Race Talk

For many Americans, the view that race shapes social meaning and access to opportunity in the United States received added impetus with the election of the country’s black president.  In the context of a public that disproportionately views substantive "race talk" as irrelevant or necessarily divisive, how do we talk constructively about race? Sessions engaging this theme will report the best research and thinking on such key conceptual elements as implicit bias, frames, symbolic attitudes, values, and persuasion, identifying the implications of that work for communications about race and ethnicity. In so doing, we hope to continue to sow the seeds of a productive and inclusive dialogue in the service of racial justice.
The conference will address the following questions through panels, workshops, plenary sessions, and trainings.

1. How has the advent of the nation’s first African American president complicated or simplified the place that race occupies in the nation’s collective sensibility? In the ways that people talk about race?
2. What implications do emerging research and thinking about implicit bias, frames, symbolic attitudes, values, and persuasion have for our communications about race?
3. What examples do we have of research-based communication strategies, frames, messages, etc., that demonstrably buttressed the progressive movement?
4. How have our current dialogues on race constructed unnatural divisions between potentially allied groups (e.g. African Americans and Somali populations)?
5. What examples are there of movements or efforts that have achieved progress in achieving racial justice through constructive dialogue?
6. How has our nation’s racial dialogue impacted the economic recovery efforts? How does it limit our long-term national potential?