Economic Racism in the American Context
Continuing with the theme of “Economic Racism in Perspective,” we turn in mid-November to the American story of economic discrimination and its persistent effects. Two lectures delivered by BU faculty will focus on the insidious legacy of segregation in American commerce.
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“Obama, Katrina, and the Persistence of Racial Inequality”
Robert A. Margo (BU Department of Economics)
Professor Margo will survey what economic historians know about the evolution of racial (black/white) differences in economic status (income, wealth, education) from the end of the Civil War to the present. He will argue that, while there has been a narrowing of racial differences in the long run—what economists call “convergence”—the extent of convergence is considerably less than that predicted by the standard economic model of the transmission of inequality across generations. In addition, convergence has been episodic—that is, occurring during specific periods of time—rather than continuous, as the standard model predicts. He will argue that the long-run evolution of racial economic differences is better described empirically by a model in which African-Americans constitute a separate economic “nation,” implying an important role for racial segregation and discrimination in the historical narrative.
Robert A. Margo is the former chair of the BU Economics Department and incoming president of the Economic History Association.
November 13, 2014 at 7 pm
Florence and Chafetz Hillel House at Boston University
213 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
617.353.7200
“The Last Store Standing: Commerce as Force, Symbol and Casualty in the Gentrifying American City”
Japonica Brown-Saracino (BU Department of Sociology)
Drawing on her comparative ethnography of four gentrifying places—two Chicago neighborhoods and two small New England towns—Professor Brown-Saracino will explore the role of commerce in gentrifying neighborhoods, many of which, as part and parcel of gentrification, experience dramatic racial and ethnic turnover paralleling economic transformation. She will highlight the complex and situational symbolic position of commerce in these changing places, from efforts to preserve an “authentic” Swedish deli in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood or to save Provincetown’s traditional fishing industry, to the celebration of the opening of new businesses catering to the gentry that signal neighborhood transformation. From the calls of gentrifiers in Chicago’s Argyle for a pancake house that might replace Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants, to an Iranian storeowner’s tears as her shop was displaced just as Chicago invested in a Swedish-themed streetscape outside her shop door, Brown-Saracino will reveal how residents—new and old, wealthy and poor—use talk of local commercial establishments to promote, bemoan, and forestall gentrification and the myriad social, material, cultural, and political changes it advances.
Japonica Brown-Saracino is an Associate Professor in the BU Sociology Department and author of the prize-winning book A Neighborhood That Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for Authenticity (University of Chicago Press, 2009).
November 20, 2014 at 7 pm
Florence and Chafetz Hillel House at Boston University
213 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
617.353.7200
