A Discussion of the Book Caste: The origins of our Discontents by Isabelle Wilkerson
Speakers: William L.Turner, PhD and Marlene F. Watson, PhD
Description: Participants will engage in a robust discussion of a caste system. Caste, as Wilkerson explains, is about power - which groups have it and which do not. Race, despite being socially constructed, is used to establish a rigid human hierarchy to justify the dominance of one group over another. Racial caste is therefore a powerful system of oppression that influences all of our lives and behaviors as well as that of a nation's treatment of its people.
Speaker Bios:
William Lofton Turner, Ph.D. holds a Distinguished Professorship in
Leadership and Public Policy and serves on the executive leadership team
as Counselor to the President at Lipscomb University on matters of equity,
diversity and strategic community engagement. An expert in family,
community, and public health, Turner's extensive and lauded academic
career has included tenured professorships at Vanderbilt University, the
The University of Minnesota and the University of Kentucky. From 2007 to 2009, he worked for then-Senator, later President, Barack Obama as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow and legislative advisor. His program of
research is conceptually grounded in systems theory and other ecological
perspectives, and his research has centered on themes related to African
American family strengths and their relationship to health and mental
health prevention and intervention.
Marlene F. Watson, PhD, is the Director of Training at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York and Associate Professor Emerita in the Department of Counseling and Family Therapy at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. Dr . Watson is a licensed couple and family therapist in private practice and author of the acclaimed book, Facing the Black Shadow. She is President of Family Process Institute's (FPI) Board of Directors and serves on the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy (JMFT), Journal of Family Psychotherapy (JFP), and Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships (JBSR). She is the former Chair of the Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education and the first-ever couple and family therapist to receive the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship where she served as a senior health advisor to United States Senator John D. Rockefeller IV. She is a former columnist for Heart & Soul magazine and the recipient of the American Family Therapy Academy's (AFTA) 2009 Distinguished Contribution to Social Justice Award.
