Stand Up! The New Politics of Racial Uplift: A Public Philosophy Symposium May 2, 2008

Purpose of Symposium
The Millions More Movement, Cosby's 'call-outs,' and other recent trends renew an old approach to black political thought and practice. The racial uplift tradition tries to improve the conditions of black life by insisting on moral refinement and race-based organization. Uplift ideology and practice have a long and storied past, but critics of the tradition worry over its limitations. Some express concern that it is anti-democratic, intolerant, elitist, sexist, and heterosexist. Others think it focuses too much on personal morality and cultural pathology and not enough on social justice and political economy.

The participants in the 'Stand Up!' symposium will think through the risks and rewards of this new racial uplift politics. This interdisciplinary exercise in public philosophy will explore the implications of a social phenomenon with broad ethical significance. The new politics of racial uplift emerges from a widely shared conviction that something is deeply wrong in American society. Our public philosophy conference will take this judgment seriously, and subject this politics to searching and critical scrutiny.

The symposium is free and open to the public.

Confirmed Participants:

Angela D. Dillard is a Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan and author of books exploring conservativism, religion, and political radicalism including Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Now?: Multicultural Conservatism in America and Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit.

Kenyon Farrow is an essayist, organizer, and media and communications specialist. He is the co-editor of the popular anthology Letters from Young Activists and the forthcoming book A New Queer Agenda as well as the board co-chair for Queers for Economic Justice.

Kevin Gaines is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of books examining race and gender politics in post-World War II America and global dimensions of U.S. struggles over the meaning of citizenship including American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era and Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century.

Kathryn T. Gines is an Assistant Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies and Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Her research and publications emphasize questions of identity and authenticity, freedom/oppression/resistance, and language and meaning. She is currently writing a book about 19th century philosophies of race and gender and another on women and hip hop.

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. is a Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University and a Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Project. He has written several books about American pragmatism and African American religious history and its place in American public life including Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America, Is it Nation Time? Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism, and In a Shade of Blue:Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall is the founding director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center and the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies at Spelman College. She is the author and (co)editor of several books examining Black women’s lives and activism including Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought, Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality and Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women’s Equality in African American Communities. She is also the founding co-editor of Sage: A Scholarly Journal of Black Women

Joy James is a Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Williams College. She has authored and edited books focusing on political and feminist theory, critical race theory, and incarceration including Warfare in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy, Resisting State Violence: Gender, Race, and Radicalism in US Culture, Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals, and the forthcoming Memory, Shame and Rage: The Central Park Case, 1989-2002.

Adolph Reed is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of several books about African American politics including Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era, The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics and W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line.

Jared Sexton is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of several articles exploring Black cultural studies, race & sexuality, coalition politics, and film & media as well the forthcoming book Amalgamation Schemes: Anti-blackness and the Critique of Multiracialism.

Aishah Shahidah Simmons is an award-winning African-American feminist lesbian documentary filmmaker, international lecturer, writer, and activist. She is the producer, writer and director of the internationally acclaimed documentary NO!, which explores the international reality of rape and other forms of sexual assault through the first person testimonies, scholarship, spirituality, activism and cultural work of African-Americans. NO! also explores how rape is used as a weapon of homophobia. Through a major grant received from the Ford Foundation, Ms. Simmons coordinated the French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitling of NO!; produced and directed the two-hour Breaking Silences: A Supplemental Video to NO!, and she was the creative and editorial director of Unveiling the Silence: NO! The Rape Documentary Study Guide.

Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr. is a Professor and Faculty Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard University Law School and a Founding Fellow of the Jamestown Project. He has worked both as a staff attorney for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and as a private practice attorney.

Paul C. Taylor is a Professor of Philosophy at Temple University and a founding member and Senior Fellow of the Jamestown Project. Dr. Taylor has numerous publications in the areas of aesthetics, race theory, and social philosophy, including his first book, Race: A Philosophical Introduction. He is currently working on a manuscript about Black aesthetics.

Official Website: http://www.temple.edu/philosophy/standup/