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Madison (1/14/2010)
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 14, 2010
New Academy Evenings Season Opens with a Discussion Panel Examining Race and Shifting Demographics in Wisconsin and the World
MADISON-With an African
American president and Latina supreme court justice, it would seem that America is on its way to becoming a more pluralistic place. But what about here in Wisconsin, where minorities today comprise 15%
of the state population? While this is not a large number (compared to the rest of the U.S. our state ranks 39th, well down the list), demographic
projections tell us that not only will the next U.S. generation be larger-growing from 300 to about 440 million people-but it will also be more
racially and ethnically diverse. A recent U.S. Census Bureau report indicates that the state's Hispanic population is
growing at 4% faster than the national rate, yet Latinos represent only 5.1% of Wisconsin's total population; African Americans represent 6.2%, yet over 75% of this population lives in Milwaukee County. So, how diverse are we, really, and how will living in a more pluralistic society
affect us?
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and Academy Evenings panel participants Michael Thornton, Lynet Uttal, and Katherine Cramer Walsh, along with moderator Emily Auerbach, will explore our shifting demographics and changing attitudes in the "Wisconsin 2050: Pioneering the Future" presentation, Guess Who's Coming to
Dinner: The Nature of Tolerance in 2050. This free, public discussion forum will be held on Tuesday,
February 16, from 7:00-8:30 pm at the Madison
Museum of Contemporary Art Lecture Hall, 221 State Street, Madison. Seating is first-come, first
served. Doors open at 6:15 p.m.
The "Wisconsin 2050: Pioneering the Future" Academy Evenings series is sponsored by the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation, Wisconsin
Alumni Research Foundation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, M&I
Bank, the Evjue Foundation, and Isthmus Publishing Company.
About Academy Evenings
Academy Evenings engage the
public in a wide variety of topics of public interest and feature Wisconsin's
leading thinkers, scholars, and artists. These free forums are intended to
encourage public interaction with these leaders in an intimate atmosphere
designed to foster discussion and build community. The Wisconsin Academy of
Sciences, Arts and Letters sponsors Academy Evenings regularly in Overture Center
for the Arts in Madison and at other venues across the state. For more
information on Academy Evenings in your area, visit www.wisconsinacademy.org.
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Panel Participant Bios
 Michael Thornton is a professor of Afro-American
Studies, Asian American Studies and Sociology, and faculty director of the
Morgridge Center for Public Service at UW-Madison. His work on racial attitudes
ranges from examining survey data to understand what factors predict when
blacks feel close to Asian Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, West Indians
and Africans, to exploring black, Asian American, Latino, and mainstream
newspaper coverage of inter-minority relationships. He publishes on racial,
gender and class differences in self-esteem and perceptions of personal control
among black and white adults. Much of this work reflects his own family
heritage: his mother, Japanese; his father, black; and his wife, Dominican.
 Katherine Cramer Walsh is an associate professor in
UW-Madison's Department of Political Science, the Morgridge Center for Public Service
Faculty Research Scholar, and an affiliate professor in both the School of
Journalism and Mass Communication and the La Follette School of Public Affairs.
She is the faculty director of a Wisconsin public opinion survey, the Badger
Poll. She is the author of Talking about Race: Community Dialogues and the
Politics of Difference (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
 Lynet Uttal is a professor in UW-Madison's Department of Human
Development and Family Studies and director of the Asian American Studies
Program. Her current research on Latino immigrant families draws on
community-based research and education workshops that were conducted in Dane
County. She is the author of Making Care Work: Employed Mothers in
the New Childcare Economy (Rutgers University Press, 2002)
 Emily
Auerbach is a UW-Madison professor of English and project director of The Courage to Write, a series of
radio documentaries on women writers. She reaches not only undergraduates
through her campus classes on 19th-century literature but also hundreds of
thousands of nontraditional students through lectures and public appearances.
Auerbach also directs the Odyssey Project, a free humanities course for low-income
adults. She is a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.
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Contact:
Jason A. Smith
tel: 608-263-1692 x21
email: jsmith@wisconsinacademy.org
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