Covid-19 and Racial Disparity:
The Time is Now for Solidarity, Mercy, and Long-Overdue Justice
Read Shannen Dee Williams’ article→
Join us for a Discussion
Join us from 2-3 pm EST on Thursday, May 28th for a discussion of racial disparity during COVID-19. We’ll use Shannen Dee Williams’ telling of Sister Duchemin’s story as an entryway into highlighting the huge racial disparity still in our society today.
The coronavirus pandemic has not only magnified longstanding racial inequities in access to health care, housing, food security, income and jobs but also exposed a truth that many scholars, health care professionals and activists of color have forcefully professed in the face of strident denial for decades: Racism literally kills people.
Although it is unclear when the worst effects of Covid-19 will be behind us, what is certain is that the nation’s black and brown communities will be uniquely traumatized and in need of true solidarity, mercy and long-overdue justice. How can we each help usher in the long-overdue justice that our world calls for? We’ll discuss this, drawing from Shannen’s wisdom, together.
We’ll focus on Shannen’s article and recommend that you read it beforehand.
Our Facilitator
Shannen Dee Williams
Dr. Shannen Dee Williams is the Albert Lepage Assistant Professor of History at Villanova University. A historian of the African-American experience with research specializations in women’s, religious, and black freedom movement history, Williams is completing her first book, Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African-American Freedom Struggle with Duke University Press. Her research has been supported by a host of fellowships, grants, and awards, including a Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Fellowship in Religion and Ethics from the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation, and the John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award from the American Catholic Historical Association.
A Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, Dr. Williams received the Mary Magdalene Award from the Southeast Pennsylvania chapter of the Women’s Ordination Conference in 2020 for her work in amplifying the voices of black Catholic women and girls in church history. In 2018, Williams received the inaugural Sister Christine Schenk Award for Young Catholic Leadership from FutureChurch for using history to foster racial justice and reconciliation in religious congregations of women. In a guest blog published in Patheos in December of 2014, Williams publicly criticized the U.S. Catholic theologians’ statement on racial injustice that initially excluded black women and girls as victims and opponents of state and vigilante violence.
Thursday, May 28th. 2-3 pm EST.
All are welcome via Zoom
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Additional Resources:
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The coronavirus pandemic has not only magnified longstanding racial inequities in access to health care, housing, food security, income and jobs but also exposed a truth that many scholars, health care professionals and activists of color have forcefully professed in the face of strident denial for decades: Racism literally kills people.
-Shannen Dee Williams
