Hidden Truths: Black Women, Thick Bodies, and Anti-Black Racism in America
In "Black Women, Thick Bodies, and Anti-Black Racism in America," Kamille Gentles-Peart, Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at RWU, will explore how Black women’s bodies are used to justify the oppression of Black women in the African diaspora. It will address how, beginning with the forced displacement of Africans to the “new world,” American white places and spaces pathologize voluptuous Black female bodies, using these bodies to legitimize Black women’s enslavement and to support anti-Black woman practices in contemporary “post-racial” America.
The yearlong series presents important conversations on the marginalized stories of our local area, and its complicated history with Indigenous peoples, the slave trade, environmental justice and immigration, and how these issues surface as present day disparities and systemic racial inequities. For more information on the series and the full schedule of events, visit Hidden Truths: Stories of Race and Place.