Jacqueline Battalora
Going Back to go Forward
45 to 90-minute keynote, can be lengthened for more reflection and discussion time
Explore when, where, how and why the human category called “white people” was first used in law. The history exposes race as a construct and reveals a mindset that is foundational to the United States shaping every institution and workplace. This lecture helps ground people in facts, dramatically diminishes defensiveness and advances shared understanding of the roots of racial bias.
How U.S. Law & Policy Divides US
30 to 60-minute keynote, can be lengthened for more reflection and discussion time
Learn about founding U.S. law that conferred unearned advantage and disadvantage ensuring that the lives of people would be dramatically different. The material exposes the roots of the white = American equation.
Deepens knowledge of racial bias within the U.S. history. Intended to follow GOING BACK TO GO FORWARD and advance knowledge base well beyond the introductory level.
Behind The Blue Line
90-minute keynote, can be lengthened for more reflection and discussion time
Learn how whiteness and patriarchy remain central features of policing, apparent in the constitution of police forces and in police practices. Persistent attention to these forces can advance racial and gender equity while lifting up the dignity and social value of policing as a career.
Develop knowledge of the historical roots of racial & gender bias within policing and identify pathways forward.
Sexuality & Race
30 to 60 minute keynote, can be lengthened for more reflection and discussion time
Learn about the similarities and divergences in the social construction of race and sexuality. This lecture draws upon the work of Johnathan Ned Katz and surfaces patterns in the constructive work of making human difference. Exposes structures of exclusion/inclusion via Sexuality & Race. Ideal for those seeking to draw connections between structures of exclusion and inclusion.
White Guilt, Gender, and the Current Wave of White Rage
90-minute keynote with time for discussion built in
In this interactive training with Dr. Jacqueline Battalora, guilt will be explored as a gendered practice. We will call up experiences of guilt as a guidepost; as stifling; as a weapon; as social control. The wave of so-called “anti-critical race theory” legislation blocking certain content from public school classrooms will be posited as policy protecting primarily women and children from the discomfort of guilt. This largely white male effort will be contextualized within a long line of historical practices similarly couched. Participants can expect to expand their historical knowledge, to see guilt in new ways, and to find within experiences of white guilt insights to inform a racial justice pathway.
“Nothing in my life has required more courage, curiosity, and humility than the exploration of race and few efforts have meant so much.”
Jacqueline Battalora
Dr. Jacqueline Battalora is a keynote speaker, author, and trainer in workplace and educational inclusion. Her keynotes about the legal invention of the human category “white” people, turn contemporary conceptions of race upside down and reorient thinking about race and human divisions. The keynotes are steeped in law and history made both accessible and nuanced.
Jacqueline Battalora is the author of Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today and more than a dozen articles. She is an attorney and professor of sociology at Saint Xavier University, Chicago and a former Chicago Police Officer. Battalora is an editor for the Journal of Understanding and Dismantling Privilege.
She completed her law degree from the University of Toledo and came to Chicago to practice. Her interest in the role of law in creating human difference shaped her graduate work at Northwestern University where she received her Ph.D.