Jean Ait Belkhir
Associate Professor
Ph.D. Paris

Jean Ait Belkhir founded the American Sociological Association Section on Race, Gender and Class, which he chaired from 1994-1998 and was re-elected chair in 2005 and 2006. He also created the journal Race, Gender and Class in 1993. He founded and continues to organize the annual Race, Gender and Class conference at New Orleans since 1998. His specialty is race, gender & class (RGC) and social inequality. Dr. Belkhir teaches RGC as an associate professor at UNO and at Southern University in New Orleans. He has been director of the sociology program at Southern University at New Orleans. Since the formation of the journal and section, several issues of the Race, Gender & Class journal have fostered debate and discussion on issues of intersectionality.

Dr. Belkhir, of Algerian, Berber and French parentage, feels that his formative experiences in France and Algeria, including his academic training, prepared him to study race, gender and class as separate entities, and possibly in an additive way; but when he came to the U.S.A. he began to see the three as simultaneously operating spheres of inequality that should be studied together. While an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin at Superior, Belkhir was involved in American Sociological Association (ASA) workshops on race, gender and class intersectional work.

The ASA RGC Section is now one of the biggest ASA Sections. It has nurtured scholars / activists to study and teach sociological issues from an intersectionality perspective. For Dr. Belkhir the sociological problem of the 21 st century will be the problem of social inequality from an intersectionality of race, gender and class. Dr. Belkhir is currently working on a book entitled: Race, Gender and Class which will bring both capitalism and class back into the discussion of RGC.