The Paris-Bourbon County Library is excited to announce a special Martin Luther King, Jr. Day author talk on January 21 at 10 am. National bestselling author Tanner Colby and Director of the UK Center for Equality and Social Justice Dr. Christia Spears Brown will host an interactive talk about the persistence of social segregation in churches, schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces.
Mr. Colby’s book, Some of My Best Friends Are Black, looks at integration and the ways it has failed Americans of all races. The review publication Bookpage writes:
“While campaigning for Barack Obama in 2008, Tanner Colby realized he didn’t really know any black people. Asking around, he found that his friends didn’t either. There were very few circumstances when blacks and whites, as he phrases it, hang out and play Scrabble together. He set out to learn why.
Four related stories come together here: a Birmingham school system’s gradual integration; a Kansas City neighborhood that fought housing discrimination; the separate and unequal strata occupied by blacks and whites in advertising; and the integration of a Louisiana Catholic parish whose parishioners were separated only by a parking lot.
Dr. Christia Spears Brown is a Professor of Psychology at UK whose research focuses on how our identities are shaped by our experiences of racial, ethnic, and other group membership, especially as children and adolescents. She has appeared as a speaker and writer in national media including NPR, the CBS Evening News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.