Gulf Coast Life

Author of 'White Racism' Textbook Comes to FGCU

By Rachel Iacovone,

Published January 24, 2018 at 12:55 PM EST

Flyer advertising White Racism course on Dr. Ted Thornhill's office door

The White Racism sociology course being taught at Florida Gulf Coast University this spring has made national headlines since the announcement of it being offered.

The controversy surrounding the subject led many to question the course curriculum, including the required textbooks. The main one, chosen by the class' professor, Dr. Ted Thornhill, is "Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America" by Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva.

Bonilla-Silva is the president of the American Sociological Association and a sociology professor himself at Duke University. He joins Gulf Coast Live to discuss the text being used in the White Racism class as well as his upcoming lecture, "The Continuing Significance of Color-Blind Racism in TrumpAmerica."

The speech will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday night in the Cohen Center Ballroom on FGCU's campus and is open to the public.

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Rachel Iacovone

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

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Julie Glenn

(1971 - 2022)

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Mike Kiniry

mkiniry@wgcu.org

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