Reparations scholars and activists Dr. William ‘Sandy’ Darity and Kristen Mullen will be featured speakers of the University of Southern California’s (USC) Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture on Feb. 3.
Entitled “From Japanese American Redress to Black Reparations: A Conversation with John Tateishi and William Darity/A. Kirsten Mullen,” the webinar will take place on Zoom from 4 to 5:30 p.m.
Darity and Mullen, a husband and wife duo, are revered for their longstanding work studying, explaining and advocating for reparations for Black Americans. They co-authored the award-winning book, “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century.”
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Tateishi – the former executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) – authored “Redress: The Inside Story of the Successful Campaign for Japanese American Reparations.”
Darity tweeted he was “looking forward to” he and Mullen “extending our conversation with John Tateishi on making reparations happen.”
This is not the first time the trio has come together. They also had what Darity described as “a lively conversation” in Nov. 2020 about their “respective books.”
Residents of North Carolina, Darity is the Samuel DuBose Cook Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at Duke University and Mullen is an author, folklorist and museum consultant. She also founded Artefactual & Carolina Circuit Writers.
Tateishi and his family were forced out of his Los Angeles home and imprisoned in concentration camps for Japanese Americans during World War II, according to his bio on his website.
When Darity and Mullen won the 2020 Sam Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction for From Here to Equality, Darity highlighted why the work they do is so important.
“We must emphasize that the case for reparations that we make in the pages of ‘From Here to Equality’ is not limited to slavery. Indeed we must place on the account for the debt that is owed to Black American descendants of U.S. slavery in addition the nearly century-long period of legal segregation in the United States American apartheid or what we refer to colloquially as the Jim Crow era,” Darity said.
To sign up for the conversation, visit dornsife.usc.edu/cjrc.
