Short notice, but if you're in Southern California, I just heard about this really interesting event happening tomorrow with Scott Kurashige, author of
The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles
:
What L.A. History Can Teach Us About Obama's Candidacy
From "Minority" Politics to a New Majority
Saturday, March 1, 2008, 2 p.m.
@ The Southern California Library
6120 S. Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90044
Talk and Book Reading with Scott Kurashige
Author of The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles
"Scott Kurashige shifts the urban history paradigm in this brilliantly triangulated account of African American and Japanese American resistance to white racism in Los Angeles."--Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums and In Praise of Barbarians
The long historical struggles to remake Los Angeles from a "white city" into a multicultural "world city" open up a critical window for making sense of Barack Obama's campaign for presidency--and the future of U.S. politics.
Join us on Saturday, March 1, as Scott Kurashige breaks down how Asian Americans, Blacks, Latinos/as, and whites in neighborhoods from Crenshaw to Boyle Heights worked together to create new definitions of community in a city whose civic and political leaders proudly proclaimed themselves to be defenders of white supremacy less than a century ago.
His talk will draw on the lessons of this history to show why no serious candidate for the presidency from here on out can ignore the mandate to build a multiracial coalition--one built not on carving people into "minority interest groups" but on a new collective majority.
Everyone welcome. Free admission. Books will be available for purchase and signing.
For more information, go to www.socallib.org or call (323) 759-6063.
Sounds like it's going to be a really fascinating talk. Alas, yet another item to add to my bulging, constantly expanding list of books to read.
