Angela Davis sits with Milan Satcher, a sophomore at Brown University, for a photograph. Davis delivered the annual Martin Luther King Jr. lecture at Brown yesterday.

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

PROVIDENCE — How can America claim that race no longer matters when there are more black men in prison than there are in college, when America ignores the rights of prisoners abroad, when minority children continue to receive a second-class education?

Those questions were at the heart of a speech given by Angela Davis, the former Black Panther and radical firebrand, who gave the Martin Luther King Jr. lecture at Brown University last night. Davis, whose signature Afro is now a more subdued halo of blond-tinged curls, seemed to have mellowed in the four decades since she appeared on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List on charges of being an accomplice to kidnapping and murder. (She was later acquitted of all charges.)

It’s hard to imagine that the Angela Davis of the 1960s would acknowledge that she, too, harbors racist thoughts, as Davis did last night. But then the Angela Davis of today is 64 years old and a professor of the history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she also runs the department of feminist studies.

Asked whether a young Southeast Asian student should have called Governor Carcieri a racist, Davis offered a nuanced response, one seasoned by years of political activism as well as intellectual rigor.

“We all bear the imprint of these ideas,” she said, speaking in Salomon Hall. “I also bear the imprint of these multiple racisms. We have to ask the extent to which we are all implicated.”

The crux of Davis’ argument is that many Americans are in denial about the deep life of racism that continues to permeate the nation more than 130 years after black Americans received the right to vote. According to Davis, this country has become so fixated on segregation that it has ignored the many ways that racism still insinuates itself into American life, from the treatment of undocumented aliens to the disproportionate incarceration of black men.

“We have become convinced that the only way to eliminate racism is by not noticing race,” she said. “How can we say that race doesn’t matter when we say who goes to which institution — college or prison?”

In the Old South, the signs of racism were obvious, from segregated schools to segregated water fountains. Now that those signs are gone, Davis said, discrimination continues under the aegis of equality, the idea that we are all somehow color-blind. Race, she said, matters a great deal.

In what might have been a dig at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Davis said that segregation was not abolished because a political leader woke up one day and had an epiphany. Segregation was eliminated because ordinary people became aware that they could be agents of social change.

Davis also spoke of the dangers of associating racism with individuals rather than institutions and attitudes. It’s easy to express outrage when a radio talk show host makes racist comments about black athletes, but why do so few Americans look deeper than that, at the culture that gives rise to such attitudes?

“We live as if racism has been eliminated,” she said. “We treat these events as if they were exceptions or aberrations. But there is a reservoir of racism in our collective psyches.”

And, in a reference to Sen. Barack Obama, Davis said we can’t assume that a new president will represent “our hopes and dreams.” As an aside, Davis said she is voting for the presidential candidate nominated by the Green Party.

After receiving a standing ovation, Davis answered questions from the audience, most of whom were born more than 20 years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law. Asked to reflect on the once-popular adage, “black is beautiful,” she said that she doesn’t use the term, African-American, because she finds it exclusionary.

“I hear that African-American doesn’t include Caribbeans. I find that bizarre. I think it puts black Americans on top of a hierarchy. Black is more inclusive. It gives me a global identity.”

lborg@projo.com