Celebrating AAIDN Board Member Kim McClain DaCosta

This  Black History month, AAIDN is pleased to celebrate its board member Dr. Kim DaCosta, associate professor of sociology at New York University. Dr. DaCosta’s scholarship focuses on racial inequality—in particular, the contemporary production of racial boundaries. Find out more about Professor DaCosta, her work at NYU, and why she is so strongly committed to the work of the African American Irish Diaspora Network.

Three questions with Professor Kim DaCosta, AAIDN Board Member:

Kim McClain DaCosta, is associate professor of sociology at New York University. She received her B.A. degree from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Her book, Making Multiracials: State, Family, and Market in the Redrawing of the Color Line (Stanford University Press, 2007), explores the cultural and social underpinnings of the movement to create multiracial collective identity in the United States.

Professor DaCosta is currently writing on how interracial extended kin relationships speak to questions of interracial empathy, care, and politics. She teaches courses on race in different societies, social mobility, consumerism, and the commercialization of intimate life. Professor DaCosta served as Associate Dean of Students at NYU's Gallatin School for seven years and has been involved in NYU’s Prison Education Program since its inception in 2013, most recently as its Faculty Director.

We celebrate Professor DaCosta and her many contributions to scholarship and to the African American Irish Diaspora Network this month.

To learn more about her, we asked three questions:

1.     What drew you to the AAIDN?

To be honest, when I first heard of AAIDN I was astonished (and delightfully so) that such a group existed.  Having lived my life as an American of Irish and African descent, that identification was largely familial—something shared only with my five siblings. What a treat to find others with a similar history and a group interested in exploring the multifaceted and longstanding connections between both communities. 

2.      Can you share a summary of any current research of interest to the AAIDN membership?

I’m currently exploring the extent of the genealogical ties between African Americans and people of Irish descent.  While we have a growing number of historical accounts of the places and events in which blacks and Irish came into contact, much of that research emphasizes the big events of economic and political life (e.g., the draft riots, labor competition, slavery). We know less about the forms of intimacy between blacks and Irish and their legacies in the present.

3.      What initiative(s) of the AAIDN do you find most energizing?

Hard to choose, but if I must, I would say that the opportunities AAIDN offers for collaborative learning about our shared history and how we might use it to make sense of a changing present is especially exciting to me.  Be it podcasts, lectures, student exchanges—these are vehicles through which to bring people together, something we need more of!