The Race and Change Initiative is a multimedia site that was created by author, oral historian and media producer Dr. Kitty Oliver while an adjunct professor of oral history writing and race and ethnicity within the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, and it was generously funded by the Community Foundation for Palm Beach, Martin Counties, Knight Foundation Fund, and New Visions Educational Foundation, Inc.
The site highlights creative uses of the Race and Change Dialogue strategy, a 21st Century model for talking about differences in public forums in a non-confrontational, inclusive, hopeful way across cultures and generations including:
The Race and Change Initiative Youth Outreach Project featuring intergenerational dialogues across cultures with radio broadcasts and transcripts of stories of college students and teenagers of diverse immigrant backgrounds, video programs on the race relations experiences of youth and elders.
The podcast Voices of Race and Change: The Younger Generation, produced by young people across cultures sharing their personal experiences with race and ethnic issues today.
Voices of Race and Change: Oral Histories and Podcast, exploring race relations from the perspective of elders from a variety of cultural backgrounds, including excerpts from the Race and Change Oral Histories archive.
The Race and Change Oral Histories archive has over 125 audio-taped and videotaped interviews of Whites, Blacks, Hispanics/Latinos, and Asians ranging from life histories of baby boomers – U.S. born and immigrants – who came of age with the Civil Rights Movement, to interviews in Ghana, West Africa. It is the only cross-cultural collection of its kind and scope in the U.S. where ordinary people reflect candidly on race relations experiences over the years and how society and they have changed.
Dr. Kitty Oliver is a veteran journalist and academic, an author and oral historian, a media producer, and a professional singer with an MFA in Creative Writing, specializing in literary nonfiction and memoir, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies, focusing on race and ethnic communication.
A product of the civil rights era who came of age with integration in the U.S., she brings an innovative perspective to race and ethnic relations sharing research and stories across cultures in Race and Change dialogues where people can explore race in a hopeful, progressive way.
