Author: Steven

  • Peola: “There’s nothing wrong in passing. The wrong is the world that makes it necessary.” Fannie Hurst, Imitation of Life, P. F. Collier, (1933): 244.

  • The word “Negro” is, biologically, a misnomer, for the African Negroes, brought to the United States as slaves, have crossed in breeding with the dominant White population, as well as with the aboriginal American Indian types with whom they came into contact, so that there is today only a small percentage of the American Negroes…

  • Obama’s mixed ancestry generates some of the new uncertainty about blackness. The white part of his genetic inheritance is not socially hidden, as it often is for “light-skinned blacks” who descend from black women sexually exploited by white slaveholders and other white males. Rather, Obama’s white ancestry is right there in the open, visible in…

  • ..this was a book that really, completely, changed and challenged everything that I knew and I thought I knew about race. And I thank you for that, because it’s just one of those books that really, really kind of changes your life in a way because it sort of opens things up and makes you…

  • There are no three primary races, no three major groups. The idea of three primary races stems from nineteenth-century typology; it is totally misleading to put the black-skinned people of the world together-to put the Australian in the same grouping with the inhabitants of Africa. And there are certainly at least three independent origins of…

  • Confounding Identity: Exploring the Life and Discourse of Lucy E. Parsons Berks Conference for Women Historians 2011 29 pages Michelle Diane Wright, Assistant Professor of History Community College of Baltimore County Despite the vast research conducted on radical activist history of late nineteenth century Chicago, there is very little that examines political and social ideologies…

  • In hindsight, onlookers often accuse Lucy Parsons of negating her African heritage for a seemingly more desirable ethnic identity. There is a sense, especially within the modern African American community, that a person of color self-labeling anything other than exclusively Black is virtually treasonous and committing a form of identity denial and self-hate. Criticism of…

  • The cradle to the grave: Reflections on race thinking thesis eleven: critical theory and historical sociology Volume 115, Number 1 (April 2013) pages 43-57 DOI: 10.1177/0725513612470533 Gerhard Maré, Professor of Sociology University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa Despite a constitutional and oft-stated political commitment to an undefined notion of non-racialism, South Africans continue to operate…

  • Who will benefit from AR-TPD “cost-savings”? Two or More: Mixed thoughts about the Census NAC 2013-03-24 Eric Hamako Eric Hamako is one of 32 members of the Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee (NAC) on Race, Ethnic, and Other Populations, 2012-2014. This blog is intended to 1) share updates and Eric’s perspectives on the NAC, 2)…

  • Race, Religion Collide in 2012 Campaign The Associated Press 2012-05-05 Jesse Washington, National Writer, Race and Ethnicity Rachel Zoll, National Religion Writer How unthinkable it was, not so long ago, that a presidential election would pit a candidate fathered by an African against another condemned as un-Christian. And yet, here it is: Barack Obama vs.…