Artist in Residence and documentary filmmaker Bruce Orenstein and his students have produced videos for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Democracy NC, and the North Carolina NAACP.
The Visual Narratives of Inequality working group engages in digital storytelling that highlights issues of social and economic inequality.
The Narratives of Inequality working group embodies the philosophy that showing the human effects of unjust policies is a powerful tool for informing policymaking in the present—and working towards a more equitable future.
This working group collaborates closely with researchers, community leaders, and the public to communicate the historical practices, lived experiences, and adverse effects of social inequality.
The group employs a multifaceted approach, utilizing filmmaking, podcasts, social media and other visual mediums to convey the lived realities of those affected by inequality.
Projects
Shame of Chicago
Directed by documentary filmmaker and Artist in Residence Bruce Orenstein, Shame of Chicago: Shame of the Nation is a four-part documentary series that brings alive the story of how Chicago’s real estate industry designed and exported the practices and policies that racially divided America’s northern cities during the 20th century. This series chronicles the history of housing segregation and its lasting impact on America’s racial wealth gap. It is scheduled to be broadcast on public television in April 2024 and then placed on the Cook Center website where it’ll be available as a teaching resource for educators nationwide. For questions, contact Bruce Orenstein at bruce.orenstein@duke.edu.
Voices in Equity Podcast
Voices in Equity is the official podcast of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. In this series, we invite subject matter experts discuss the various causes and consequences of inequality while considering remedies for these disparities. For questions, contact Amber Holland at amber.holland@duke.edu.
Cook Center Media Workshop
The Cook Center Media Workshop was a group of student interns dedicated to using media and storytelling to create social change. Under the direction of documentary filmmaker and Artist in Residence Bruce Orenstein, students directed, edited, and produced videos that highlight issues of social and economic inequality in North Carolina.
Past projects have explored racial inequality in Durham’s school-to-prison pipeline, the challenges facing North Carolina’s low-wage workers, and the impact of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. These videos have been featured on a multitude of platforms including ABC World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer, UNC Public Radio, the 2013 Summer Retreat of Congressional Democrats, and the 2015 Oral History Association National Conference. For questions, contact Bruce Orenstein at bruce.orenstein@duke.edu.
Durham's Black Wall Street: Finding Freedom Through Entrepreneurship
Durham's Black Wall Street is an exhibition that looks at the key themes behind the success of Black Wall Street in Durham, North Carolina: capital, courage, and connection. Visitors have the opportunity to hear from people who experienced Black Wall Street and Hayti, Durham's Black business district under segregation, first-hand through listening stations and videos.
Through an interactive touchscreen, they are able to explore many of the Black businesses in Hayti that were lost to the City of Durham's Urban Renewal program in the 1960s. The exhibition ends with the current moment, marked by the decline of Black business nationally, and points to lessons from the Black Wall Street era as a path towards addressing the racial wealth gap through meaningful support for entrepreneurs today.
The physical exhibition is located on the first floor of the historic NC Mutual Tower in downtown Durham, North Carolina. The exhibit is also available virtually and can be accessed by clicking the button below. For questions, contact Quran Karriem at quran.karriem@duke.edu.
Quran Karriem
Quran is an experimental musician, media artist and theorist working primarily with electronic and algorithmic media. His research is concerned with human improvisation and automated decision, particularly insofar as they reproduce sovereign power and racial hierarchy through semi-autonomous knowledge systems. His work examines the power relations and ideologies that inhere in the design of digital systems, processes and interfaces, and is motivated by a concern with the operative and recursive nature of computational, racialized capital in postmodern sociotechnical assemblages.
A multiple award-winning software designer and former product executive, Quran has led development teams for a number of media and technology companies and applies a decade of direct experience with systems design, data management and organizational structure in the context of ‘start-up culture’ to social critique. His product initiatives have been recognized by such global research and trade bodies as Gartner Research, the Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association (GSMA), the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) and Frost & Sullivan.
Bruce S. Orenstein
Bruce Orenstein is currently producing the documentary series Shame of Chicago: The Segregation of an American City. He also runs the Telling Our Stories Student Working Group at the Cook Center and teaches documentary production at the Arts of the Moving Image Program. Orenstein founded and directed the Chicago Video Project, one of the nation’s first studios dedicated to producing organizing-driven videos for grassroots social change organizations. His television credits include the Emmy-award winning WTTW documentary No Place to Live, and the nationally broadcast PBS documentaries, The Democratic Promise: The Life and Legacy of Saul Alinsky and American Idealist: The Story of Sargent Shriver. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Orenstein led direct-action community organizations in low-income communities in Chicago and Seattle.
Rachel Ruff
Rachel Ruff works to disseminate research findings and current events to media materials for the Cook center past, current, and ongoing projects. Additionally, she works with the Inequality Studies minor and the Hank and Billye Suber Aaron Young Scholars Research Institute. She graduated from Fayetteville State University with her BA in Political Science and a minor in Creative & Professional Writing.
Her research interests span across Political Science, History, Public Policy, and Education Policy, with a keen focus on higher education, civic engagement, and social equity. She is particularly interested in exploring political behavior, the dynamics of the American political system, and the impact of public opinion on legislative processes. Additionally, she is interested in how these concepts shape an understanding of the current state of Black American Politics.
