Anti-Blackness at HSIs

In the first episode of season 3 of ¿Qué pasa, HSIs? I talk to Dr. Whitney Pirtle, Associate Professor of Sociology and McArthur Foundation Chair in International Justice and Human Rights at the University of California, Merced, where she also directs the Sociology of Health and Equity (SHE) Lab. As a formative critical race scholar, her research explores issues relating to race, identity, inequality, health equity, and Black feminist praxis. Her latest work includes writing on Covid-19 pandemic inequities and institutional anti-Blackness. In this episode we talk about her experiences as 1 of 5 Black tenure track faculty members at an HSI and about how she stepped into research about anti-Blackness within HSI spaces. While Dr. Pirtle describes ways that we can acknowledge and disrupt anti-Blackness in HSIs, she also tells her story about how she has mentored Black students and protected them from anti-Blackness, while also thriving as a critical scholar and teacher who centers race and raced students in her classroom. In this episode Dr. Pirtle asks, “what’s good, HSIs?”