Author: Steven

  • Miss Universe Japan — spectacle, race, and dreams Grits and Sushi: my musings on okinawa, race, militarization, and blackness 2015-03-19 Mitzi Uehara Carter The newly crowned Miss Universe Japan is Blackanese. No, she’s Japanese. No, she’s Haafu. Multiracial? Mixed? Japanese enough to represent Japan in a silly beauty contest? Ariana Miyamoto is from Nagasaki, Japan…

  • Chicago’s Jazz Age still lives in Archibald Motley’s art The Chicago Tribune 2015-03-20 Howard Reich Where does Chicago’s Jazz Age still live? In the paintings of Archibald Motley, on view in a new exhibition Trumpets blared, saxophones thundered, singers belted and dancers swayed from nighttime to past sunup. Walk along “the Stroll” — a very…

  • The Tragic Immigrant: Duality, Hybridity and the Discovery of Blackness in Mark Twain and James Weldon Johnson ELH Volume 82, Number 1, Spring 2015 pages 211-249 DOI: 10.1353/elh.2015.0001 Richard Hardack Around the turn of the twentieth-century, a number of American writers imagined that European culture could help them develop an external perspective with which to…

  • “What Are You?” That’s None of Your Business Multiracial Asian Families 2015-03-20 Sharon H. Chang A couple months ago I got cornered big time by a stranger and their “What are you?” mind-meld. The unsolicited probing went on for a while. Honestly something I’m used to. But this time was crazy multidimensional and unique in…

  • A young Jewish woman, raised as white, learns she’s not Religion News Service 2015-03-13 Lauren Markoe, National Reporter WASHINGTON (RNS) The Schwartz‘s seemed like any other Jewish family in Woodstock, N.Y., except for one thing: mom and dad were obviously white, and their daughter Lacey was obviously not. That racial disconnect would be easier to…

  • Genetics: No evidence of role in racial mortality gap Science Daily: Your source for the latest research news 2015-03-16 There is still no evidence of genetic difference between blacks and whites to account for the health disparities in cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a new study by McGill University researchers. Published in the American Journal…

  • The Evolution of the Idea of Race: From Scientific Racism to Genomics Oxford University Press Webinar Oxford University Press Friday, 2015-03-20, 18:00-19:00Z, 14:00-15:00 EDT Join Oxford University Press on Friday, March 20th for a Webinar featuring Tanya Golash-Boza. Tanya Golash-Boza is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts at the…

  • As a biracial gentleman, it has been blatantly clear to me my entire movie-going existence that my distinct mixed race experience must be just some fairytale figment of my imagination to those shining the greenlight in Hollywood. Characters of multiple ethnicities typically find their stories swept under the dirty rug to give the red carpet…

  • Alabama Shakes’s Soul-Stirring, Shape-Shifting New Sound The New York Times Magazine 2015-03-18 Joe Rhodes With its highly anticipated second album, this band of small-town misfits finally has a ticket out — not that they would ever leave. In the upstairs dressing room at the Georgia Theater in Athens, Ga., in January, Alabama Shakes was getting…

  • John Rollin Ridge’s Joaquín Murieta: Sensation, Hispanicism, and Cosmopolitanism Western American Literature Volume 49, Number 4, Winter 2015 pages 321-349 DOI: 10.1353/wal.2015.0008 John C. Havard, Assistant Professor Department of English and Philosophy Auburn University, Montgomery, Alabama The mixed-race Cherokee poet, journalist, and novelist John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated…