{"id":67,"date":"2021-04-13T16:39:02","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T16:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/?p=67"},"modified":"2021-04-14T16:40:01","modified_gmt":"2021-04-14T16:40:01","slug":"meet-a-fellow-sebastian-ramirez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/2021\/04\/13\/meet-a-fellow-sebastian-ramirez\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet a Fellow: Sebastian Ramirez"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Photo.action<\/a>Sebastian Ramirez is the 2020-2021 American Studies Graduate Student Fellow from the Department of Philosophy.\u00a0He\u00a0will be giving a public lecture on Friday, April 23 at 12:30 PM<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>entitled \u201cRacism\u2019s Revenge: Towards\u00a0A\u00a0Du\u202fBoisian\u202fTheory of Racist Ideology.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

What is your research about and why does it matter?<\/b><\/p>\n

Scholars and activists often\u00a0conceptualize\u00a0racism\u00a0as a set of affects, attitudes, beliefs, practices, and\/or institutions that directly or indirectly\u00a0benefit white people and\u00a0harm people of color\u00a0by virtue of ascribed racial identities.\u00a0On this approach, white people\u00a0should\u00a0oppose racism\u00a0because\u00a0it is\u00a0morally\u00a0wrong.\u00a0Unfortunately, moral suasion alone rarely moves human beings.\u00a0We often persist\u00a0in our actions until we are given strong practical reasons to consider and enact viable alternatives.<\/p>\n

My current research explores the practical reasons white people have for opposing racism.\u00a0Drawing on W.E.B. Du\u00a0Bois,\u00a0I construct a conceptual framework that accents the social, cultural, political, and economic disadvantages that white racism has indirectly caused most white people. In so doing, I show how and why disadvantaged white people have\u00a0strong practical reasons\u00a0to oppose\u00a0racism, white privilege notwithstanding.\u00a0I believe that this framework can potentially guide a much-needed strategy for addressing enduring white supremacy in this country.<\/p>\n

Describe a discovery or a moment in your research that excited you.<\/b><\/p>\n

Two related research moments stand out for me. The first was when I discovered a 1946 letter from\u00a0Justice Charles E. Toney of the New York City Municipal Court to W.E.B. Du\u00a0Bois. Justice Toney encouraged Du\u00a0Bois\u00a0to\u00a0write on the moral, social, economic, and cultural losses suffered by \u201cthe American white man\u2026by the mistreatment of the Negroes.\u201d Du\u00a0Bois\u2019s\u00a0response, in which he\u00a0acknowledged the importance of such work but declined to undertake the project, citing internal difficulties at the NAACP, inspired me to revisit his work with an eye to the resources he did have for addressing this question.<\/p>\n

The second moment was when I listened to a 2018 discussion with\u00a0labor historian David Roediger\u00a0and heard him\u00a0pose\u00a0the\u00a0question \u201cHow do we talk about the fact that whiteness is a misery-producing machine for people of color, but likewise encourages people to accept miserable lives on the other side of the color line?\u201d\u00a0This confirmed for me the fact that scholars across the disciplines still lack a systematic framework for addressing this issue and thus reinforced my desire to pursue the question.<\/p>\n

What was your first job, and what lessons did you learn from it?\u202f<\/b><\/p>\n

I washed dishes at a Japanese steakhouse in Horseheads, NY. I\u00a0learned about the value of service work and the exploitative nature of the service industry, which subsidizes waiter\/waitress income through tips.<\/p>\n

\n

Sebastian Ramirez<\/strong> is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy.\u00a0After teaching English in China for three years, Sebastian moved to Nashville to study\u00a0social and political philosophy, critical theory, and philosophy of race. His dissertation draws on W.E.B. Du\u00a0Bois\u00a0to explore the self-destructive character of white supremacy in the United States. Sebastian is also interested in the topics of abolitionism, democracy, and racial capitalism. Beyond academia, he enjoys hiking, wandering, and listening to music.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sebastian Ramirez is the 2020-2021 American Studies Graduate Student Fellow from the Department of Philosophy.\u00a0He\u00a0will be giving a public lecture on Friday, April 23 at 12:30 PM\u00a0entitled \u201cRacism\u2019s Revenge: Towards\u00a0A\u00a0Du\u202fBoisian\u202fTheory of Racist Ideology.\u201d What is your research about and why does it matter? Scholars and activists often\u00a0conceptualize\u00a0racism\u00a0as a set of affects, attitudes, beliefs, practices, and\/or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8541,"featured_media":356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rpw-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8541"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":357,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/rpwcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}