Month: December 2016

  • It was a policy was born of good intentions but has stirred up perplexing, often painful, questions: What makes a person black, or white? Is it facial features? Hair? Family? Or an experience of racism? And who gets to decide?

  • Black-ish Recap: The Bunny Magnet Vulture 2016-12-01 Nichole Perkins It’s been a while since we’ve had such a perfect episode of Black-ish, but “Being Bow-racial” was worth the wait. Junior’s [Marcus Scribner]white girlfriend sends Bow [Tracee Ellis Ross] on the sort of identity crisis she hasn’t had since college. She narrates, giving us a much-needed…

  • Kathleen Collins’s ‘Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?’ Books of The Times The New York Times 2016-11-29 Dwight Garner Kathleen Collins, Elizabeth Alexander (fore.), Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? (New York: Ecco, 2016) When the filmmaker, playwright and fiction writer Kathleen Collins died of breast cancer in 1988, at 46, she left behind a wide body…

  • What was the source of Krazy Kat’s comic genius? The Washington Post 2016-12-06 Glen David Gold Michael Tisserand, Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White (New York: HarperCollins, 2016) Genius is simplicity. A dog, who is a policeman, loves a cat, who loves a mouse. The mouse throws bricks at the cat, and…

  • Even though I felt a strong tie to my roots in Poland, my physical appearance often deceived me in such a homogeneous country. Julia Kitlinski-hong, “When Looks Deceive: Being Biracial in Poland,” Wanderfull, November 14, 2016. http://www.sheswanderful.com/2016/11/14/biracial-chinese-polish-american-racism-krakow-poland/.

  • I can pass, but I will always choose to out myself because blackness is power. The coolest thing about me is being black. When they assume otherwise, I do not get mad or accusatory; I understand the complexity of genes and phenotypes. I embraced the role of house slave when I resignated with Isaiah in…

  • What I Found in Standing Rock The Players’ Tribune 2016-12-01 Bronson Koenig, Guard Wisconsin Badgers Photos by Alexandra Hootnick/The Players’ Tribune Near the edge of the Standing Rock camp in North Dakota, about 50 yards from a tributary of the Missouri River, there’s a basketball hoop. It’s one of those worn-out outdoor hoops that leans…

  • Event Review: Salena Godden’s #LIVEwire Album Launch Welcome to the MA in Black British Writing The world-first Masters programme in Black British literature at Goldsmiths, University of London 2016-12-09 Heather Marks Soho holds many secrets, and last night revealed one of them to be Salena Godden’s spoken word album launch at Carnesky’s Finishing School. Descending the…

  • “It’s my black girl who looks like a white girl with a tan and a bad hair day.”

  • What is the Black Atlantic? My Comparative Perspective Afro-Europe International Blog 2011-01-09 Sibo Kano Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic (1994) is a difficult read but it’s a very influential book. An author who builds further on Gilroy’s work and who writes very accessible books about blackness is Livio Sansone (professor of anthropology at the University of…