Lecturer Talks of Racial Divisions

Racial division become more prominent when they make their way into a society's pattern of speech a British professor from the Open University said yesterday in this year's first W. E. B. DuBois lecture.

Professor Stuart Hall spoke yesterday on "Race: The Floating Signifier," He emphasized that the power of the words can enhance impressions that would otherwise be based only on the physical attributes.

"Of course there are differences of all sorts in the real world,'" Hall said. "However it's only when these differences have been organized within the discourse that these differences can be said to acquire meaning [and] to have real effects on human beings."

Hall also spoke on how biology affects perceptions of Blacks.

"The key fact about the these grossly physical differences [between Blacks and those of other races] is that they are clearly defined to the eye," Hall said. "They're absolutely, incontrovertibly, the evidence of difference--and, as everyone knows, seeing is believing."

Hall went on to the say that some people mistakenly take Black's physical differences from other races as a sign that Blacks are inferior in some other way.

Hall is Professor of Sociology and Head of Discipline in the Faculty of Social Science at the Open University in the United kingdom. He has co-authored and co-edited many books on topics including politics and the modern state.

W. E. B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr. said he was pleased to have Hall speak in this year's lectures.

"It's exhilarating to have Professor Hall lecture here. He's one of my heroes," Gates said. "I admire him enormously. I Hope it's the first of many visits to Harvard by Professor Hall. He's a brilliant man."

And Hall himself said he was glad to come to Harvard.

"I'm very pleased indeed to be here," Hall said. "The DuBois Institute in the heart of Harvard is an extremely important political intervention and I'm delighted to be invited to speak here,".

Hall will continues his three-lecture series today and tomorrow, speaking on "ethnicity and Difference in Global Times" and "Nations and Diasporas."

All the lectures take place in Emerson 105 at 3:30 p.m.