Category: United States

  • How Green Was My Surname; Via Ireland, a Chapter in the Story of Black America The New York Times 2003-03-17 S. Lee Jamison Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Shaquille O’Neal! So many African-Americans have Irish-sounding last names—Eddie Murphy, Isaac Hayes, Mariah Carey, Dizzy Gillespie, Toni Morrison, H. Carl McCall—that you would think that the long story…

  • Why It Was Easy for Rachel Dolezal to Pass as Black Pacific Standard 2015-06-15 Lisa Wade, Associate Professor of Sociology Occidental College, Los Angeles, California Race is more social than biological. Source: (1)ne Drop Project Earlier this year a CBS commentator in a panel with Jay Smooth embarrassingly revealed that she thought he was white…

  • A More Perfect Union: Black Freedoms, White Houses Public Culture Volume 28, Number 1, January 2016 pages 63-87 DOI: 10.1215/08992363-3325016 Jasmine Nichole Cobb, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois President Barack Obama signifies both the power of the institutional presidency and the legacy of black freedom struggles. His post in…

  • Taken Identity The UC Santa Barbara Current Santa Barbara, California 2015-12-21 Jim Logan A new book by a UC Santa Barbara historian traces the bright and fuzzy lines of race in America The United States’ long record on race is, shall we say, checkered. Even in a time when an African-American sits in the White…

  • Allyson Hobbs. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. [Smith-Pryor Review] The American Historical Review Volume 120, Issue 5, December 2015 pages 1903-1904 DOI: 10.1093/ahr/120.5.1903 Elizabeth M. Smith-Pryor, Associate Professor of History Kent State University, Kent, Ohio Allyson Hobbs. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. Cambridge,…

  • Crossing Gender, Fantasizing Bodies Transgender Studies Quarterly Volume 2, Number 4, November 2015 pages 717-719 DOI: 10.1215/23289252-3151664 Michael Davidson, Professor Emeritus of American Literature; Distinguished Professor University of California, San Diego Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race. Ellen Samuels. New York: New York University Press, 2014. 263 pp. Ellen Samuels’ Fantasies of Identification is about…

  • Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race New York University Press April 2014 273 pages 12 halftones Cloth ISBN: 9781479812981 Paper ISBN: 9781479859498 Ellen Samuels, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and English University of Wisconsin, Madison In the mid-nineteenth-century United States, as it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between bodies understood as black, white,…

  • ‘True Detective’ Helmer Cary Fukunaga Teams With John Legend For Pulitzer Winner ‘The Black Count’ Deadline Hollywood 2014-04-28 Dominic Patten EXCLUSIVE: On fire since the success of HBO‘s True Detective this year, director Cary Fukunaga has lined up his next project I’ve learned. Teaming with John Legend and his Get Lifted Film Co. partner Mike…

  • The Tax Sleuth Who Took Down a Drug Lord The New York Times 2015-12-25 Nathaniel Popper, Wall Street Reporter Gary Alford, a special agent with the I.R.S., pored over old blog posts and chat room logs that led, eventually, to Dread Pirate Roberts. Cole Wilson for The New York Times Gary L. Alford was running…

  • Black in a Foreign Land: In Defense of Dominican Identity The Huffington Post 2015-12-17 César Vargas I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic until I was two months shy of turning 13. The Dominican Republic has a peculiar color metric system–not necessarily on race. So it should go without saying that I wasn’t…