Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Afro-Latin Americans Living In Spain And Social Death: Moving From The Empirical To The Ontological, Ethan Johnson, Joy González-Güeto, Vanessa Cadena

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper has three objectives. First, we establish that although Spain has attempted to distance itself from its role in the sub-saharan African slave trade and the significance blackness plays within its borders, there exists a significant population of people of African descent from Latin America living in Spain. Second, we show Black people are living what Sadiyah Hartmann refers to as the afterlife of slavery in Latin America. We claim it is worthwhile to take into account that Afro-Latin Americans are fleeing to the country that is largely responsible for them being in Latin America and the conditions of …

On The Ordinariness Of Murdering The Black Psyque And Flesh: Antiblackness In Educational Policy And Practice In Brazil, Colombia And Ecuador, Éllen Daiane Cintra, Mauri Balanta Jaramillo, Ethan Johnson

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper seeks to understand how anti-blackness has manifested in Brazilian, Colombian and Ecuadorian education based on analyzes of the education of ethnic-racial relations in these three countries. We start from the recognition of dynamics of violence that position Black people as socially dead (PATTERSON, 1982) in the afterlife of slavery (HARTMAN, 2007). Next, we analyze aspects of education and legal apparatus regarding ethnic-racial relations within education. We conclude that the lens of antiblackness (SHARPE, 2016; WILDERSON, 2010; VARGAS, 2020) in education advances analysis of the antagonistic and paradigmatic relationship that positions Black people as a problem and uneducable (DUMAS, …

Love Letters For Liberatory Futures, Jessica Rodriguez-Jenkins, Roberta Hunte, Lakindra Mitchell Dove, Antonia R.G. Alvarez, Alma M. O. Trinidad, Gita Mehrotra

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

This collection of letters serves to explore the narratives of a collective of women of color in academia by examining individual, collective, spiritual, and institutional strategies for surviving and transforming our institutional spaces and the ways that White Supremacy has shaped our journeys. Multiple perspectives are viewed, and we have written to our children, our future social work students, our future selves, our BIPOC faculty siblings, and our feared enemies to envision and embody more liberatory futures.

Keywords: liberation, academia, BIPOC faculty, institutional racism, White Supremacy

“Why You Always So Political?”: A Counterstory About Educational-Environmental Racism At A Predominantly White University, Martín Alberto Gonzalez

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Using critical race counterstorytelling, I tell a story about the experiences of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) undergraduate students at private, historically and predominantly white university in the Northeast. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, document analyses, and literature on race and space and racism in higher education, I argue that the racially hostile campus environment experienced by MMAX students at their respective university manifests itself as a form of educational-environmental racism. Through narrated dialogue, Aurora (a composite character) and I delve into a critical conversation about how educational-environmental racism is experienced by MMAX students through a racialized landscape in the …

How Latino Anti-Blackness Upholds Racism In The United States: A Counterstory Book Review Of Tanya Katerí Hernández’S Racial Innocence, Martín Alberto Gonzalez

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this piece, the author uses counterstorytelling as a research method to write a book review of Tanya Katerí Hernández’s recently published book, Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality. Specifically, in this counterstory, the author created two composite characters, Alberto and his mother, Lola, made up of arguments from the book to engage in a real and critical dialogue about the anti-Blackness amongst Latinos in the United States. Drawing on Hernández’s argument that Latino anti-Blackness upholds racism, the author uses this counterstory to illustrate the various ways Latinos enact anti-Black ideologies and practices to …

Educational Myths Of An American Empire: Colonial Narratives And The Meriam Report, Madhu Narayanan

Educational Leadership and Policy Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Meriam Report is a remarkable historical artifact of the United States' colonial project. The idea of a stronger nation through education embodied in the report betrays the report's imperial core. The report's authors express moral outrage at the failure of the United States to respect the human dignity of Native Americans. To absolve these failures, the report repeatedly looks to education as the way forward. My interest is in the discursive construction of that argument, specifically how new discourses of progress, scientific management, and modern administrative principles were used to justify expansion of the federal government and solidify the …

The Power Of Counterstory With Martín Alberto Gonzalez, Martín Alberto Gonzalez

PDXPLORES Podcast

In this episode of PDXPLORES, Chicano & Latino Studies Professor Martín Alberto Gonzalez discusses the counterstory. As Gonzalez explains, counterstories are a narrative form of scholarly communication that uses stories to disrupt oppressive narratives established by empowered groups. Counterstory does so by pointing to the roles that systems of oppression, like white supremacy, racism, sexism, and capitalism, play in society, and higher education, in particular, by providing alternative narratives.

Click on the "Download" button to access the audio transcript.

The Future And Thriving Of Bipoc Communities: A Time To Act Macroconvening, Global Diversity & Inclusion, Portland State University

Global Diversity and Inclusion Publications and Presentations

This is the overview of the "Time to Act Macroconvening," an event bringing together the BIPOC community on November 4, 2022. The macroconvening was shaped by five affinity-based convenings that were held from June to November 2022. Each engagement was unique, but centered around discussions of the future of thriving and joy of BIPOC communities in and around Portland, and what role PSU has in bringing this future to bear.

Main downloadable file:
Affinity Convenings Thematic Overview

Additional files:

• Event graphic
• Overview article by Christina Rojas, "PSU Brings Together BIPOC Community Groups to Envision a Thriving Future."
• Pictorial Summary of …

Native Leaders Round Table, Institute For Tribal Government, Portland State University, Global Diversity & Inclusion, Portland State University, Serina Fast Horse, Direlle Calica

Global Diversity and Inclusion Publications and Presentations

This event was a Zoom meeting, a "pre-summit" to start conversations that will take place at the first Native Summit set for Spring 2023. The main file is the event description, and the supplemental files include 5 pictorial summaries of the output.

Long overdue, Portland State University is on a journey to becoming an Indigenous affirming institution, a place with authentic relationships and partnerships with the nations/tribes in our area and a place that invites and, is supportive of, Native students who graduate at equitable rates, equipped to advance their communities and the world.

Part of the Tribal relations work …

Convening For A Prosperous Future: Middle East North African South Asian (Menasa) Convening, Global Diversity & Inclusion, Portland State University, Middle East, North Africa, South Asia (Menasa), Portland State University

Global Diversity and Inclusion Publications and Presentations

PSU is proactively leaning into its future as a majority-BIPOC student institution and is dedicated to coming alongside BIPOC communities, critical partners, actors, and agents to act in the present to ensure a prosperous future.

We recognize that opportunities and challenges for BIPOC communities require collective, rather than singular, action. In that spirit, we invite you to save the date and join Portland State University's Global Diversity and Inclusion Division on Sunday October 23rd between 11am-2pm for a convening luncheon contemplating present challenges and imagining a prosperous future for our Middle East North African South Asian (MENASA) Community.

This social …

Convening For A Thriving Future: Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, Asian, And Asian American Community, Stephen Percy, Ame Lambert, Lindsay Romasanta, Patrick Villaflores, Christian Aniciete, Marchel Marcos, Allie Yee, Alyshia Macaysa, Aileen Duldulao, Sokho Eath, Roxanna Bautista, Global Diversity And Inclusion, Portland State University

Global Diversity and Inclusion Publications and Presentations

On October 1, 2022, Portland State University (PSU) held the Convening for a Thriving Future for Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, Asian, and Asian American (PIAA) Communities at the university’s Native American Student Community Center (NASCC). This event was part of a series of BIPOC-centered and -led community convenings by PSU’s Global Diversity & Inclusion as one of our action items in the Time to Act Plan for Equity & Racial Justice.

PSU contracted with Roxanna Bautista of Rise Up Solutions to support the planning, development, and coordination of this convening, in addition to providing facilitation and contributing to this convening …

Convening On The Future Of Black Thriving & Joy, Office Of The President, Portland State University, Justice Oregon For Black Lives

Global Diversity and Inclusion Publications and Presentations

This co-creation event aims to be an asset-based intergenerational, inter-ideological, and intercultural opportunity for listening, shared learning, and recognition of points of synergy and opportunity across the rich complexity of the black community in our area -- resulting in a shared agenda and momentum for action.

This affinity/identity based/closed event focuses on the black community and is part of a series of conversations with the different BIPOC communities as stated in the Time to Act plan created as a result of the October 2020 Time to Act summit. As a result of these conversations, Portland State University is seeking to …

Asian American And Pacific Islander Presidential Fellows Report, Betty T. Izumi, Bree Kalima

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

Since the 2010 Census, Oregon’s Asian American population has grown by 42.3% and its Pacific Islander population has grown by 57.3%, making these groups the fastest growing in the state (US Census Bureau, 2019; US Census Bureau, 2020a). In the Portland metropolitan area, these populations experienced a growth of 42.1% and 64.7%, respectively (US Census Bureau, 2019; US Census Bureau, 2020a). Although Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) are often lumped together as a monolith, they differ from each other in ethnicity and also culture, politics, socioeconomic status, language, religion, immigration status, and migration and colonization histories. Given the history …

Blacks In Oregon, Darrell Millner

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Periodically, newspaper or magazine articles appear proclaiming amazement at how white the population of Oregon and the City of Portland is compared to other parts of the country. It is not possible to argue with the figures—in 2017, there were an estimated 91,000 Blacks in Oregon, about 2 percent of the population—but it is a profound mistake to think that these stories and statistics tell the story of the state's racial past. In fact, issues of race and the status and circumstances of Black life in Oregon are central to understanding the history of the state, and perhaps its future …

Evaluating The N/Ne Preference Policy, Amie Thurber, Lisa Bates, Susan Halverson

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

North/Northeast Portland has long been the heart of Portland's Black community. By 2010, the area had lost two-thirds of its Black residents to displacement. In response, the City adopted a Preference Policy that prioritizes displaced affordable rental and homeownership applicants. This report describes findings from the first phase of a study to understand what difference this policy is making in the lives of residents.

‘The Environment Is Us’: Settler Cartographies Of Indigeneity And Blackness In Prophecy (1979), Kali Simmons

Indigenous Nations Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article examines the triangulation of whiteness, Blackness, and Indigeneity in the ‘creature feature’ sf-horror film Prophecy (Frankenheimer US 1979), arguing that the film’s renderings of environmental racism ultimately function to justify white supremacist hetero-patriarchal maintenance and surveillance of Black and Indigenous lands and bodies. A close examination of Prophecy’s representational and ideological shortfalls – in particular its renderings of Black and Indigenous maternity – reveals troubling entanglements between settler-colonial logics of geography, ecology, monstrosity, and subjectivity.

Healthy Birth Initiatives: The Road Toward Reproductive Justice, Roberta Hunte, Susanne Klawetter, Sherly Paul

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study concerns racialized experiences of reproductive oppression among Black women and the efforts of one organization - Multnomah County’s Healthy Birth Initiatives (HBI) - to combat this oppression and move towards Reproductive Justice. This study explores how Black women experience and respond to racism-related stress and its impacts on their health during and after pregnancy and subsequent parenting. The project was informed by a pilot focus group conducted in 2016 by Drs. Jenna Ramaker and Roberta Hunte in partnership with HBI, which asked HBI clients about the role of toxic stress and racism-related stress in their lives. The current …

Black Freedom Beyond Borders: Memories Of Abolition Day, Amber Butts, Ayize Jama-Everett, Calvin Williams, Donte Clark, Lisa Bates, Naudika Williams, Shawn Taylor, Walidah Imarisha, Amir Kadar

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The anthology is available here for download, and the YouTube video of authors reading excerpts is embedded.

Wakanda Dream Lab and PolicyLink present a storyworld of safety and freedom in a future without prisons and policing.

While debates about “defunding” raise the question of what a new public safety system might look like, authors and artists are showing us what is possible through speculative fiction. In the spirit of visionary fiction, we convened future-bending Black storytellers for a Black Speculative Writer's Room Project, and together, we created an anthology of freedom dream stories exploring a world after the abolition of …

Racial Justice Is Climate Justice: Racial Capitalism And The Fossil Economy, Julius Mcgee, Patrick Trent Greiner

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The narrative of oppression moves through dialectical pressures. Capitalism evolved from the feudal order that preceded it, creating new forms of racial oppression that benefited an emerging ruling class [1]. Racial tensions evolve alongside economic oppression that subjugates labor to capital. The preceding racial order molds to emerging mechanisms of expropriation and exploitation by way of force and resistance. Beneath the surface of these tensions lies the interconnected threads of ecological and human expropriation. At the heart of all oppression, lies the manipulation of reproduction. The social processes necessary to reproduce black and brown communities, the ecological processes necessary to …

How Oregon’S Racist History Can Sharpen Our Sense Of Justice Right Now, Walidah Imarisha

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Writer Walidah Imarisha on eight years of talking about the brutal history of race in Oregon.

Name a small town in Oregon. I have most likely been there, talking about race.

For the past eight years, starting as part of Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project, I’ve stood in front of thousands of attendees in packed libraries, community centers, senior homes, college campuses, and prisons.

I’ve seen it all: multiple people arguing the Ku Klux Klan was and remains a “civic organization,” chiding me for focusing solely on the “negatives” while adamantly denying they support racism or are themselves racist. I’ve received …

Centering Equity In Oregon’S 100 Year Water Vision: A Student-Led Policy Paper Prepared By The Oregon Water Stories Team At Portland State University, Clare T. Mcclellan, Sadie Boyers, Victoria Cali De Leon, Tony Cole, Laura Cowley-Martinson, Shersten Finley, Dustin Lanker, Julia Seydel, Aakash Nath Upraity, Janet Cowal, Melissa Haeffner

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this report is to provide evidence for the need to further intentionally incorporate equity into Oregon’s 100 Year Water Vision. Four case studies contextualize this need and highlight the variety of water issues throughout the state, supported by linguistic analyses of local newspapers. As Oregon policy-makers are responsible for ensuring working water systems for all Oregonians, we also suggest implementable criteria for the evaluation of equity in water issues and decision-making. This student-led and interdisciplinary report comes from the Haeffner-Cowal Oregon Water Stories research lab at Portland State University.

Rememory, Walidah Imarisha

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Short Story Summary

Set in a future world where those who believe in liberation have set up autonomous zones across the United States, teen Ayo contemplates her place in this society without prisons and police. While her chosen sibling Essakai is fighting to free more territories, Ayo decides to journey into the Rememory, the collective consciousness of past Black liberation movements, to find out what her role in creating these new just worlds should be.

Foreword to Black Freedom Beyond Borders: Memories of Abolition Day

There are times when our lived reality feels stranger than science fiction - a viral …

“Their Markers As They Go”: Modified Trees As Waypoints In The Dena’Ina Cultural Landscape, Alaska, Douglas Deur, Jamie Hebert

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Inland Dena’ina, an Athabaskan people of south-central Alaska, produce and value Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) in myriad ways. Ethnographic interviews and field visits conducted with Inland Dena’ina residents of the village of Nondalton, Alaska, reveal the centrality of CMTs in the creation and valuation of an Indigenous cultural landscape. CMTs serve as waypoints along trails, as Dena’ina people travel across vast distances to hunt wide-ranging caribou herds and fish salmon ascending rivers from Bristol Bay. CMTs also provide bark and sap used in Dena’ina material culture and medicines, leaving signature marks upon the spruce, birch, and other trees found …

Albina Zone, Lisa Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Story Summary:
In near future Portland, the police have been abolished, but what else is needed for real liberation? A gifted young woman and her mother struggle to communicate across a rift of unspoken history.

Foreword to Black Freedom Beyond Borders: Memories of Abolition Day

There are times when our lived reality feels stranger than science fiction - a viral pandemic, an economic crisis, global conflicts on multiple frontlines, the rise of white supremacist racism, a wave of state violence against Black bodies, the fiery uprisings across the nation, and militarized guards deployed in response… It was the Red Summer …

Psu Black Studies At Risk, Professor Says: Administration Called Out For Toxic Environment, Beverly Corbell, Ethan Johnson

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This school year is the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Black Studies Department at Portland State University, a momentous occasion for celebrating the formation of a degree curriculum devoted to the history, culture and politics of black people, but the African-American director of the department doesn’t feel much like celebrating.

Ethan Johnson, who has headed the department for the past 15 years, says the university is failing to support the black studies curriculum and even more is failing to listen to the concerns of minority students and faculty at the school, a result that is disastrous to their …

Raven’S Work In Tlingit Ethno-Geography, Thomas F. Thornton, Douglas Deur, Bert Adams

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This is a chapter in Language and Toponymy in Alaska and Beyond: Papers in Honor of James Kari.

Book description:
It is difficult to imagine place names research in Alaska without the work of James Kari. Through his tireless field work and advocacy, Dr. Kari has collaborated with speakers of all of Alaska’s Dene languages to help build a comprehensive record of Dene geographic knowledge. When Jim came to Alaska in 1972, the documentation of Dene languages was fragmentary at best, and the only records of Native place names were those found inaccurately spelled on maps and gazetteers. Now …

Housing Segregation And Resistance In Portland, Oregon, Carmen P. Thompson

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Local researchers Greta Smith, Melissa Cornelius Lang, and Leanne Serbulo gathered at the Oregon Historical Society in Portland, Oregon, for a public history roundtable discussion moderated by Carmen P. Thompson, adjunct professor of Black studies and African American History at Portland State University. Inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of the federal Fair Housing Act, these researchers have uncovered and analyzed new sources related to the history of housing segregation — and resistance to that discrimination — in Portland, Oregon. This is a record of that event.

Can Reducing Income Inequality Decouple Economic Growth And Co2 Emissions, Julius Alexander Mcgee, Patrick Greiner

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the past two decades, income inequality has steadily increased in most developed nations. During this same period, the growth rate of CO₂ emissions has declined in many developed nations, cumulating to a recent period of decoupling between economic growth and CO₂ emissions. The aim of the present study is to advance research on socioeconomic drivers of CO₂ emissions by assessing how the distribution of income affects the relationship between economic growth and CO₂ emissions. The authors find that from 1985 to 2011, rising income inequality leads to a tighter coupling between economic growth and CO …

Black Americans And The South African Anti-Apartheid Campaign In Portland, Oregon, Ethan Johnson

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper argues that in order to understand the anti-Apartheid campaign in Portland, Oregon it must be located within the particular socio-historical context of race and racism in the city and state. Thus, Black people living in Portland had good reason to compare the Apartheid system in South Africa to their own experience. Therefore, the confluence of national and local issues that move the local anti-Apartheid campaign forward is examined; the paper documents the rise and development of critical organizations in the anti-Apartheid campaign in Portland; the paper focus on the closure of the Honorary South Africa Consulate in downtown …

Teaching Australian Literature In A Class About Literatures Of Social Reform, Per Henningsgaard

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article presents an intriguing thesis about proximity and identification, distance and empathy based on the experience of teaching Sally Morgan’s My Place to American university students alongside Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in a class examining literature as an agent of social change. Indeed, its response to the question, “How does the Australian production of My Place influence its American reception?” will surprise many people. Students more readily demonstrate empathy with characters and are prepared to ascribe their unenviable life circumstances to social structures that propagate oppression when reading literature about cultural groups …