Nerve Endings Firing Away

One of the upsides of attending a prominent university in the United States is the chance to attend talks and lectures by notable academicians. Yesterday I attended a talk by the eminent sociologist William Julius Wilson who works primarily in the field of race and ethnic relations in the American urbanscape. His most recent book,There Goes the Neighborhood highlights the inherent differences and changes over three decades in four Chicago neighborhoods. He was on campus as a part of the Distinguished Lecture Series at the Bush Library. Apart from hearing him speak, I had particular interest since his talk was in the subject area of my current research.

A little more on Dr. Wilson for those who might not have heard of him. Currently, the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, he holds 41 honorary degrees including honorary doctorates from Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands (Whew! And I am struggling to complete one). A MacArthur ‘genius’ from 1987 to 1992, he also was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Philosophical Society, the Institute of Medicine, and the British Academy [source].He received the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor one can get in the United States. So, he is indeed an institution by himself and one of the most prominent academics in the country today.

His talk focused on his findings that he documents in his latest book. He studied the four carefully selected neighborhoods that were each distinct in their demographic profiles to understand the social and urban fabric of the community. Highly qualitative, Dr. Wilson and his team spent nearly 3 years within the community to get a better picture. Although his presentation style was not suited to my taste (he read out his presentation entirely), the Q&A session was insightful. As you know, America is on the threshold of a dramatic demographic shift. After reaching 300 million, the population trends are shifting drastically in favor of the Hispanics as blacks are no longer the only minorities. However, in spite of their different minority status, black continue to be disadvantaged and most of this is attributed to lack of opportunities, deprivation of access, and still-persistent racial discrimination.

Dr. Wilson suggested finding commonalities among different races and ethnicities and creating networks of interdependence. He gave the examples of big cities where high land prices do not allow you to be prejudicial and everyone just seems to live in harmony. Coalition building through effective leadership from the community leaders and activists also plays an important part. Upon asked about his childhood, he expressed surprised that he landed up at Harvard. He counted the strikes against him that would not have made this possible. He was the son of a poor coal miner. His parents were educated only till the 10th grade. He lived in rural Pennsylvania and his dad died at age 12 leaving his mother to care for 6 children. One interesting anecdote he shared was about his mother who had gathered her friends to watch her son on TV on a talk show. In the show, he said his parents were relatively uneducated. After the show, he got a call from his mother scolding him for embarrassing her and she added, that she wasn’t one of those people he writes about.

He commended President Gates who is in the news in recent times for promoting diversity on the A&M campus and he admitted that he was pleasantly surprised to see a healthy representation of the minority community on campus in spite of what he had heard before. He asked A&M to “hold on to the president” or at least get him back after 2 year to continue what he started. In spite of Dr. Wilson’s seal of approval, I don’t think A&M is yet that racial or ethnically integrated but that is a topic for a separate post especially in light of the racial video on YouTube about A&M that created waves.

I haven’t dwelt much on the content of Dr. Wilson’s talk because it is simply too vast and complex to cover in a measly blog post and of course, I hope you get the book to get a clearer picture on race and ethnic conflicts in the United States.