IUME Up Close

Dr. David Wall Rice Recap ☆ By:IUME Team

Black men. Black boys. These are the words that Dr. David Wall Rice always starts his classes and lectures with, just as he did this afternoon. Why does he start with those words? Because more often than not, society avoids them, preferring to use just “males” instead. Why is this so? Why is this important? What does this mean–both to black men and black boys themselves, but as a reflection on our society?

Today, IUME was proud to host its inaugural Visiting Faculty Fellow, Dr. David Wall Rice, a professor of psychology at Morehouse College, Thursday afternoon  at Milbank Chapel at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Rice spoke for over an hour about his research at his Identity Orchestration Lab, which focuses on black boys and authentic engagement. Within these topics, he weaved in theoretical constructs with popular culture, doing so in the framework of black identity through a psychological lens. Dr. Rice’s words were poignant and thought-provoking, pushing the audience to dissect how we, or more appropriately society in general through a white dominant framework, conceptualize and simplify black males. Dr. Rice spoke both from his academic experience and personal intuition, digging deep into the complexity of identity on a population that has continually been labeled as simplistic, or as Dr. Rice said, “one-dimensional.” Dr. Rice’s work seeks to not only disprove that method of thinking, but explain, for example, how even the act of having to “prove” your identity itself is already through a deficit lens.

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