Category: Articles

  • Soledad O’Brien on #OscarsSoWhite: Why Did It Take So Long to Have This Discussion? The Hollywood Reporter 2016-01-28 Soledad O’Brien, Founder and CEO Starfish Media Group Soledad O’Brien Getty Images In my experience, diversity doesn’t just “happen.” It has to be very intentional. People have to have a genuine desire to make a change. It’s…

  • Chirlane McCray and the Limits of First-Ladyship The New York Times Magazine 2016-02-09 Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and First Lady Chirlane McCray Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times What two years in Gracie Mansion have meant for a woman who aspired to be the “voice for the forgotten voices.”…

  • Invisible Bridges: Life Along the Chinese-Russian Border The New Yorker 2016-02-09 Peter Hessler In the summer of 2014, Davide Monteleone, an Italian photographer who had lived in Moscow for more than a decade, began to travel to the Russian-Chinese border in search of something that felt real and reliable. “I had been covering the uprising…

  • Bill Clinton downplays Obama: ‘We’re all mixed-race people’ The New York Post 2016-02-14 Aaron Short Bill Clinton still wants to be known as America’s “first black president.” The former president downplayed President Obama’s historic presidency, telling a Memphis crowd Friday everyone has some African ancestry. “Unless your ancestors, every one of you, are 100 percent,…

  • An Interview with Poet and Room Poetry Coordinator Chelene Knight Room: Literature, Art, and Feminism Since 1975 Issue 37.4: Claiming Space (2015) Interview with Bonnie Nish Chelene Knight was born in Vancouver and is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at SFU. She has been published in Sassafras Literary Magazine, Room, emerge 2013 and Raven…

  • “End the Autocracy of Color”: African Americans and Global Visions of Freedom Imperial & Global Forum (blog of the Centre for Imperial and Global History at the History Department, University of Exeter) 2016-02-15 Keisha N. Blain, Assistant Professor of History University of Iowa John Q. Adams Historically, black men and women in the United States…

  • Black History Month 2016: Three-star General, Lt. General Nadja West Black German Cultural Society 2016-02-05 Congratulations!!! Lt. Gen. Nadja West has been appointed as the Army’s 44th Surgeon General. With this appointment comes a promotion to lieutenant general, which makes West the Army’s first black female 3-star general as well as the highest ranking female…

  • Arcade Fire Exploited Haiti, and Almost No One Noticed The Atlantic 2013-11-12 Hayden Higgins Arcade Fire / JF Lalonde The band has a deep, sincere relationship with the Caribbean nation. But even so, Reflektor’s marketing campaign has perpetuated stereotypes. Months before Arcade Fire’s new album came out, I learned of its existence when social media…

  • Maj. Gen. Nadja West confirmed as 44th Army Surgeon General www.army.mil: The Official Homepage of the United States Army 2015-12-11 Maria Tolleson, Media Relations Officer Maj. Gen. Nadja West is sworn in as 44th Surgeon General of the Army by Acting Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning. West is also Commander of the US Army…

  • South Bend high school student behind race-based signs speaks out WNDU TV 16 South Bend, Indiana 2016-02-12 A local high school student says he’s in trouble after he and two other students posted some controversial signs at Riley High School. The signs stated “COLORED ONLY” and “WHITES ONLY,” and they were placed above water fountains…