Each fall, faculty are contacted by prospective doctoral students who are interested in furthering their education, acquiring more credentials, becoming researchers, and sometimes looking for another way of being an educator. When students call or email expressing interest, we faculty respond back, often invite them for a visit to campus, and at least where…

I’ve been rereading Sylvia Wynter’s epic piece, Unsettling the coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom, and it has me unsettled and unsettling the ways in which Marxist/capitalist-based understandings of societal inequity must interface with racialized stratification. One of Wynter’s deeply intricate and historically supported points is that far more impactful than labor and economic structure is the fundamental…

I’ve had some interesting conversations about my recent post on the trouble with being ‘in solidarity.’ This brief speech by Fred Moten at the 2009 American Studies Association meeting provides further thought on the discursive move and limitations of signing off ‘in solidarity.’

I had some interactions on social media about the recent surge in word count differences in low SES and high SES children and how this is problematically connected to universal pre-school. The problem is not that pre-school itself is undesirable; the problem is these policy implications are premised on assimilationist and deficit-based views of low…

Activist spaces are relatively new to me. I was raised in a home where meritocracy, individualism, and competition were more doctrine than questioned discourses. As an adult, I have situated my immigrant homespace in both my heart and schooled-up sociology mind, and I have also found chosen home spaces amongst many activists, scholarly and community-based.…

“So what is your real name?”   I get this a lot.  I understand; it’s confusing. Patel? Stevens? Lisa? Leigh? For me, my names reflect/contain much of my life trajectory and history, so I’m not so fond of relinquishing or shortening them just to make it easier for people used to one first and one…

After I shared an idea for revamping/redesigning how research courses are taught with a co-worker, this exchange ensued: Co-worker: That’s smart. Me: Yeah, thanks; I’ve been thinking about it for awhile. Co-worker: No, that’s really smart. Me: Yes, I know. Co-worker: [after a pause] That’s really a great idea. Can I steal it? Me: Um……

It is no news to anyone that the United States is becoming a place where whites are no longer the numerical majority of the population. California has been what is called a “majority-minority” state since 2000. What this seemingly nonsensical phrase means is that racial minorities are now the majority of the state’s population, and…

I write this still reeling from the Zimmerman verdict that verified, again, that the infrastructure of this nation is one built to support and maintain white supremacy. My social media feeds are flooded by the posts of pain, anger, and resentment that people of color are feeling as they are reminded of the core truths…