Category: Articles

  • Professor shifts the lens on race through portraiture, new book FIU News Florida International University 2014-01-02 Evelyn Perez What is blackness? What does it mean to be black? Is blackness a matter of biology or consciousness? Who and what determine who is black and who is not? A new book by Yaba Blay, co-director of…

  • DNA Double Take The New York Times 2013-09-16 Carl Zimmer From biology class to “C.S.I.,” we are told again and again that our genome is at the heart of our identity. Read the sequences in the chromosomes of a single cell, and learn everything about a person’s genetic information — or, as 23andme, a prominent…

  • The Alternative History of 2013: Alt-Weeklies Year in Review AAN News Association of Alternative Newsmedia 2013-12-19 Jason Zaragoza For our first-ever Alt-Weeklies Year in Review, we asked AAN editors and reporters to share the stories they are the most — and least — proud of from the past year. What follows is an edited version…

  • The trouble with ‘passing’ for another race/sexuality/religion… The Guardian 2014-01-02 Koa Beck Brooklyn, New York The broadening of the definition historically used for those of mixed-race who ‘passed’ as white exposes the power of privilege “Racial passing“, or “passing”, was originally coined to define the experience of mixed raced individuals, particularly in America, who were…

  • Melissa Harris-Perry: LGBT Advocates Need Public Progressive Faith Religion Dispatches Sexuality/Gender University of Southern California 2011-05-31 Peter Montgomery, Associate Editor Political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry has developed a devoted following with her appearances on Bill Moyers Journal and Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, and her insightful commentaries on race, history, politics and culture in The Nation and…

  • Whiter Shades of Pale: “Coloring In” Machado de Assis and Race in Contemporary Brazil Latin American Research Review Volume 48, Number 3 (2013) pages 3-24 DOI: 10.1353/lar.2013.0046 Alex Flynn, Lecturer in Anthropology Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom Elena Calvo-González, Professor of Anthropology Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil Marcelo Mendes de Souza Department of Comparative Literature…

  • De Blasio Sworn In as New York Mayor The New York Times 2014-01-01 Michael M. Grynbaum Bill de Blasio was sworn in as the 109th mayor of New York City early Wednesday, at two minutes past the stroke of midnight. The oath of office was administered by Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New…

  • Racial Democracy and Nationalism in Panama Ethnology Volume 45, Number 3 (Summer, 2006) pages 209-228 DOI: 10.2307/20456595 Carla Guerrón-Montero, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Latin American Studies, Black American Studies, and Women’s Studies University of Delaware In spite of having more fluid and flexible racial boundaries than other regions of the world, Latin America continues to…

  • Am I supposed to be more Brazilian than black? Africa is a Country 2013-12-20 Daniel Barbosa We’re always told (by our media, politicians, commentators, etcetera) that Brazil is the most multicultural and multiracial country in the world. That Brazilian miscegenation gave birth to a unique kind of beauty and that the Brazilian mixture of races…

  • Marylander of the Year: Benjamin Todd Jealous [Editorial] The Baltimore Sun 2013-12-28 Our view: Jealous leaves the NAACP a revitalized and relevant institution that is at the forefront of the social justice struggles of our time In the spring of 2008, as the prospect that America would elect its first black president became more and…