Dr. Ethan Johnson is professor of the Black Studies Department in the School of Gender, Race and Nations at Portland State University.
His research is interdisciplinary and international. He examines broadly the educational experiences of youth of African descent concerning how they negotiate and interpret racial identity and racism in the United States and Ecuador and by extension Latin America. In addition, his scholarship and teaching compares and contrasts mainstream/White and Black people’s representations of blackness in both popular culture and the mass media. He has also extended his work into a socio-historical analysis of the experiences of Black people in Portland, Oregon regarding community organizing and colorism.
He teaches a number of courses that reflect his research interests. They are Slavery, the Multiracial Experience in the United States, Blackness in Latin America and the African Diaspora in Europe. Finally, Dr. Johnson is the founder of the Black Bag Speakers Series at Portland State University.