The point, after all, is to change the world.
The death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and the responding protests served as a catalyst for the resurgence of #BlackLivesMatter, a movement working to shift national and local conversations about race, class, gender, and inequality. In this essay, the authors reflect on how academia can answer this call, from their positions as emerging scholars.
Under the leadership of W. E. B. Du Bois, Atlanta became a hub of early American sociology with rigorous empirical studies of black communities. One hundred years later, that history has been pushed to the sidelines.
One of W.E.B. Du Bois’ most powerful ideas was also most discomforting to the establishment: A belief in rigorous scholarship that was also engaged in the project of political transformation. It’s a legacy we ought to reclaim.
Race, the history of sociology, and the marginalized man – lessons from Aldon Morris’ book “The Scholar Denied”