 23 June 2021.

About:

Much of the discussion on race, racism, and anti-racism in Europe and North America relates to theories and practices conceptualized in the USA, a land affected by the legacies of slavery and racism. However, this context generates a particular view of racism that can be complicated by local specificities in other contexts. Latin American intellectuals have challenged "Northern" epistemologies through a decolonial approach: knowledge can be derived from different vantage points and from different traditions. Moreover, in a diverse continent as South America, indigeneity, mestizo identity, and legacies of slavery constitute an assemblage of diverse understandings of race, often contrasting with the US, but also in dialogue with the latter. Are North American perspectives of race hegemonic? How can we understand race and racism if we change the vantage point and look from the South? (How) can that help debates in Europe? Join us at this discussion about race and racism from a decolonial perspective, featuring thinkers from Latin America and beyond.

Panellists:

- Graziella Moraes Silva (Associate Professor in Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland):
"After Mestizaje? Old and new dilemmas of antiracism in Latin America"

- Sérgio Costa (Professor for Sociology of Latin America at Freie Universität Berlin and Co-Director of the M. S. Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America [mecila.net]):
"From race to inequality regimes: Racism in Latin America"

- Mariana Morena Pereira (tbc):
" Black identity and anti-racism in Brazil"

- Jonathan W. Warren (ethnographer, heterodox sociologist, and digital story-maker who has spent the past thirty years researching race matters in Brazil, the US, Vietnam and Germany):
"Key insights from race studies in Latin America"

Moderation: Gruia Badescu (Research Fellow / Dept. of History and Sociology)