Black Childhood and Philosophy | Panel Discussion

On November 21, 2014, the University of Kentucky College of Law hosted the James and Mary Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor Conference. Anthony Paul Farley, the 2014 Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor, led a group of prominent speakers through the day\u27s events. The Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor conference focused on the four freedoms and race. Black childhood is in danger. What is freedom of speech without the right to an education? What is freedom of worship amidst nihilistic erasures of black childhood? What is freedom from want when most of black childhood is lived below the poverty line? What is freedom from fear when black childhood is itself feared? Democracy requires these questions to be answered, and childhood’s relationship to time means that there is such a thing as too late. As academics and activists from all over the nation, we gather together to address these urgent questions of race, childhood, and democracy. The panel on Black Childhood and Philosophy included the following speakers: Kidulthood Sarah Jane Forman, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law Black Children & American Nihilism Odeana Neal, University of Baltimore School of Law Structural Harm in the Age of Mass Incarceration SpearIt, Texas Southern University\u27s Thurgood Marshall School of Law Is There a Future for Black Boys In America? A Candid Discussion of the Education, Criminalization, and Victimization of Our Black Boys Phyllis Taite, Florida A&M University School of Law Freedom: The Yet to be Realized Dream of Rural Girls in East Africa Tsedey Tedla, LL.M. The Dangers of Neutrality: Structural Inequality, Schools, and Post-Racial Determinism Cedric Powell, University of Louisville, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law Closing Remarks: Anthony Paul Farley, Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Kentucky College of Law Moderator: Jennifer Bird-Pollan, University of Kentucky College of La