Author and professor James Darda will discuss the Blue Lives Matter countermovement, formed in 2014 in reaction to calls for police reform because of police brutality, as the focus of the next Conversations on Race and Policing, set for 1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 2, on Zoom.

The program, “The Whiteness of Blue Lives: Race in American Policing,” is open to the public and can be accessed from a PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android at https://csusb.zoom.us/j/97960458784.

“The Blue Lives Matter countermovement that formed in 2014 wielded an old trick,” the program’s description reads. “Joseph Darda, author of ‘How White Men Won the Culture Wars,’ discusses how white men held on to their racial and gender status after civil rights and feminism through mutable identities that allowed them to bridge the two dominant racial ideologies of the time: conservative color blindness and liberal multiculturalism. White men who claim blue lives assert their national belonging as agents of the law while bemoaning that the law doesn’t serve them as blue minorities. What did they do to be so white and blue?”

Also, read Darda’s November 2018 column in the Los Angeles Review of Books, “The Thin White Line,” for more background on his talk.

Darda is an associate professor of English at Texas Christian University, where he teaches 20th and 21st century American literature, American cultural studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and critical sports studies.

He is the author of “How White Men Won the Culture Wars: A History of Veteran America” (University of California Press, 2021) and “Empire of Defense: Race and the Cultural Politics of Permanent War” (University of Chicago Press, 2019). His next book, “The Strange Career of Racial Liberalism,” is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in the spring.

Conversations on Race and Policing, also known as CoRP, began in the aftermath of the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd while in the custody of four Minneapolis, Minn., police officers. A video of the incident posted on social media led to widespread protests, the firing of four police officers, the arrest and conviction of one officer on a second-degree murder and related charges, the other three on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder – and a spotlight worldwide on race and policing.

The series has featured scholars, journalists, law enforcement officers, lawyers, activists, artists, educators, administrators and others from throughout the nation who shared their experience and expertise on issues related to race and policing.

More than 40 forums have taken place, and video recordings of the sessions are posted online on the Conversations on Race and Policing Lecture Series Archive.

The series is organized by CSUSB students Marlo Brooks, Zoralynn Oglesby, Evelyn Jimenez, Jade McDonald, Jaime Castro and Connie Cornejo; Mary Texeira, CSUSB professor of sociology; Jeremy Murray, CSUSB associate professor of history; Robie Madrigal, public affairs/communication specialist for the CSUSB John M. Pfau Library; and community member Stan Futch, president of the Westside Action Group. 

For more information, contact Robie Madrigal at rmadriga@csusb.edu or Jeremy Murray at jmurray@csusb.edu.

Also visit the Conversations on Race and Policing webpage.