Exclusion, Stigmatization, and Civic Imagination: Reflections on the Limits of Civility

• In Event: 390 - Section on Race, Gender and Class Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. The Politics of Race, Gender, Class, and Sexuality

Abstract

This study aims to document the human cost of race and gender stigmatization and its continuing sway over America. Its primary focus is on the pathways open to the stigmatized groups seeking to join civil society after centuries of institutionalized exclusion, the dogged persistence of stigmatizing practices after society renounced its bigoted customs, the civic rituals the excluded are expected to master as a price of full citizenship, the repressive dimension of civility as a price of admission to full citizenship, and the dilemmas the newly enfranchised face while trying to fit their particularistic identities into the universalistic paradigm of modern democracy.

Author

• Dmitri Shalin, University of Nevada-Las Vegas