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My article is on Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. I plan to expand on his earlier life and influences that helped him in his career and development of characteristics. The article can also include more details on his works and personal life.

Article:

Early Influences
''Bonilla-Silva experienced a rich education while studying in Puerto Rico where he double majored in Sociology and Economics. Moreover, he also met key mentors at this university. In his work White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-civil Rights Era, he recounts these mentors: "Myriam Muniz, Arturo Torrecillas, Carlos Buitrago, Juan Jose Baldrich, Carlos Ramos [...] shaped my sociological imagination". This sociological imagination continued to develop as he transitioned to a graduate education later in the US. At Wisconsin-Madison, Jose A. Padin and Charles Camic are two noteworthy mentors that Silva recounts to be key influences on his development as a sociologist .''

''As a early sociologist, Silva was focused on Marxism ideas. He learned this from his mentor, Arturo Torrecillas. Torrecillas served as a professor of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Bonilla-Silva's undergraduate university. As a student, the young undergraduate learned from his professor and adopted similar views.''

''Thus, both during his undergraduate and graduate career, Silva was in the presence of key sociological figures that supported his development and helped him become more independent. It was in his publications that Silva recognized these early influences on his personal and career growth.''

Family and Early Life
''Born in Pennsylvania, Silva grew up in a family of intellectuals. His father, Jacinto Silva, was a university lecturer and his mother, Ruth Maria Silva , was a sociologist like her son. Bonilla-Silva said that his parents helped provide a stable environment for him, supplying what was necessary for him to grow. Moreover, his mother had a significant influence on her son, providing him an early influence in sociology.''

''Bonilla-Silva has his own family as well. He married Mary Hovsepian and they have a son together called Omar Francisco Bonilla .''

Publications and Evolution of Sociological Views
''In both his personal life and as a student, Bonilla-Silva encountered many influences. His professors, friends, coworkers, and eventually his own students all impacted his growth and development as a sociologist. As a student, he was influenced by Marxist teachings. However, the man changed his focus soon as he learned and encountered racial prejudice and felt a calling to deal with the racism in the United States. This is evidenced by the explosion of published literature centering the structure of race in society and its influence on people.''

''In one of his earliest literature, Bonilla-Silva suggested a "structural" understanding of racism, a relatively unexplored and revolutionary way of approaching this idea. This was shown in his work Rethinking racism: Toward a structural interpretation. This work was done near the end of his time while the scholar was at the University of Michigan, before he started working at Texas A&M University .''

''As Bonilla-Silva continued to expand the boundaries of the understanding of racism, his literature reflected these new findings. Examples include:''
 * Racism Without Racists (4th Ed) 
 * In this book published in 2014, Bonilla-Silva delves into a discussion regarding race relationships in modern America. Despite the political correctness that has permeated society, racism still exists on a broad scale. The stereotyping and categorization of people by their skin color or heritage continues to be a big role in society. The author bring this issue to light, considering a broad range of perspectives. Moreover, he also takes a historical view on this issue since the past has a really big influence on how modern society thinks and functions.
 * What We Were, What We Are, and What We Should Be: The Racial Problem of American Sociology 
 * This journal publication comes in light of Bonilla-Silva's new position as president of the American Sociological Association . He considers this new position along with the problems that sociologists like him are trying to solve in the realm of race relationships and racism. In a way, this publication serves as a public statement of his mission, his values as the new president.
 * Other works also include:
 * The new racism: The racial regime of post-civil rights America 
 * Introduction: Examining, debating, and ranting about the Obama phenomenon 
 * The Sweet Enchantment of Color Blindness in Black Face: Explaining the “Miracle,” Debating the Politics, and Suggesting a Way for Hope to be “For Real” in America 
 * The invisible weight of whiteness: the racial grammar of everyday life in contemporary America 
 * The last shall be first: Best Books in the Race Field Since 2000 
 * The 2008 Elections and the Future of Anti-racism in 21st Century America Or How We Got Drunk with Obama’s Hope Liquor and Failed to See Reality 
 * and many more...

''From all of these works, it is evident that Bonilla-Silva has been an active scholar in the sociological topic of race. He has taken several angles at the topic, investigating it from a historical lens, a political lens such as with the recent political administration run by President Obama , and from his perspective looking at modern society. His seminal works have largely contributed to new ideas and new ways of envisioning the influence of racism in society.''

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (born February 6, 1962 in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania) is an American political sociologist and professor of sociology at Duke University. Since August 2017, he has been the president of the American Sociological Association. Previous to this, he taught at Texas A&M University (1998-2005) and University of Michigan (1993-1998) .

Education and career
Bonilla-Silva received his BA in sociology and economics from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus in 1984, and his MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1987 and 1993, respectively. He taught at the University of Michigan from 1993–1998 and at Texas A&M University from 1998–2005, after which he joined the Duke faculty.

Work and views
Bonilla-Silva is known for researching the role of race in public life. In 2003, he published the book Racism Without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, which discusses his view that systemic racism is a major problem in the United States, despite the fact that Americans do not do or say something overtly racist on a regular basis. As of 2014, it was his best-selling book. He has said that systemic racism in the United States did not disappear in the 1970s, as many Americans believe, but merely became less overt and harder to identify. He has also blamed the fact that formerly all-white colleges in the United States did not change their curriculum or culture after integrating for racist incidents re-occurring on the campuses of these colleges. He has described these colleges as "historically white", and has said that this problem is not one of bad apples, but that it may be one of the entire apple tree.

In October 2017, Bonilla-Silva criticized Supreme Court Justice John Roberts for referring to social science as "sociological gobbledygook."

Awards
Bonilla-Silva received the 2011 Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award from the American Sociological Association (ASA). In 2009, he and Tukufu Zuberi both received the Oliver C. Cox Award from the ASA's Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities for their book White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology.