Convocation: Joan Morgan

An award-winning journalist and author, Joan Morgan is a provocative cultural critic. Her groundbreaking book, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, marked the literary debut of one of the most original, perceptive and engaging young social commentators in America today. In this fresh, funky, and ferociously honest book, Morgan bravely probed the complex issues facing African-American women in today's world: a world where feminists often have not-so-clandestine affairs with the most sexist of men; where women who treasure their independence often prefer men who pick up the tab; and where the deluge of babymothers and babyfathers reminds black women who long for marriage that traditional nuclear families are a reality for less than 40 percent of the African-American population. In light of the candidacy and election of President Barack Obama, Morgan now takes a look at the changing racial and ethnic composition of America since Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech in 1963 and examines several insightful questions: What would Dr. King make of the changing makeup of America and its impact on America's black and white racial binary? Who are we talking about in 2013, when we use the term African American? How useful is it to still use the terms Black and African American interchangeably? And finally, what impact does this heterogeneous and multi-ethnic American Blackness have on the country from a political, social and economic perspective? The title of her presentation is "Is America 'Post-Racial'?"