Category: Articles

  • How Obama became black The Washington Post 2011-06-14 David Maraniss He was too dark in Indonesia. A hapa child — half and half — in Hawaii. Multicultural in Los Angeles. An “Invisible Man” in New York. And finally, Barack Obama was black on the South Side of Chicago. This journey of racial self-discovery and reinvention…

  • Meet Your Cousin, the First Lady: A Family Story, Long Hidden The New York Times 2012-06-16 Rachel L. Swarns This article is adapted from “American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama” by Rachel L. Swarns, to be published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, on Tuesday. REX,…

  • “Passing” and the American dream Salon Magazine 2003-11-03 Baz Dreisinger These days we’re supposed to think race doesn’t matter. But as “The Human Stain” and a raft of recent writing makes clear, we’re just as fascinated by its slippery boundaries as ever. Every now and then, cultural and social critics fashion an axiom that’s flippant,…

  • Bodies with Histories: The New Search for the Biology of Race Boston Review May/June 2012 Anne Fausto-Sterling Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biochemistry, Program in Women’s Studies, and Chair of the Faculty Committee on Science and Technology Studies Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island Richard C. Francis, Epigenetics: The Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance. W.…

  • Passing free Boston College Magazine Summer 2003 Black in the South, Irish in the North, The Healys Slipped the Bonds of Race in Civil War America James M. O’Toole, Associate Professor of History Boston College When Michael Morris Healy and Eliza Clark entered into a common-law union in 1829, they violated perhaps the most powerful…

  • Multiracial Jews Moving Beyond Isolation The Jewish Week 2012-06-12 Julie Wiener, Associate Editor Now 12 percent of the community, racially diverse Jewish households making their way into mainstream — but still less ‘engaged’ than others. When Rabbi/Cantor Angela Buchdahl was growing up — the daughter of a white Jewish father and a Korean-American mother —…

  • Army to appoint first mixed-race officers Korea Herald 2012-06-11 Yonhap News The South Korean Army said Monday that two of its cadets with multicultural backgrounds are soon to become non-commissioned officers, the first such cases since the Army’s foundation. Cadet officers Bae Jun-hyeong, 22, and Han Ki-yeop, 21, will undergo a 12-week training course next…

  • She scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to another woman, a woman whose skin was reddish brown,, a woman who was probably colored. “Is Mr. White white or colored?”

  • How Racist Are We? Ask Google The New York Times 2012-06-09 Seth Stephens-Davidowitz Barack Obama won 52.9 percent of the popular vote in 2008 and 365 electoral votes, 95 more than he needed. Many naturally concluded that prejudice was not a major factor against a black presidential candidate in modern America. My research, a comparison…

  • New Laureate Wrestles with Mixed Race Better Living through Beowulf: How great literature can change your life 2012-06-11 Robin Bates, Professor of English St. Mary’s College of Maryland Monday   I see that Natasha Trethewey, who teaches creative writing at my graduate alma mater (Emory University), is America’s new poet laureate. Trethewey is mixed race…