"From Discrimination to DEI: The Possibilities and Limits of Addressing Race in the Workplace"

In the US, work has long served to perpetuate racial inequality, with workers of color historically locked out of jobs that could provide pathways to economic security. In the late 20th century, legal and policy interventions sought some limited redress, with efforts to expand occupational opportunities to groups who had previously been systematically excluded. Yet those policies were tailored to address historic forms of discrimination and failed to account for rapidly changing workplaces, labor practices, and racial demographics. In this presentation, Dr. Adia Harvey Wingfield considers how these failures limited social policy ostensibly designed to broaden occupational pathways, and how future interventions and organizations can rectify these mistakes.

Adia Harvey Wingfield is the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Arts & Sciences and Vice Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity at Washington University in St. Louis.

See more information on the UMD Sociology website.

Dr. Wingfield gave an earlier version of this presentation to the DCSS in February. DCSS also awards the Morris Rosenberg Award for Outstanding Sociological Achievement in honor of Professor Rosenberg.