Who Leads Us? Why Our Elected Leaders Look Nothing Like America, and What We Can Do About It
Dr. Brenda Choresi Carter
4:00 pm Class of 1947 room, Homer Babbidge Library
Earlier this year, the tragic shooting of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri captured national attention. Ferguson—a town whose population is over 60 percent black but whose political power structure is overwhelmingly white—became a stark illustration of the ways our political leadership has not changed along with our country. During this time, the Reflective Democracy Campaign, which works to dismantle the structural barriers that exclude people of color and women from full representation in our political system, completed a historic new database cataloging the race and gender of all elected office-holders in the United States from the county level up to the President. The results of this unprecedented survey are unsettling, and raise significant questions about the demographics of power and the future of American democracy. Join us for a discussion about the campaign’s findings, as well as the causes of—and potential solutions to—the demographic mismatch between our political leaders and the people they are elected to serve.
Dr. Brenda Choresi Carter directs The Reflective Democracy Campaign, an initiative of the Women Donors Network. The campaign works to remove barriers keeping women and people of color from positions of elected leadership and advocates for a political system that truly reflects the American electorate. Trained as both an academic and an organizer, Brenda brings a wealth of specialized knowledge and research to her work as an advocate for socioeconomic and political change. Her extensive involvement in issues critical to working people and underrepresented populations informs Brenda’s teaching. As a visiting faculty member in the American Studies Department at Brown University and in the Wesleyan University Center for Prison Education, Brenda teachers courses on work, culture, and the economy, providing a real-world perspective on contemporary American society. She is at work on a book exploring representations of workers in contemporary American mass culture and has presented at conferences and institutes across the U.S. Dr. Carter received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University and a B.A. in English and government from Georgetown University. She lives in Connecticut.
For more information, contact: Africana Studies Institute at africana@uconn.edu