Jacqueline Battalora, Author of “Birth of a White Nation,” to Speak Sept. 12 at UNC Asheville

Jacqueline Battalora, author of Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today, will give a free public lecture at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 12 in UNC Asheville’s Highsmith Student Union, in the Blue Ridge Room.

Battalora, a native of Edinburgh, Scotland who also lived in Belgium while growing up, moved to Victoria, Texas with her family, where she attended middle school and high school and began forming an understanding of race in America. Once a police officer in Chicago, she is now an attorney and professor of sociology at Saint Xavier University.

Battalora’s talk is titled Going Back to Go Forward: Exploring the When, Where, How and Why the Human Category Called “White People” Was First Used in Law. The lecture will explore the legal history of race beginning in the 1600s and examine how the deployment of class and gender hierarchy have played a role in current public understandings of race.

For more information, contact Luke Givens (lgivens@unca.edu), director of UNC Asheville’s Office of Multicultural Affairs & Intercultural Center which is presenting this lecture.