Professor Nitasha Sharma is known for her work in researching and comparing different societies and cultures. On this episode of Global Lunchbox Podcast, Sharma discusses these distinctions and their importance on the theme of “Conducting Comparative Race Studies: Black Studies, Native Studies, and Black Residents of the Hawaiian Islands.” She highlights how most people do not consider racial disparities for those living in lesser-known countries, such as some of the Pacific islands, and how their experience may be dissimilar to that of more well-known countries.
Sharma is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Asian American Studies and Director of the Asian American Studies Program at Northwestern. She is the author of Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness (2010) and Hawai′i Is My Haven: Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific (forthcoming in September 2021).