Dr. Tehama Lopez Bunyasi
Assistant Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR), George Mason University
In an October 2012 poll, Lopez Bunyasi fielded questions about the value of Whiteness and the racial experiences of White respondents. Her analysis of the poll data indicates that Whites are more likely to claim that racial privilege exists in certain domains of American society as compared to others. She, furthermore, finds that Whites are more likely to provide color-blind answers when talking about the role of race in their own personal lives as opposed to when they are assessing the role of race in society at large.
Tehama Lopez Bunyasi is an Assistant Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) at George Mason University. A political scientist by training, her research is grounded in conflicts around race and ethnicity in the United States with specializations in racial attitudes and ideologies, structural inequality, Whiteness, Latino racial identity, and political behavior. Dr. Lopez Bunyasi is currently preparing a book manuscript, Breaking the Contract: The Political Possibilities of Seeing White Privilege. This multi-methodological project examines the role of perceptions of White privilege on the racial attitudes and political preferences of White Americans. This study finds that awareness of the relative advantages Whites have over People of Color contributes to greater support for interventions that help reduce racial inequality. She is also working on a project that examines how the American non-elite makes and ascribes meaning to Latino racial identity through their conversations with one another.
Africana Studies
Co-Sponsors: Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Political Science Department