Toward a Unified Theory of Black America - Roland Fryer

Date/Time:	Tuesday, 31 Jan 2006 at 8:00 pm
Location:	Sun Room, Memorial Union
Cost:	Free
Contact:
Phone:	515-294-9934
Channel:	Lecture Series
Categories:	Lectures
Actions:	Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder

Harvard economist Roland Fryer, the 2006 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. keynote speaker, uses economic theory to study race relations in America. His groundbreaking work in using intricate economic theory in the field of African American studies has garnered the attention beyond academic departments. He is a Junior Fellow and assistant professor of economics at Harvard who received his doctorate in 2002 from Pennsylvania State University. His...

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Fellow Harvard professor Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. praises Fryer as a star, while reminding us that, "he's only 27 years old." Gates Jr. believes that Fryer will "raise the analysis of the African-American experience to new levels of rigor." Fryer was recently the subject of a high-profile New York Times Magazine profile,"Toward A Unified Theory of Black America," where the diversity (and unity) of his work was explored: "[Fryer] is writing one paper about mixed-race children, another about historically black colleges and another tentatively titled 'Bling-Bling,' about the consumption patterns of blacks vs. whites."

Fryer rose from a childhood where he was exposed to drugs, crime and parental abandonment to earn an economics degree in 2 years. On his own rise specifically, and that of a new generation of blacks generally, Fryer is happy to note that, "it's happening through the medium of education and through the idea of the mind." Fryer believes that we are now at a time where the technologies of the day, combined with a new-found willingness for open dialogue and cross-disciplinary action are making it possible to not only learn from and analyze Black history like never before, but also to push forward and make unprecedented progress. As The New York Times wrote, Fryer, like his hero, the pioneering black scholar W.E.B. Dubois, has "the appetite to rigorously round up the facts and concepts and emotions that constitute race and then crack them open one by one…to study--and maybe even help fix-the condition of being black in America."