Rethinking race at the Students of Color Dinner

Rethinking race at the Students of Color Dinner

University of Buffalo Law Links
University of Buffalo Law School
April 2010

On the day that civil rights icon Benjamin Hooks passed away, UB Law School’s 21st annual Students of Color Dinner took stock of the nation’s state of race relations – and celebrated achievements that transcended race and culture.

The April 15 dinner, held at the Buffalo Niagara Marriott, featured as keynote speaker UB Law Associate Professor Rick Su, who teaches and writes mostly in the areas of immigration and local government law. His remarks looked at the idea of America as a “post-racial society,” and he began with the news that President Obama, the son of a white mother and a Kenyan father, checked a single box on his 2010 Census form, indicating that he was “black, African-American or Negro.”

“Our racial history has always been very complicated,” Su said. “What is interesting is the fact that the Census had choosing to identify as mixed race as an option. Until 2000, the option of selecting mixed race was unavailable…

Read the entire article here.

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