Author: Steven

  • Obama has 44 cousins in the Senate. Now can’t we all just get along? The Guardian 204-08-07 A J Jacobs Forget the president’s Tea Party cousin or Washington animosity. My research shows that we’re all part of one big family. A dysfunctional one, but still – come on, cousins! It’s been a tough week for…

  • Mixed race kids a new phenomenon in the Netherlands? We think not. Africa Is a Country 2014-06-11 Chandra Frank Mieke Weisemann This week cultural centre de Balie in Amsterdam will be hosting an event titled ‘LovingDay.nl: (In)visibly Mixed’ on “mixed race” families and relationships (BTW, the Netherlands uncritically accepts this terminology, along with the assumption…

  • The problem with sub-Saharan Africa and DNA analysis tools Genealogy Adventures 2014-07-08 Brian Sheffey This is the first post in a series that covers issues I’ve experienced with reporting of sub-Saharan African results in DNA analysis. This series of posts will have a particular emphasis on DNA testing for African Americans. Over the next series…

  • A surprising number of people change their race and ethnicity from one Census to the next The Washington Post 2014-08-06 Emily Badger, Reporter On Census forms, the option to check a box for racial or ethnic identity presupposes that there’s an unambiguous answer: white, black, American Indian, Hispanic, etc. But identity is a fluid thing.…

  • America’s Churning Races: Race and Ethnic Response Changes between Census 2000 and the 2010 Census CARRA Working Paper Series Working Paper #2014-09 Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications United States Census Bureau Washington, D.C. 2014-08-04 56 pages Carolyn A. Liebler University of Minnesota Sonya Rastogi U. S. Census Bureau Leticia E. Fernandez U. S.…

  • “Where a Man is a Man”?: Ancestral Possibilities in Charles Chesnutt’s Paul Marchand, F.M.C. African American Review Volume 46, Numbers 2-3, Summer/Fall 2013 pages 397-411 DOI: 10.1353/afa.2013.0048 Susan M. Marren, Associate Professor University of Arkansas This essay reads Charles Chesnutt’s Paul Marchand, F.M.C. not as a historical romance (as Chesnutt’s contemporaneous publishers deemed it) but…

  • In “The Octoroon”—the most controversial play of his career—Boucicault addresses the sensitive topic of race and slavery. George Peyton inherits a plantation, and falls in love with an octoroon—a person one-eighth African American, and thus, in 1859 Louisiana, legally a slave.

  • First Métis Families of Quebec, 1622-1748. Volume 1: Fifty-Six Families Genealogical Publishing Company 2012 226 pages 8½” x 11” Paperback ISBN: 9780806355610 Gail Morin The term Métis originally referred to the offspring produced from the intermarriage of early French fur traders with Canadian Native Americans. Later, there were also Anglo Métis (known as “Countryborn”)–children of…

  • Your words don’t change who I am The Race Card Project (by Michele Norris) 2014-08-05 Blake Coffey Van Nuys, California In a world where being mixed is supposed to be looked at as beautiful, it’s not as easy when you are. People automatically assume that all mixed people are supposed to look mixed just like…

  • “Now We Will Be Happy” is a prize-winning collection of stories about Afro-Puerto Ricans, U.S.-mainland-born Puerto Ricans, and displaced native Puerto Ricans who are living between spaces while attempting to navigate the unique culture that defines Puerto Rican identity.