This Weekend: UNC Charlotte's Multicultural Leadership Conference

I know the state of North Carolina is in this week's headlines for other undesirable reasons, but I wanted to let you know about a conference I'll be attending this weekend, the 10th Annual Multicultural Leadership Conference hosted by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC).

This regional conference draws half of its attendees from UNCC and the other half from other schools in the area (In fact, I remember seeing fliers for this conference when I was a student in Chapel Hill!).  UNCC's Center for Leadership Development and Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) jointly organize the conference and this year anticipates 200 student leaders (including "non-traditional students") and their advisors for a day of training in the areas of leadership, diversity and ethics.

Speakers selected for the conference reflect this year's theme: L.E.A.P. Into Your Community (Learn Empower Act Produce) -- individuals who found a way to address an issue in their community and made a difference.  The overall conference goal is for students to learn about being an effective college leader, how to carry those leadership skills over into "the real world" after they graduate, and to equip students with tools to do so.  I'll be giving an afternoon talk about interracial relationships, framed largely by some of the topics I've written about and the site's mantra, "challenge the assumptions."

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking with Ted Lewis, Assistant Director for Sexual/Gender Diversity at the MRC who conveyed that "the students are super excited about your talk and feel that it's an important topic that needs to be discussed."  After going over some more basic, pedestrian, logistics for the weekend, Ted added: "So, yeah, everything is fair game, except -- steer away from asking for money."

Of course I busted out laughing over the phone.

"What?" I replied. "Asking money from the students?!"  Ted then proceeded to tell a "well-see-what-had-happened-was" story about a prior event where a speaker encouraged students to donate money to a specific charity.  "It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but that wasn't what the program was about."

So feel free to leave any thoughts or ideas (or even questions) in the comments section.  And if you are a student attending the conference, please leave a note!  I look forward to connecting with you this Saturday, and you can rest assured that I'll leave my collection plate at home.

Participants Needed: Interracial Relationships Study

When Boston College graduate student Marya Mtshali took the course Politics of Black Sexuality, she noticed a glaring need when it came to research around interracial relationships, particularly those involving Black women and White men:

Marya Mtshali, PhD Student
Department of Sociology
Boston College

"Practically all of the research I came across or found on Google Scholar about interracial couples was about Black men with White women and how Black women were upset by interracial relationships.  I noticed a gap in the literature that I think is important to fill."

And that is exactly what she aims to do through her exploratory sociological study on the experiences of Black female-White male interracial couples. Marya will be using this research for her doctoral thesis and a published article in a peer reviewed journal.  She hopes her research can provide a better overall picture of interracial couples and that the information will add to better understanding of the way race and gender intersect.



So if you are a Black woman in an "intimate" relationship with a White man or a White man in an intimate relationship with a Black woman (for purposes of this study, intimate is defined as being together consistently for at least one year), between the ages of 18 - 65, please consider helping Marya out and volunteering for this study.  Interviews typically last between 1 and 1.5 hours and consist of questions about your demographics, upbringing, dating history, and experiences from your current relationship.  Interviews are taped and stored under password protected files, using pseudonyms and other generic references to minimize the collection of personally identifiable information.  Ideally Marya would like to interview both members of the couple, but participation from both isn't required.

Now, Marya only needs ten couples or participants, but I'm hopefully optimistic that between all of us and the people that we know, we can make sure she has ten and then some.  And in case you're wondering, I'm signed up for my interview next week.

To learn more about Marya and the study visit: http://sites.google.com/site/blackfemalewhitemalestudy/

Although the site includes geographic requirements, as this point Marya is interested in participants regardless of where they live.  If you're interested in participating, email Marya directly at blackfemalewhitemalestudy@gmail.com
I thank you in advance.