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Galloway, N.J. – Faculty members from the Africana Studies, Education and Political Science programs hosted a panel discussion centering on the idea of race and racism in the Campus Center Theatre on Feb. 16.

The panel discussion, “Why Race Still Matters,” was moderated by Patricia Reid-Merritt, distinguished professor of Social Work and Africana Studies. After introducing the panelists, Reid-Merritt gave a historical perspective on how race and racism developed over time and continue to “shape our experience here in (the United States of) America.”

“Race is embedded in the fabric of American culture,” Reid-Merritt said. “And for those, even today, who are raising questions about why we’re still talking about race, it’s because we cannot not talk about race. It is one of those things that determine the quality of your life, where you might be located and the positions or statuses of your life.”

Discussions like this are routine for Reid-Merritt, who proclaims herself as a “child of the Civil Rights Movement.” It’s her hope that, by continuing these conversations in R1 and R2 courses, ������ students will walk away with invaluable knowledge of social justice.

The panelists all had varying perspectives surrounding conversations on race, which made for a well-rounded discussion.

Media Perspective – Donnetrice Allison, chair of Africana Studies and professor of Communication Studies

From Allison’s media perspective, she asserts that media is a tool of socialization; in other words, the ideas and attitudes one possesses about racial identity come from multiple sources, including what one reads or watches.

“Race isn’t biologically a real thing; there are all kinds of DNA testing that has determined that we’re more alike under the skin than we are different,” Allison said. “However, we’ve been socialized into believing certain things about race for centuries – like the 16^th and 17^th centuries – that’s how long we’ve been taught to believe that white is better than Black. Even if that’s not a real biological category, it is a category that we’ve been convinced means something.”

She provided two different examples of this: the book “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which is widely believed to have been what helped launch the American Civil War from its portrayal of an enslaved, yet devoutly Christian, man, whose faith made him forgive his captors; and the movie “Birth of a Nation,” which is lauded for its advanced film techniques but centers on white southerners who are “rescued” from violent Black men (white actors in Blackface) by the Ku Klux Klan.

Allison encouraged students to interrogate the information they receive, especially since the socialization process she described is cyclical. For example, coded language for the Black community evolved from words like “urban” to “woke.”