Summary: <p>How are individuals and groups racially classified? What are the meanings attached to different racial categories? And what impact do these categories have on a range of policies and practices? Taking the U.S. Census as a site of racial classification, Michael Omi, a professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, examines the shifting state definitions of race and how individuals and groups assert, embrace, reject and negotiate different racial categories and identities.</p><p>Michael Omi is co-author, along with Howard Winant, of <em>Racial Formation in the United States</em> (3rd edition, 2015), a groundbreaking work that transformed how we understand the social and historical forces that give race its changing meaning over time and place. </p><p>At UC Berkeley, Omi serves as the associate director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, is a core faculty member in the Department of Ethnic Studies and is an affiliated faculty member of sociology and gender and women’s studies. Omi is also a recipient of UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award, an honor bestowed on only 240 Berkeley faculty members since its inception in 1959. </p><p>This lecture, given on Feb. 20, 2019, was part of a series of talks sponsored by UC Berkeley’s <a href="http://olli.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank">Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI)</a>.</p><p>Listen and read the transcript on <a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/03/13/berkeley-talks-michael-omi/" target="_blank"><em>Berkeley News.</em></a></p><br><hr><p style="color:grey;font-size:0.75em;"> See <a style="color:grey;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://acast.com/privacy">acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.</p>
