Stony Brook professor’s biracial heritage has lessons for life, classroom

Stony Brook professor’s biracial heritage has lessons for life, classroom

Newsday
2020-02-26

Joe Dziemianowicz, Special to Newsday

Stony Brook University Assistant Professor Zebulon Miletsky holds a photo of his parents, Marc and Veronica Miletsky. Miletsky draws on his own biracial past to delve into conversations about race in America. Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara

A week and a half ago, Zebulon Vance Miletsky, who will be leading a talk on African Americans and the right to vote on Feb. 27 at the Brentwood Public Library, was zipping through a PowerPoint presentation in his “Themes in the Black Experience” class at Stony Brook University.

He got to a slide with bullet points on the renowned black historian and activist W.E.B. Du Bois. Miletsky, an assistant professor in Africana Studies and History, went off-script. He shared an anecdote with his students about the time a young Du Bois offered a white girl a valentine and she turned him down flat. Because he was black. It left a mark.

Du Bois went on to become the first African American to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard. “Childhood things shape you,” the professor added.

Miletsky, 45, speaks from experience…

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