Each year, the YWCA Madison hosts a racial justice summit that brings together community stakeholders to work on eliminating barriers that foster racism in our community. The Summit focuses on institutional racism and involves nationally-known keynote speakers and researchers, as well as local experts and advocates. Through an environment that encourages learning from and supporting each other in our common goals, the summit provides a platform for action planning and community dialogue.  

The 2012 Racial Justice Summit is entitled Mobilizing for Racial Justice: Strategies for Action and Advocacy YWCA Racial Justice Summit and features Melissa Harris- Perry and Dr. Carlos  Muñoz, Jr.
 

Melissa Harris-Perry

Melissa V. Harris-Perry is host of MSNBC's show: "Melissa Harris-Perry." Ms. Harris-Perry is also professor of political science at Tulane University, where she is founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South. She previously served on the faculties of the University of Chicago and Princeton University.

Professor Harris-Perry is author of the well received new book, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in Americawhich argues that persistent harmful stereotypes—invisible to many but painfully familiar to black women—profoundly shape black women's politics, contribute to policies that treat them unfairly, and make it difficult for black women to assert their rights in the political arena. Her first book, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, won the 2005 W. E. B. Du Bois Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists and 2005 Best Book Award from the Race and Ethnic Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.

Professor Harris-Perry is a columnist for The Nation magazine, where she writes a monthly column also titled Sister Citizen. In addition to hosting her own show on MSNBC she provides expert commentary on U.S. elections, racial issues, religious questions and gender concerns for Politics Nation with Reverend Al Sharpton, The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and other MSNBC shows. She is a regular commentator on Keeping it Real Radio with Reverend Al Sharpton and for many print and radio sources in the United States and abroad.

Dr. Carlos Muñoz, Jr.

Dr. Carlos Muñoz, Jr. is a prominent political scientist, historian, journalist, and public intellectual. An educator, author, and activist, Dr. Muñoz is also Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Muñoz was the founding chair of the first Chicano Studies department in the nation in 1968 at the California State University at Los Angeles and the founding chair of the National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies (NACCS). He is a pioneer in the creation of undergraduate and graduate curricula in the disciplines of Ethnic Studies.

Dr. Muñoz is the author of numerous pioneering works on the Mexican American political experience and on African American and Latino political coalitions. His book, Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement won the Gustavus Myers Book Award for “outstanding scholarship in the study of human rights in the United States.” The book is was a major resource for the PBS television series "Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement." Dr. Muñoz was the senior consultant for the project and was also featured in the series. He is currently working on several new books including Diversity and The Challenge for a Multiracial Democracy In America.

Dr. Muñoz is an acknowledged expert on the issues of ethnic and racial politics, multiculturalism and diversity, immigration, civil and human rights, and affirmative action. He has appeared on PBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and the Spanish-speaking UNIVISION and Tele Mundo. He is a syndicated columnist with the Progressive Media Project. His newspaper columns are distributed nationally and have appeared online on Latino.com and on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service (Europe and Latin America).