Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo 1962-

views updated

BONILLA-SILVA, Eduardo 1962-

PERSONAL: Born February 6, 1962, in Bellefonte, PA; son of Jacinto (a college professor) and Ruth M. (a college professor; maiden name, Silva) Bonilla; married Mary Hovsepian (a college professor); children: Omar Francisco. Ethnicity: "Black-Puerto Rican." Education: University of Puerto Rico—Río Piedras, B.A., 1984; University of Wisconsin—Madison, M.A., 1987, Ph.D., 1993.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of Sociology, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX 77843.

CAREER: University of Wisconsin—Madison, instructor in sociology, 1992; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, assistant professor of sociology, 1993-98; Texas A & M University, College Station, assistant professor, 1998-2002, associate professor of sociology, 2002—. Lecturer at institutions in the United States and elsewhere, including Rutgers University, McGill University, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Stanford University, and Washington State University.

AWARDS, HONORS: Oliver Cromwell Cox Award, American Sociological Association, 2001, for White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era.

WRITINGS:

White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil RightsEra, Lynne Rienner Publishers (Boulder, CO), 2001.

Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and thePersistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2002.

(Editor, with Ashley W. Doane) White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism, Routledge (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to books, including Race, Nation, and Citizenship, edited by Paul Wong, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1999; Skin Deep: How Race and Complexion Matter in the "Color-Blind" Era, edited by Cedric Herring, Verna Keith, and Hayward Derrick Horton, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL); Racialized Identities in the City: Implications for the Twenty-first Century, edited by Alma H. Young; and The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity: Theory, Methods, and Public Policy, edited by Amanda E. Lewis and Maria Krysan, Russell Sage Press (New York, NY). Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Journal of Political Ideologies, Critical Sociology, Sociological Inquiry, Discourse and Society, American Sociological Review, Research in Politics and Society, Journal of Latin American Studies, and Race and Society.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Editing White Logic, White Methods, White Researchers: Racism and Methodology, with Tukufu Zuberi; Anything but Racism: How Sociologists Limit the Significance of Racism, with Hayward Horton and Gianpaolo Baiocchi.

SIDELIGHTS: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva told CA: "I write to challenge people's common sense on racial matters. If I do my job well, readers must either love what I have to say or hate it passionately.

"By training I am a sociologist and most of what I know about sociology I learned in Puerto Rico, where I received my B.A. in sociology.

"Writing is a craft. Thus, my approach to writing is similar to how workers approach their jobs. I write every day and am not concerned about perfection. I never have had 'writer's block' because my goal is not to be Hemingway or Poe, but rather to communicate as clearly as I can.

"I write about racial and ethnic relations in the United States and Latin America because I know, as a black Puerto Rican, how important these social categories are. Race matters here and elsewhere."