Paquin to discuss American apartheid at Friday colloquium

A Bluffton University faculty member who has conducted research in the Ferguson, Mo., area will present a March 13 campus colloquium aimed at helping provide better understanding of the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting last August.

Dr. Walter Paquin, assistant professor of social work at Bluffton University, will discuss “Ongoing ‘American Apartheid’: St. Louis County 1990-2010” at 4 p.m. Friday in Stutzman Lecture Hall in Centennial Hall. The talk is free and open to the public.

The colloquium will examine 20 years of neighborhood mobility to and within St. Louis County, the increased segregation experienced by black county residents and its impact on community members’ lives. It will shed light on the frustration expressed by Ferguson community members after the fatal shooting of Brown, an unarmed, 18-year-old black man, by a white police officer.

Paquin was an area resident, as well as a researcher, as a graduate student at Washington University in neighboring St. Louis. He revisited his study of black suburban neighborhoods last summer.