The Institute for Public Knowledge invites you to join us for a conversation with Orlando Patterson, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Richard Arum, David E Kirkland, Patrick Sharkey, and Niobe Way on Paterson's new book, The Cultural Matrix. The event will be moderated by Pedro Noguera.

The Cultural Matrix seeks to unravel a uniquely American paradox: the socioeconomic crisis, segregation, and social isolation of disadvantaged black youth, on the one hand, and their extraordinary integration and prominence in popular culture on the other. Despite school dropout rates over 40 percent, a third spending time in prison, chronic unemployment, and endemic violence, black youth are among the most vibrant creators of popular culture in the world. They also espouse several deeply held American values. To understand this conundrum, the authors bring culture back to the forefront of explanation, while avoiding the theoretical errors of earlier culture-of-poverty approaches and the causal timidity and special pleading of more recent ones.

There is no single black youth culture, but a complex matrix of cultures - adapted mainstream, African-American vernacular, street culture, and hip-hop - that support and undermine, enrich and impoverish young lives. Hip-hop, for example, has had an enormous influence, not always to the advantage of its creators. However, its muscular message of primal honor and sensual indulgence is not motivated by a desire for separatism but by an insistence on sharing in the mainstream culture of consumption, power, and wealth.

This interdisciplinary work draws on all the social sciences, as well as social philosophy and ethnomusicology, in a concerted effort to explain how culture, interacting with structural and environmental forces, influences the performance and control of violence, aesthetic productions, educational and work outcomes, familial, gender, and sexual relations, and the complex moral life of black youth.

Orlando Patterson is a historical and cultural sociologist, currently the John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He previously held faculty appointments at the University of the West Indies, his alma mater, and the London School of Economics, where he received his Ph.D. His academic interests include the culture and practices of freedom; the comparative study of slavery and ethno-racial relations; and the cultural sociology of poverty and underdevelopment with special reference to the Caribbean and African American youth. He has also written on the cultural sociology of sports, especially the game of cricket. Professor Patterson is the author of numerous academic papers and five academic books including, Slavery and Social Death, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, and The Ordeal of Integration. A book on the cultural aspects of poverty among disadvantaged African-American youth is forthcoming.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a philosopher, novelist, and cultural theorist with current faculty appointments at NYU's Department of Philosophy and School of Law. Professor Appiah's work deals with political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and the mind, and African intellectual history. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University, and has taught philosophy and African-American studies at universities around the world, including Princeton, Cornell, Yale and the University of Ghana. He is the author of numerous books, includingThe Ethics of Identity (2005), The Honor Code (2011) and the prize-winning Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006). 

Richard Arum is a sociologist of education. He is currently a senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and professor of Sociology and Education at NYU. His research deals with the legal and institutional environments of schools, social stratification, student achievement and socialization, and formal organizations. He is the author of many academic articles and books, including Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (2011) and Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates (2014). 

David E. Kirkland, PhD, JD, is an author, activist, cultural critic, and educator. He is the Deputy Director for the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools and an associate professor of English and urban education at NYU. His scholarship examines the intersections between language, race, gender, and urban youth culture under the lens of literacy. His most recent book A Search Past Silence: The Literacy of Black Males is a TC Press bestseller and winner of the 2014 AESA Critics Choice Award.

Patrick Sharkey is a professor of Sociology at NYU. His academic work deals with neighborhoods and communities, stratification and mobility, urban sociology, crime and violence, and social policy. His writing and research have appeared in the LA Times, the Washington Post, NPR, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Times, among others. His first book Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Equality (2013), describes how political decisions and social policies have led to severe disinvestment from black neighborhoods, persistent segregation, declining economic opportunities, and a growing link between African American communities and the criminal justice system.

Niobe Way is a professor of Applied Psychology at NYU. She is also the co-Director of the Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education at NYU and the President for the Society for Research on Adolescence. Way’s research focuses on the intersections of culture, context, and human development. Way is a nationally recognized leader in the field of adolescent development and in the use of mixed methods; she has been studying the social and emotional development of girls and boys for over two decades. Way’s sole authored books include: Everyday Courage: The Lives and Stories of Urban Teenagers (1998); and Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (2011).

Pedro Noguera is a professor of Sociology and Education at New York University. Dr. Noguera is a sociologist whose research focuses on the ways schools are influenced by social and economic conditions, as well as demographic trends in local, regional and global contexts. His most recent book isSchooling for Resilience: Improving the Life Trajectories of African American and Latino Boys (2014) with Edward Fergus and Margary Martin. Dr. Noguera appears as a regular commentator on educational issues on CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio and other national news outlets. 

This event is co-sponsored by Public Books, The Metro Center at NYU and NYU's Department of Sociology.

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