Race: Are We So Different?

August 4 - December 9, 2018

This exhibition has ended. Click here to view current exhibits.

Sponsored By:

Free general admission to Sloan Museum in the Flint Cultural Center is sponsored by the Community Foundation of Greater Flint and the Ruth Mott Foundation.

This exhibit is the first in a series of events designed to inspire community conversations, presented by the University of Michigan-Flint and the Community Foundation of Greater Flint. The RACE: Are We So Different? exhibition explores three primary themes:

The science of human variation, and where current scientific understanding is inconsistent with popular notions of race.

The history of the idea of race, with an emphasis on the role of science in shaping the concept of race.

The contemporary experience of race and racism in the United States, and the often-invisible ways race and racism have infiltrated laws, customs, and institutions.

Location
Sloan Museum in the Flint Cultural Center
1221 E. Kearsley St. Flint, MI 48503

Hours
Monday-Saturday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Sunday: 12-5 p.m.

For more information, call 810-237-3450.

Addressing Racism in the Public Health Arena

Free admission

Please join us for a talk by Dr. Lawrence Reynolds. This presentation will consider how systemic racism prevents the successful restructuring of the social determinants of health to promote health equity. We will examine how the interaction of race, power, privilege and place has reproduced inequity and disparities at various stages along the life course of Flint's African American residents.

Date: Monday, September 17
Time: 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Location: Sloan Museum, 1221 E. Kearsley St. Flint, MI 48503
Pre-registration is strongly recommended. Please click the button below to reserve your seat.

FULL EVENT: An Experiential and Historical Look at Systemic Racism and its Effects in Flint

Free admission

Harold Ford, a lifelong Flint resident, will offer a 21st century perspective of what W.E.B. DuBois called “the problem of the twentieth century... the problem of the color line.” He will draw upon his five+ decades as an educator, activist, writer, and citizen. His experiences include: participation in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march; FBI/Red Squad surveillance as an anti-war activist; writing for Michael Moore’s Flint/Michigan Voice and East Village Magazine; an ACLU lifer; and 43 years as an educator in Beecher. His multiple perspectives will include points of pride and personal ignominy.

Date: Monday, September 24
Time: 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Location: Sloan Museum, 1221 E. Kearsley St. Flint, MI 48503
Pre-registration is strongly recommended. Please click the button below to reserve your seat.

Social Justice Practice and Community Organizing

Free admission

Please join us for a talk by Natasha Thomas-Jackson, Regional Manager, NextGen America. There is an art and science to effectively organizing in communities and making social justice a reality for all – one that involves empathy, intersectionality, and a fundamental understanding of systemic challenges that individuals and communities face. This talk will explore these issues and provide information, resources, and best practices for how we can practically engage communities to create a more socially just, inclusive, and healthy world.

Date: Monday, October 1
Time: 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Location: Sloan Museum, 1221 E. Kearsley St. Flint, MI 48503

Flint's Oral History: A Look At Race, Place, and Systemic Racism Through the Experiences of Flint Residents

Free admission

Please join us for a talk by Dr. Erica Britt, Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Michigan-Flint. This presentation will highlight stories from the Vehicle City Voices Project, an oral history project about life in the city of Flint. In addition to hearing visions of Flint's past, present, and future, we will also explore the spoken and unspoken narratives of race and systemic racism that frame the experiences of Flint residents.

Date: Monday, October 8
Time: 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Location: Sloan Museum, 1221 E. Kearsley St. Flint, MI 48503

“Whitewashing”: Racial Disenfranchisement in Higher Education

Free admission

Is there systemic racism on UM-Flint’s campus? The panel discussion will explore the ways in which race, and particularly whiteness, shape higher education in the U.S. The discussion will include critical examinations of how the U.S. higher education infrastructure systemically advantages, and indeed was designed for, white students, faculty and staff, and how contemporary educational institutions are, or are not, working to challenge this legacy. More specifically to UM-Flint, this panel will challenge contradictions between perceptions and realities of the campus climate, and explore unintended impediments that put at variance our mission statements and the pragmatic instruments for their wholesome delivery.

Panelists:
Dr. Ernest Emenyonu, Professor of African Studies, UM-Flint
Dr. David J. Luke, Director, Intercultural Center, UM-Flint
Thomn Bell, Director, Center for Educator Preparation, UM-Flint

Date: Tuesday, October 23
Time: 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
Location: UM-Flint’s Harding Mott University Center, Happenings Room, 400 Mill St. Flint, MI 48503

Anthropology: Culture, Race and Health: Unequal Health Outcomes and the Bio-Cultural

Free admission

If race is a social construct, how can it have such clear effects on things like health outcomes? In this dialogue we introduce the idea of the “Bio-Cultural,” a way anthropologists think about how social phenomena like race affect our bodies. Race is not biological, but it nonetheless impacts bodies in unequal ways, sometimes with multi-generational consequences. The “Bio-Cultural” helps us to make sense of this process without inadvertently falling back on a biological model of race.

Discussion led by:
Dr. Jennifer Alvey, Associate Professor of Anthropology, UM-Flint
Dr. Daniel Birchok, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, UM-Flint

Date: Monday, October 29
Time: 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Location: Sylvester Broome Empowerment Village, 4119 Saginaw St. Flint, MI 48505

Community Visioning Conversation

Free admission

You are invited to join Sloan Museum, Working Actively Intentionally Together (WAIT) and the Community Foundation of Greater Flint in a Visioning Session for a Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) Conversation. We’d like to hear from Flint residents and community members like you about problems plaguing the community, what progress may already be underway, and potential allies who can engage in the TRHT process.

Residents will gather along with a W.K. Kellogg consultant and participate in a guided community visioning session which will include small group discussions. We are sure that through this process and your involvement, we will glean valuable insights, information and perceptions about the community to help move the community forward.

TRHT is a national initiative of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to engage communities, organizations, and individuals from across the United States in racial healing and addressing present-day inequities linked to historic and contemporary beliefs in a hierarchy of human value.

Date: Sunday, November 4
Time: 3:00-5:30 p.m.
Location: Sloan Museum, 1221 E. Kearsley St. Flint, MI 48503
Food will be provided.

Free event. Pre-registration is required. A $2 service charge will be applied to online registrations. To register for free, without the online service charge, please call 810-237-3450.

Community Read: Demolition Means Progress, Chapters 1-2

Free admission

Join a group of Flint community members to discuss Demolition Means Progress by Andrew Highsmith. This read is intended to engage the community in dialogue and seeks to strengthen the Flint community by promoting inclusion and understanding about differing points of view, to promote literacy and foster community through shared experience. For this meeting, we will focus on Chapters 1 & 2. You do not need to have read the book to attend. A limited number of free copies of the book will be available. Come prepared to discuss with respect and an open mind. Pre-registration is not required for this event.

Date: Saturday, November 10
Time: 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
Location: Sloan Museum, 1221 E. Kearsley St. Flint, MI 48503