Month: May 2013

  • Double-Checking the Race Box: Examining Inconsistency between Survey Measures of Observed and Self-Reported Race Social Forces Volume 85, Issue 1 pages 57-74 DOI: 10.1353/sof.2006.0141 Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology Stanford University Social constructivist theories of race suggest no two measures of race will capture the same information, but the degree of “error” this creates…

  • “Black No More”?: Walter White, Hydroquinone, and the “Negro Problem” American Studies Volume 47, Number 1 (Spring 2006) pages 5-30 Eric Porter, Professor of American Studies University of California, Santa Cruz In an August 1949 Look magazine article—”Has Science Conquered the Color Line?”—NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White pondered the social implications of monobenzyl ether of…

  • Race works through a type of “common sense” that is based on individual experiences, cultural norms, (misunderstandings of) history, the law, politics, as well as psychological motivations and decision-making that operate on both a conscious and subconscious level. In total, the race business is a type of magic and pseudo-science. This makes it no less…

  • Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego [FitzGerald Review] Journal of American History Volume 99, Issue 4 (2013) pages 1285-1286 DOI: 10.1093/jahist/jas672 David FitzGerald, Associate Professor of Sociology University of California, San Diego Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego. By Rudy P. Guevarra Jr. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012.…

  • Excursus on “Hapa”; or the Fate of Identity Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies Volume 3 (2012): Special Issue: Mixed Heritage Asian American Literature 11 pages Nicole Myoshi Rabin University of Hawai‘i, Manoa When I was growing up the license plate on my mom’s Dodge minivan read: R3HAPAS. My mom explained to my sister, brother,…

  • AM NOT WHITE. I am not Black. I am mixed. I am one half Polish, one quarter Russian, and one-quarter Japanese. I was born, raised, and educated in public schools in the suburbs of Chicago, and then abruptly transitioned to public schools located in north Alabama when I was an adolescent.

  • William F. Yardley The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture (Version 2.0) 2009-12-25 Lewis L. Laska Tennessee State University William F. Yardley, an influential and powerful advocate for the legal rights of blacks, was the first African American to run for governor of Tennessee. Yardley was born in 1844, the child of a white mother…

  • Assuming Responsibility for Who You Are: The Right To Choose “Immutable” Identity Characteristics New York University Law Review Volume 88, Number 1 (April 2013) pages 373-400 Anthony R. Enriquez New York University School of Law Golinski v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management, a district court case challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act,…

  • Leo Branton Jr., Activists’ Lawyer, Dies at 91 The New York Times 2013-04-27 William Yardley Associated Press Leo Branton Jr. with Angela Davis during her 1972 trial on murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges. She was acquitted. Leo Branton Jr., a California lawyer whose moving closing argument in a racially and politically charged murder trial in…

  • Black, White, and Many Shades of Gray Harvard Magazine May-June 2013 Craig Lambert Randall Kennedy probes the “variousness” of charged racial issues. In The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, David Remnick relates a story from Obama’s first year at Harvard Law School, when he registered for “Race, Racism, and American Law,” a…