Research Agenda
I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania broadly interested in racial capitalism and how systems of power are created and maintained. I primarily explore how racial, economic, gender, and sexual hierarchies among others are (re)produced institutionally and organizationally (e.g., in legal and educational systems).
My intellectual approach is historical, rooted in Black Studies and black traditions, and attentive to 1) the histories, afterlives, and present manifestations of slavery and colonialism and 2) how systems of domination affect the well-being of systematically dominated people. As my work largely focuses on how systems of domination impact black and indigenous people, I am particularly committed to imagining and promoting a society in which black and indigenous people are cared for, protected, and supported outside of punitive, carceral, reform-based, and assimilative frameworks.
My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Social Science Research Council.
“Students in ABC (A Better Chance) Program.” Photograph. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College, 1967. Dartmouth College Photographic Records, Rauner Special Collections Library.
“Irene Mathurin, Cheryl Morris, and Carolyn Alston, students in the ABC (A Better Chance) program, returning to Prospect Hall dormitory after a morning of classes.” Photograph. South Hadley, MA: Mount Holyoke College, 1965. Mount Holyoke College Collections.
Dissertation
My dissertation focuses on the A Better Chance organization’s (ABC) assimilative process of racial integration in order to illuminate processes of racial capitalism. ABC was founded in Andover, Massachusetts in 1963 to select and train nonwhite children (primarily black and indigenous children) to racially integrate white public and private schools in the US. After first being piloted in the Northeast region of the US in the early and mid-1960s, ABC spread across the country. Leaders of elite white educational institutions including John Sloan Dickey (President of Dartmouth College, 1945-1970) and John Kemper (Headmaster of Phillips Academy, 1948-1971) created ABC in response to President John F. Kennedy’s call for the racial integration of Northeastern educational institutions in 1962. By the early 60s, unlike Southern school districts, many Northern school districts had not been mandated by the courts to desegregate. ABC’s organizational structure gave these educational leaders power over the process of racial integration: they controlled which and how many nonwhite children would integrate white public and private schools, selected and trained nonwhite children for integration, and created a system in which white educational institutions and white people in segregated Northern towns could profit from racial integration.
Based on ethnographic and archival research, my dissertation explores: 1) how nonwhite children have been selected and trained to integrate white schools from the 1960s to the present, 2) the historical and sociopolitical contexts in which ABC has emerged and flourished, and 3) the economic and sociopolitical interests ABC has served. I am conceptually interested in how the history of the ABC organization can help us to better understand the current political moment that putatively prizes “diversity” and how examining ABC’s assimilative processes of racial integration can illuminate processes of racial capitalism.