Category: Media Archive

  • Skin Bleach And Civilization: The Racial Formation of Blackness in 1920s Harlem The Journal of Pan African Studies Voume 4, Number 4 (June 2011) pages 47-80 Jacob S. Dorman, Assistant Professor of African American History and American Studies University of Kansas Unlike previous scholarship on skin-bleaching advertisements conducted by scholars such as Lawrence Levine and…

  • NOTE: This article expands on a comment on Prof. Hortense Spillers’ article “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s, Too” published on The Feminist Wire on February 25, 2011. Omar Ricks would like to thank Prof. Spillers for inviting his contribution to The Feminist Wire.

  • This Article aims to expose the shortcomings of the prevailing crude racial categories as a means to implement the core provisions of antidiscrimination law—constitutional and statutory provisions such as the Equal Protection Clause and Title VII, and the jurisprudence that has developed around these provisions.

  • It was the New Graduate Student Reception for my class, the first social event of my first semester in the best graduate department in my field in the country. I was full of myself, as we all were, full of pride at having made the final cut, full of arrogance at our newly recorded membership…

  • Shades Of Grey: Interracial Couples On TV FlowTV Volume 15, Issue 4 (2011-12-05) Erica Chito-Childs, Associate Professor of Sociology Hunter College, City University of New York Showing interracial couples on television is not necessarily something new. In 1968, Star Trek aired what is widely regarded as the first black-white interracial kiss on television between William Shatner’s…

  • Racial melting pot won’t end social disparities San Francisco Chronicle 2012-02-12 Brenda Payton, Lecturer in Journalism San Francisco State University I looked at the room full of San Francisco State University students and saw the beginning of the end of race as we have defined it.   If that sounds a little over-the-top, here’s some…

  • Why Are We Hung Up on Our Mixed Roots? The Root 2012-03-06 Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D., Editor At-Large The latest controversy in Beyoncé Knowles news may be her breast-feeding Blue Ivy in public, but I’m still shaking my head about the recent fuss over her True Match commercial for L’Oréal, which highlights the singer’s mixed-race…

  • A Mixed Bag: Examining the College Experience of Multi-Racial Students INSIGHT Into Diversity April/May 2012 (2012-03-29) Andrea Williams, Contributing Writer To most American youth, college is the requisite rite of passage into adulthood, an experience marked as much by self-exploration and discovery as biology lectures and late night cram sessions.   From managing the excitement…

  • Can Drake Save the Bar Mitzvah? The Jewish Week Blog: Well Versed 2012-04-12 Eric Herschthal When Drake’s new video, “HYFR,” dropped [was released] over the weekend—in which the Jewish, biracial hip-hop superstar raps at a bar mitzvah—I was thrilled. Initially. For years, pop culture references to the Jewish rite of passage have been stuck in…

  • Obama and the Elusive Idea of Race The Root 2011-04-26 Mary C. Curtis Scientists increasingly conclude that ethnicity cannot be defined scientifically, but that hasn’t stopped the racists, the Birthers and the confused from casting their insecurities onto the president. It’s not surprising to get involved in a heated discussion about race when you’re strolling…