America’s Black-White Divide: Looking Back, Looking Around, Looking Forward

Lawrence Bobo, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Claude Steele joined in conversation with Margaret Levi to consider these questions (below) and offer insights on the prospects for progress and enduring change that will help us realize a more just and equitable society in our time.

• Should we regard the Trump years as akin to the fall of Reconstruction in the 19th Century?
• Is a great success and stride forward like the election of Barack Obama destined to galvanize countervailing social forces that constitute an enormous step backward on racial progress?
• Is the challenge of achieving racial justice today as deep and intractable a problem as ever or are the circumstances different and better, providing grounds for optimism?
• What should we expect for the course of Black-white relations over the next decade or two given the trends currently at work?

This event, which is part of the Social Science for a World in Crisis series, is produced by Stanford University’s Center for the Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), in partnership with the program in African and African American Studies at Stanford University, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.