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Perceptions of Blackness: Color, Constraints, and Confinement
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Speaker: Dr. Kathryn Waddell Takara, University of Hawaii, USA
Venue: Room 115, SEIS Building, BFSU
Time: 3:10 – 5:00 pm, June 1 (Thursday), 2017
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About the Lecture
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The aim of this lecture is to explore the perceptions of blackness and the constraints of the international politics of color. It will include a discussion of the conditions of ignoring, devaluing, or omission of black history, the meaning and growth of racism, the appropriation and significance of “civilization”, history, privilege of whiteness, and the devaluation of non-white history in the West. The constructs of democracy, colonialism, imperialism, institutional racism, and white supremacy and the consequences of the practices of discrimination, segregation, and stereotypes including resistance will be analyzed in relation to my personal experiences as a Black female growing up in the Jim Crow (segregation) south in a climate of racism, violence, and exclusion, and my subsequent education and opportunities in the East Coast, France, Africa, and West Coast, as well as my 50 year life experiences as a resident of Hawaii (the alleged racial paradise in America). A discussion of modes of control of non-whites including the media, dehumanization, demonization, the lack of decent jobs, housing, educational opportunities, the omission of contributions from history, and incarceration will be included. The lecture will offer some hopeful solutions for healing racism, changing stereotypes, and repairing the psychological effects of labeling and inferiority/superiority complexes, including restitution, changing attitudes, and an alchemy of race and rights.
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About the Speaker
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Born and raised in Tuskegee, Alabama, a child of Jim Crow, Kathryn Waddell Takara is a retired Associate Professor from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she developed and taught courses in African American and African politics, history, literature, and culture for thirty-one years and organized national and local conferences on African American issues, culture, politics, and the Diaspora. She has also taught French. Takara earned her PhD in Political Science and an MA in French. A writer, poet, and public scholar, Takara particularly enjoys her family and friends, pets, meditation, qigong and taiji, travel, books, gardening, raising orchids, and interior design. Dr. Takara has publishedTimmy Turtle Teaches, a colorful children’s travel book. Her other publications include four books of poetry: from Ishmael Reed PressNew and Collected Poems, and from Pacific Raven PressPacific Raven: Hawaii Poems, Tourmalines: Beyond the Ebony Portal,Love’s Seasons: Generations Genetics MythsandZimbabwe Spin: Politics and Poetics. She has published a collection of oral histories with African Americans in Hawaii, as well as numerous poems and scholarly articles. In 2017, She published her 8th book,Shadow Dancing, Selling Survival in China. She was honored in 2016 by the NAACP for a Lifetime Achievement Award in Education and African American history and culture in Hawaii.
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All interested parties are welcome!
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