Gregory Stephens

For 20-plus years Stephens has advocated and participated in equal rights issues, multi-ethnic artforms, and sustainable lifestyles, as a teacher, pubic speaker, radio programmer, and activist. From 2002-2004 Stephens was a bilingual teacher in Oklahoma City public schools, working with Spanish-language elementary school students. From 2001-02 Stephens was a Rockefeller Fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He did ethnographic research among Latin American immigrants, and studied dual language programs and political debates about bilingualism. Stephens was a Lecturer in American Studies and Mass Communication at the University of California, 1997-99. From 2000-2001 he was Visiting Assistant Professor of Human Relations at the University of Oklahoma, where his classes include intercultural mediation, coalition-building, and civic environmentalism.

CREDO
Stephens is fluent in Spanish, and is the father of two biracial, bilingual children. He is committed in word and deed to creating a "more attractive alternative" to the history of racialism, what Nelson Mandela calls "non-racial democracy." Stephens defines his political agenda as the creation of more inclusive forms of identity, community, and citizenship in which commonality and difference can co-exist. In addition to a politics of inclusion, our biggest challenge of the 21st century is survival, he believes, both cultural and ecological. In writing, teaching, and speaking, Stephens advocates two core issues: the development of an ethic of inter-generational solidarity, and of multi-ethnic kinship.

KNOWING WHAT DIVERSITY MEANS: THE PUBLIC DEBATE
Stephens' book, On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Bob Marley (Cambridge UP), now in its second printing, has aroused a great deal of debate. It features a ground-breaking study, "Bob Marley's Zion: A Transracial 'Blackman Redemption'." Stephens has given dozens of lectures across the United States and in Great Britain, along with many radio interviews. These have included "To the Best of Our Knowledge," syndicated on 90 National Public Radio stations; "London Live," British Broadcasting Corporation; "Get Up Stand Up," The Beat, Los Angeles; "Forum," KQED, San Francisco; "Topical Currents," WLRN, Miami, FL; "Eklektikos," KUT, Austin, TX; "Hard Knocks Radio," KPFA, Berkeley, CA; "Radiogram," KUSP, Santa Cruz, CA; "Real Time," KWAB, Boulder, CO.

As a journalist, Stephens has published nationally in forums such as the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Village Voice, and was an award-winning columnist for the Laredo News in 1981-82. From 1984-87 Stephens was an award-winning songwriter for Elouise Burrell in Austin TX. Their bands Trickle Down and New Mix recorded several records and opened for touring groups ranging from Run-DMC to the Neville Brothers to Dennis Brown.