The Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics started in January of 2006 is funded by Dean Scott Waugh of the Social Sciences Division at UCLA and headed by Director Mark Q. Sawyer of the Department of Political Science and the Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies Center.

   The Center aim of the center is to explore the way in which race, and ethnicity are important parts of modern societies. The center seeks to examine race, and ethnicity at the local level, at the international level, and comparatively.

   In order to accomplish this the Center will support outside speakers as well as bring faculty, students, and community members in Los Angeles interested in the topic. Mark Q. Sawyer's primary research interests focus on Latin America. He has recently published a book entitled Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba with Cambridge University Press. Other faculty associated with the center include Professor Raymond Rocco who examines immigrant political organizing and the search for citizenship in Los Angeles, Associate Vice Chancellor of Community Affairs Franklin Gilliam who works on race and communications, Director of the Institute for Social Science Research David Sears who works on racial attitudes in the US context, Professor Edward Telles an expert on Mexican migration and Race in Brazil, and Professor E. Victor Wolfenstein who examines the work of great figures like W.E.B. DuBois, and Malcolm X through the lens of political theory.

   The Center also plans to take advantage of the unique laboratory that Los Angeles provides. It will conduct a large-scale survey exploring the racial attitudes of major groups in the Los Angeles area. In particular it will examine the racial attitudes, especially those developing among minority groups like African Americans, Latinos, and Asians in the US. The study will hope to examine what creates, community, prejudice and conflict among groups as measured in the survey research context. Issues included will be jobs and labor, schools, and immigration. The Center will also archive surveys collected on racial attitudes in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

   In addition the center will continue to support international work. Students associated with the center are working on issues like Salvadoran migrants in the US, African Migrants in France and the interaction between African Americans and the Chinese in the Mississippi Delta. The Center hopes to push the study of race beyond the boundaries of the US and into an international, and comparative context. It also hopes to move the understanding of race in the US beyond the black/white paradigm.

   The Center Director Mark Sawyer is quoted as saying, “Issues of Race, and Ethnicity are some of the most complex modern societies have to face. Our idea of who is or who is not a member of the race, nation, or neighborhood are in understood through the lens of race. Societies as disparate as the US, France, Cuba, the Sudan, and Venezuela are struggling with these phenomena. Globalization and mass migration have only accelerated the importance of race, nation and citizenship.”