Professor connects economics, institutional racism in classroom

Professor John McCray advocates for the inclusion of diverse students so that everyone’s voice is heard. PHOTO CREDIT: John McCray

Throughout 30 years and many positions at the University of Rhode Island, John McCray Jr. has seen the campus change in front of his own eyes.

“First of all, it’s grown significantly,” McCray said. “The infrastructure has improved, the place is a major world-class institution. In 1990, it was in pretty poor shape, there were a lot of student problems, a lot of social problems, problems with the infrastructure, buildings were too old”

When McCray first joined URI, he was hired as the vice president of Student Affairs, being hired by former URI President Edward Eddy. Before coming to the University, he served in the same position in the State University of New York System. During his time at URI, he oversaw the Division of Student Affairs, the Women’s Center and Disabled Students Services, now known as Disability, Access, and Inclusion.

During his tenure, he oversaw the construction of what is now the Multicultural Student Services Center (MSSC). At the time, the MSSC was in a different building in poor condition, according to McCray. In addition, there had been a student protest led by the Black Student Union, who McCray said felt excluded on campus.

“Various different sources, not just in the University, but in the community got together and said ‘this is not the kind of place we would have, especially for what we call minority students,’” McCray said. “So we decided we would build another building.”

After his time at the Kingston Campus, McCray was named the vice provost of Student Affairs at URI’s Feinstein Campus in Providence in 2000. He served in this role for 14 years before returning to Kingston.

Now, as a professor, McCray teaches both economics and Africana studies. According to him, there is a connection between the two subjects.

“Economics is the study of scarce resources that may have alternative uses and the economics of racism is how our resources are developed and distributed in terms of income and wealth,” McCray said.

He said that racism is an example of a social mechanism that determines the distribution of resources, bringing the two subjects together.

Examples of institutional racism given include racism in employment, education and income. He also pointed out that race and racism are two different constructs.

“Race is a statement about a phenol type, the physical characteristics that you have,” McCray said. “And racism is about a behavior. And the thing about the behavior of racism is that it uses racism as a mask to basically disguise a kind of human behavior that’s used to disguise the distribution of income and wealth.”

McCray also teaches traditional economics courses, such as ECN 201, Introduction to Microeconomics, which sophomore business major Zack Essex is taking right now.

“We’re diving into the basics, and he says we’re gonna talk about stock prices affecting supply carriers and things and I think that’s interesting,” Essex said.

Essex also pointed out that the class will help him in the future when it comes to handling money.

“This is a basic understanding of what affects money, because it’s important to understand money and one day, hopefully, I’ll be dealing with my money, like maybe my business,” Essex said.

Through his time at URI, John McCray has seen the Kingston campus grow over time, and he hopes to continue to see improvements on campus.