Rebekah Modrak Curates Essay Series for the National Center for Institutional Diversity

Stamps Professor Rebekah Modrak partnered with Roland L. Leak, Associate Professor of Marketing in the College of Business and Economics at North Carolina A&T State University to curate a series of essays on ​“The Intersection of Power, Race, and Commerce” for Spark magazine, a publication of the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID). The series was published on June 3, 2021.

The series contains a collection of five invited submissions from diversity scholars whose scholarship speaks to the relationships between commerce, power, and race in light of shifting opinions and epiphanies about racial justice, in the wake of massive racial protests over the past year. Essays survey the impact of whiteness and white management on sports culture; question whether progressive representations in Nike ads actually translates into racial justice; critique the ways that universities’ exhibitions of diversity in their marketing materials misleads prospective students into thinking that an aspirational identity has already been achieved; examine the history of Wedgwood decorative porcelain being founded on a singular act of looting ​“White Earth” from South Carolina Cherokees; and analyze advertisers’ use of skin as a commodity, signal of brand meaning, and subject of fetishism.

Spark Magazine | The Intersection of Power, Race, and Commerce