The New Racial Studies Praxis Project (NRSPP) is student-based interdisciplinary initiative designed to explore issues of race, expand the existing body of race theory, and connect knowledge to practice. Our goals are to promote critical dialogues on racial issues, to create alliances among scholars and activists, and to contribute to meaningful, on-going efforts for social justice. NRSPP works to make conscious and understand the continuity and connection between past and present forms of racism and antiracism; we also seek to gain insight into the ways in which future race consciousness can both harm and heal.
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
We acknowledge those people -- famous and unknown -- who have paved the way for social justice and racial equality through scholarship and action: we stand on the shoulders of such scholar-activists as W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, Américo Paredes, Ernesto Galarza, Anna Julia Cooper, Vine Deloria, and Tamotsu Shibutani, among many others. We are very mindful of the fact that previous struggles and sacrifices make our work possible. Rather than making light of this history, we are seek to connect our current work with that of our predecessors. Looking forward, we are searching for ways to acknowledge race as a social construction, deal with the impact of race as a social reality, and work toward the elimination of racism and interlocking systems of oppression.
THEORY AND PRACTICE
Serious scholarship requires action. Rather than abstracted disembodied theory or ideas, our commitment to praxis assumes that we cannot make change with ideas alone. Thus, we seek concrete ways to bridge our scholarship with anti-racist action.
CREATING DIALOGUES
For many of us, thinking and talking about race and racism is not easy or comfortable. Despite this challenge, we believe that it is vital for us to engage in these difficult dialogues if we are to bring about positive social change. The NRSPP is committed to prompting and promoting discussions on issues of race and racism and creating safe spaces for challenging and growing perspectives on race.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
As a collective of graduate students from a wide range of disciplines, we seek to create and foster partnerships with the ongoing work of community organizations, scholarly networks, and social justice movements. These include (but are not limited to) the following: on-campus organizations, labor unions, religious organizations, anti-racism collectives, local schools, school districts, colleges, and social justice organizations.
WHAT WE'RE UP TO
Here are a few projects we have worked on:
- Partnering with the IN/JUSTICE collective and other campus groups to mount several antiracist film series.
- Working at and with the MultiCultural Center on a variety of race- and racism-oriented programs.
- Working with the Center for New Racial Studies on a series of symposia. During recent academic years we took part in the following discussions:
1. "Dimensions of Immigration: Race, Labor, Global Migration, and Political Conflict in Southern California" Symposium -- Jan. 19-20, 2006.
2. "Race, Crime, and Citizenship" Symposium -- May 18-19, 2006.
3. "Critical Race Theory and Practice Symposium -- April 19-20, 2007.
We were involved with the 2006-2007 "Critical Issues in America" Series on "Torture and the Future: Perspectives from the Humanities."
We sponsored a program on "ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible" (Nov. 9, 2006).
Members of our group worked on preparing a Teaching Guide for the Reality TV Series BLACK.WHITE. That teaching guide is now featured on the DVD collection of that program that is both sold commercially and donated to high schools around the country.
IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE
We'd like to plan a symposium on "Race and Higher Education."
We are interested in the future of ethnic studies programs as a national resource for communities of color and the nation as a whole. Enhancing and expanding ethnic studies at UCSB is a priority for us. We're thinking about career paths for both graduates and undergraduates working in racial/ethnic studies: specifically, social justice-oriented career paths.
We have ongoing interests in a wide variety of subjects: immigrants' rights; labor rights (especially in the informal sector, e.g., construction, domestic labor, etc.); crime and social justice more broadly challenging the prison-industrical complex, youth and crime (and more broadly challenging the "color-blind" model of race relations today). We have interests in race and racism as global phenomena, not only as United States issues; some of us work in localities outside the US.
We see graduate student research as an important and under-recognized resource, especially for community groups. One of our goals is to connect our research to concrete community projects and activities.
TO GET INVOLVED:
Contact Michelle Samura
msamura@education.ucsb.eduTHANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST AND SOLIDARITY!