Race & Response: Katrina Projects Involve Faculty, Students, and Community

Center for Black Studies Provides
Opportunities for Theory & Action

The government response, or lack of response, to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita has left many residents of New Orleans and surrounding communities without homes, electricity, clean water, or access to basic services. Communities of color have been disproportionately impacted, raising questions of institutional racism. Some people see lethal incompetence; some see an agenda of ethnic cleansing.

On October 19, 2005, the Center for Black Studies Research and the Department of Black Studies hosted an interdisciplinary panel to discuss these issues. The spirited panel was moderated by Carl Gutiérrez-Jones, Director of the Center for Chicano Studies, and featuring Santa Barbara Mayor Marty Blum, William Freudenburg (Environmental Studies), Gaye Theresa Johnson (Black Studies), George Lipsitz (Black Studies) and Howard Winant (Sociology). The event was filmed and broadcast nationally on UCTV.

The event opened with a slide presentation by Nathan Bassiouni, a student at Tulane University who spent Fall Quarter as a student in the Black Studies Department and an intern at the Center for Black Studies Research. Nathan took his own boat into flooded areas to rescue people stranded by the storm. His narrative set the tone for the event. His photos, several of which were sold to the Associated Press, including the one used on the Race & Response postcard (above).

Grassroots Action

The Center also helped support the Associated Students Katrina Relief Group. The group spent winter break gutting houses, staffing an emergency food distribution center, and supporting the communities ravaged by the storms. These students gave “a report back” to the UCSB community, sharing images and impressions of what they had seen. During Report Back, held on February 28 in Corwin Pavilion, students expressed their intention to continue their involvement, noting how much work remained to be done and the virtual collapse of support systems. Even before they had left New Orleans, many of the students were planning the return trip during spring break.

As part of the spring break trip, which included about twenty UCSB students, the Center for Black Studies Research supported a staff member, Chryss Yost, and student, Candace Mandujano, who worked with Project H.O.P.E., an extension of Common Ground Relief. Volunteers at Project H.O.P.E. worked in the Violet, a community in St. Bernard Parish about eight miles south of New Orleans. While in Violet, students distributed food and clothing, cleared debris, and gutted houses, many of which had been completely submerged during the flooding.

MultiEthnic Alliances:
A Conversation for the 21st Century

Black Studies brings together ethnic studies scholars
within and beyond UCSB for two-day discussion

May 12-13, 2006, the Center for Black Studies Research and the Department of Black Studies hosted a two-day symposium to discuss the future of ethnic studies on the 21st century university campus. The event was co-hosted by Asian American Studies, the Department of Chicana/o Studies, and the Center for Chicano Studies.

The MultiEthnic Alliances symposium brought together and enthusiastic group of professors and scholars from various ethnic studies programs to focus on new scholarly paradigms which acknowledge the inextricability of ethnicity from issues of (im)migration, class, health, education, and gender studies. The event was designed so participants would have the opportunity to present new research and experiences during a series of panel discussions, and then to encourage the exchange of ideas by creating ample opportunities for response and conversation.

Symposium speakers included, from UCSB, Dean Melvin Oliver, Gerardo Aldana, Edwina Barvosa-Carter, LeGrace Benson, Grace Chang, Reginald Daniel, Douglas H. Daniels, Anna Everett, Diane Fujino, Maria Herrera-Sobek, Guisela Latorre, James Lee, Nelson Lichtenstein, George Lipsitz, Claudine Michel, Mireille Miller-Young, John Park, Chela Sandoval, Kaia Stern, Roberto Strongman, Howard Winant, Clyde Woods, and Xiaojian Zhao. Speakers from outside UCSB included Lisa Cacho (U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Nadège Clitandre (UC Berkeley), Rosa Linda Fregoso (UC Santa Cruz), Nelson Maldonado-Torres (UC Berkeley), Elizabeth McAlister (Wesleyan University), Viet Nguyen (USC), Laura Perez (UC Berkeley), Tricia Rose (UC Santa Cruz), Lucia Suarez (University of Michigan), Ula Taylor (UC Berkeley), João H. Costa Vargas (U. Texas at Austin), and Raul Villa (Occidental College).

On Sunday, Professor George Lipsitz coordinated a graduate student panel during which emerging scholars of ethnic studies were able to present their research. Students included Felice Blake-Kleiven (UC Santa Cruz), Ricardo Guthrie (UC San Diego), Heidi Hoechst (UC San Diego), Paula Ioanide (UC Santa Cruz), Johari Jabir (UC Santa Barbara), Esther Lezra (UC Santa Cruz), Rashad Shabazz (UC Santa Cruz), and Victor Viesca (CSU Los Angeles).

Toni Cade Bambara has written: “One’s got to see what the factory worker sees, what the prisoner sees, what the welfare children see, what the scholar sees, got to see what the ruling class mythmakers see as well, in order to tell the truth and not get trapped.” Our opportunity is to represent and document these multiple—frequently overlapping and conflicting—perspectives. As the communities we represent experience complex ethnic and cultural reshifting, growing struggles for recognition and social justice, and challenges to established identities, our role as scholars must reflect new responsibilities and levels of engagement. Ethnic studies scholars have made a commitment to serve as a bridge between these historically marginalized communities.

The event offered new opportunities for interdisciplinary, intercampus collaborations. All the panels and discussions during this free event were open to the public. The event was filmed for distribution to UCTV.

Outcome of the Conference: Introducing a New Journal

A major goal of the symposium was to encourage ethnic studies scholars to present papers which might be included in a new journal being published at the Center for Black Studies Research. George Lipsitz will be Senior Editor of the new Journal of Comparative & Relational Ethnic Studies. He will be working with a multidisciplinary editorial advisory board. The forthcoming journal reflects UCSB’s commitment to new research in the field of ethnic studies. For more information on the forthcoming journal, explore the Center’s Web site.

KOSANBA Colloquium
Scholarly Association on Vodou

The Congress of Santa Barbara (KOSANBA) is a scholarly association for the study of Haitian vodou housed at the Center for Black Studies Research. KOSANBA’s seventh international colloquium, “La Fanmi-a sanble/Family Resemblances,” focused on the relationship between Haitian Vodou and African-derived religions. The colloquium was held March 31-April 1, 2006, in Detroit, Michigan at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

New Racial Studies Project Events

Understanding the Crisis, Finding Pathways to Freedom
Symposium Imagines the Abolition of the Imprisonment System

In May, the New Racial Studies Project brought together scholars, students, activists, and grassroots organizers, including formerly incarcerated persons, to reassert the importance of democracy, equality, and human rights in the organization and operation of the US criminal justice system.

Over the course of the twentieth century, locking people up has become a “default” solution to a variety of social problems: particularly the lack of social justice and opportunity and the inveterate inequality of American society. For some Americans, the experience of being “locked up” has become a “normal” part of the life course while others are seeing their contacts with the criminal “justice” system increase in frequency and duration.

Higher Education in Prisons

At a symposium brown bag, Kaia Stern of the Department for Black Studies presented “Voices from Sing Sing: A Case Study of Higher Education in Prison.” Her research explores experiences of formerly incarcerated men who completed the Masters in Professional Studies (MPS) Program at Sing Sing prison in New York.

In the context of the contemporary U.S. prison system, which struggles with recidivism rates of nearly 70%, Stern’s in-depth case study explores the pedagogy and human experiences in the MPS models. The results of her research suggest that higher education programs are the single most effective tool for lowering recidivism, increasing institutional safety and improving public safety.