BSC Race Matters Network: Race and Justice Seminar Series.

Crisis Ordinariness and Racial Justice.

Speaker: Prof Nasar Meer. Nasar Meer is Professor of Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences and Director of RACE.ED at the University of Edinburgh.

This talk explores how societies adapt to a form of ‘crisis ordinariness’ (Berlant 2011) in which the regularity of racial injustice prevails without the need for pre-meditated racist intentions. Underwritten by a ‘racial contract’ (Mills 1997), and propelled by racial mechanics in seemingly disparate and ancillary social spheres (Meer 2022), the argument advanced here is that social systems bear the imprints of older racial injustices that are not merely restated but re-articulated in ways that may be novel, and yet share common properties with how other racial projects have been curated and sustained. Seeing racial injustice as systemic, therefore, better allows us to grasp the nature of the challenge we face.

The event is online and free to attend. Register here. For further information, please contact the event organiser and Race Matters Network co-coordinator Dr Monish Bhatia (m.bhatia@bbk.ac.uk).