Category: Articles

  • I’m Black. I’m White. I’m Both. I’m Neither. GPB Blogs: On Second Thought Georgia Public Broadcasting Atlanta, Georgia 2015-05-20 Celeste Headlee I’m black. My grandfather is William Grant Still, the “Dean of African-American composers.” His skin was the color of maple syrup. Mine is the color of café au lait. My grandfather suffered countless indignities…

  • Obama’s Twitter Debut, @POTUS, Attracts Hate-Filled Posts The New York Times 2015-05-21 Julie Hirschfeld Davis, White House Correspondent WASHINGTON — When President Obama sent his inaugural Twitter post from the Oval Office on Monday, the White House heralded the event with fanfare, posting a photograph of him perched on his desk tapping out his message…

  • As a mixed-race woman, the defining question of my life has not been “Who am I?” but “What are you?” I get it everywhere, from all races. Recently it’s been mostly from Asian immigrants. You Chinese? Last month a black guy walked up to me while I was pumping gas. Man! How do you people…

  • The Great American Mulatto: Mat Johnson Talks Identity and Facing Ghosts Gawker Review of Books 2015-05-20 Victor LaValle Mat Johnson and I have been friends since we published our first books fifteen years ago. In that time we’ve spent an untold number of hours bullshitting about writing, parenting, and sundry nonsense. Mat’s new novel, Loving…

  • Who is Ismael Ozanne, Wisconsin’s prosecutor in Tony Robinson’s death? Cable News Network (CNN) 2015-05-12 Michael Martinez, Newsdesk Editor & Writer (CNN) Ismael Ozanne wiped a handkerchief across his forehead, nervously tapped a stack of papers on the podium and slowly cleared his throat. It wasn’t the first time he’d made history; that happened in…

  • Proving My Blackness The New York Times Magazine 2015-05-24 Mat Johnson I grew up a black boy who looked like a white one. My parents divorced when I was 4, and I was raised mostly by my black mom, in a black neighborhood of Philadelphia, during the Black Power movement. I put my dashiki on…

  • Obama tweets, and a million follow: ‘It’s Barack. Really!’ Reuters 2015-05-18 Roberta Rampton, White House Correspondent President Barack Obama sent his first tweet from his very own account on Twitter on Monday, quickly amassing a million followers in five hours, the latest of many White House efforts to amplify his message with social media. “Hello,…

  • The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea by Robert Wald Sussman (review) Journal of Interdisciplinary History Volume 46, Number 1, Summer 2015 pages 109-111 Ruth Clifford Engs, Professor Emeritus of Applied Health Science Indiana University, Bloomington Sussman, Robert Wald, The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea (Cambridge:…

  • The Case for Black Doctors The New York Times 2015-05-15 Damon Tweedy, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Duke University, Durham, North Carolina DURHAM, N.C. — IN virtually every field of medicine, black patients as a group fare the worst. This was one of my first and most painful lessons as a medical student…

  • Two Takes on ‘Imitation of Life’: Exploitation in Eastmancolor The New York Times 2015-05-14 J. Hoberman “I would have made the picture just for the title,” Douglas Sirk said of his last Hollywood production, “Imitation of Life” (1959). But, newly released on Blu-ray by Universal, along with its original version, directed in 1934 by John…