Venise Wagner
Venise Wagner is a professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, where she has taught since 2001. She has a 12-year career as a reporter for several California dailies, including the Orange County Register, the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle. She has covered border issues, religion and ethics, schools and education, urban issues, and issues in the San Francisco Bay Area’s various black communities.
Biography
Venise Wagner is a professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, whereshe has taught since 2001. She has a 12-year career as a reporter for several California
dailies, including the Orange County Register, the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle.
She has covered border issues, religion and ethics, schools and education, urban issues,
and issues in the San Francisco Bay Area’s various black communities.
Venise has a BS in Chemistry from the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana, and an MA in Latin American Studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Relations, Monterey (which used to be the Monterey Institute of International Studies).
Education
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BS, Chemistry, University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana, '85
MA, Middlebury Institute of International Studies, '87
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Professor Wagner interests include explorations into racial inequality, structural racism, and various ways journalism impacts public policy and public dialogue around these issues. She's also working on a family memoir about her grandfather who was the first African American in Chicago's US Steel plant to become a journeyman boilermaker. The book examines how workplace discrimination and residential segregation informed Chicago's racial wealth gap in the mid 20th century and into today.
Personal Interests
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Venise and her miniature poodle, Gigi, are going through agility training. She also ice skates with her local skating club in Oakland, California.
Websites
Books
Articles
Living in the Red: Black Steelworkers and the Wealth Gap
Published: Dec 27, 2016 by Labor Studies Journal
Authors: Venise Wagner
Subjects:
Economics, Finance, Business & Industry, History, Sociology & Social Policy, Urban Studies
A database built from recently released archival bankruptcy records shows that African-American steelworkers compared with white steelworkers were disproportionately represented as bankruptcy petitioners soon after the 1959 national steel strike began. A deeper exploration finds that black steelworkers in Chicago at this time, despite their security in the union, faced a myriad of financial barriers.