“I read Professor Bonilla-Silva’s work during graduate school in the 1990s and it transformed the way I think about racism. Prior to reading and reflecting on his work, I was among those who thought of colorblindness as a way to end racism. His arguments pointed out how colorblindness it itself a form of racism that invalidates people’s identities and racist experiences and ignores the way race continues to affect life chances,” says Dr. Lynn Hempel, CSU Sociology Associate Professor. “His challenge to sociology to explore the mechanisms, practices and social relations that produce and reproduce racism continues to shape the trajectory of the research I do.”

Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva is a James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Sociology in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University. His training includes class analysis, political sociology, and sociology of development (globalization). The past two decades he has focused his research on race. Dr. Bonilla-Silva has published on racial theory, race and methodology, color-blind racism, stratification, racial grammar, universities, human rights, citizenship, whiteness, the Obama phenomenon, and more. This information and more can be found on his profile at Duke.