Economist William Darity Jr. To Speak At UMass: “Does Everyone Lose From Racism? ”

William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr., the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at Duke University, will present the annual Philip Gamble Memorial Lecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Thursday, May 4, at 5:30 p.m. in Bowker Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public, with seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.

In his lecture, “Does Everyone Lose from Racism? Insights from Stratification Economics,” Darity will explore the frequently made claim that racial bias leads working class whites to vote against their own self-interest. He plans to demonstrate that racial bias is functional and leads to advantages for the white working class that can more than offset any ostensible losses associated with the policies that they oppose due to their prejudices.

The founding director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke, Darity has served as chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and was the founding director of the university’s Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality. His research focuses on inequality by race, class and ethnicity, stratification economics, schooling and the racial achievement gap, North-South theories of trade and development, skin shade and labor market outcomes, the economics of reparations, the Atlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution, the history of economics and the social psychological effects of exposure to unemployment. 

Darity’s most recent book, co-authored with A. Kirsten Mullen, is “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century.” Published in 2020 by The University of North Carolina Press, the book received the Lillian Smith Book Prize, the Inaugural Book Prize from the Association of African American Life and History, the Ragan Old North State Award for Non-fiction from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association and the Best Book Award in the Social Change category from the American Book Fest.

Sponsored by the UMass Amherst Department of Economics, the Philip Gamble Memorial Lectureship Endowment was established by alumnus Israel Rogosa and other family and friends in memory of Philip Gamble, a member of the economics faculty from 1935-71 and chair of the department from 1942-65. The fund supports an annual lecture series featuring a prominent economist, and since its inauguration in 1995 Gamble lecturers have included Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and former U.S. Ambassador to India and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient John Kenneth Galbraith. In total, 10 recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics have presented the Gamble Lecture.

More information on the department of economics and the 2023 Gamble Lecture by William Darity, as well as a complete list of previous Gamble lecturers with video of all speeches since 2008, can be found on the economics department website. More info about Darity, including an archive of select research, writings and media appearances, can be found on the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy website.