The TEACHABLE MOMENT—continued from page 29 learned the lesson that “you want to give people a multimedia interaction. You want to give them something that establishes context for why they’re standing where they’re standing.” In the Tides of Freedom exhibit, the place where people are standing includes, among other things, a replica of an auction block where kidnapped Africans would stand as they were sold into slavery. The exhibition combines stage elements like this with artifacts and videos to illuminate 300 years of African-American history along the Delaware River. It will be on display at the Independence Seaport Museum until 2015. The Penn Museum exhibition, Black Bodies in Propaganda, focuses on images that were used to mobilize people of color in conflicts beginning with the Civil War and ending with the African struggle for independence. Video clips provide additional context for the posters, and visitors are given space to share their thoughts on the contradiction inherent in the exhibit: that people who, Zuberi notes, “were not full citizens in their own country ... went to fight and preserve democracy.” The exhibit will run through March 2, 2014. Multimedia successes aside, Zuberi is quick to note that he has not “given up on the transmission of information
Zuberi is currently on sabbatical, by the book.” Zuberi dove right into the and he is using the time to strike out center of an academic fray with one of in a new direction. “I’m retooling,” he his best-known books, Thicker than Blood: says, “and I’m including and embracing An Essay on How Racial Statistics Lie, in which he traces the intertwined history of South America in my retool.” He was an observer at last summer’s Autonomous statistical analysis in the social sciences Conference of and the search, Black, Afroup to the mid"[The] goal in making Colombian, 20th century, for an intellectually Palenquero, African Independence defensible and Raizal rationale was to help people better Peoples, held to for racial chart next steps understand “what is stratification. in securing This was followed the place of going on in Africa and by a multi-author these groups why that's important."” volume called in Colombian White Logic, society. White Methods: He’ll also be Racism and Methodology, which Zuberi developing new courses to teach in the co-edited with Eduardo Bonilla-Silva of future, and will be continuing his film Duke University. In his introduction to work. On top of that, he’ll be working White Logic, Zuberi describes the troubled on his Spanish—a skill that might be reactions of some colleagues to Thicker especially useful since a Spanish edition than Blood and maintains that social of Thicker than Blood is now available. Of science journals propagate the “misuse this latest leg of his long journey, he says, of statistical methods in the analysis “I’m still trying to better understand of race.” He and Bonilla-Silva were our world. ... I take great heart in being eventually honored with the American a sociologist who can take what I know Sociological Association’s Oliver and give it to a more general audience, Cromwell Cox Award, which recognizes and to help educate people so that they books that make significant contributions also can understand our world better.” ◆ to the eradication of racism.
Courtesy of Tukufu Zuberi
History Detectives, the highly successful series, has enjoyed 10 seasons—and Zuberi is hard at work on season 11.