Tag: Vox

  • Color film was built for white people. Here’s what it did to dark skin Vox 2015-09-18 Estelle Caswell The biased film was fixed in the 1990s, so why do so many photos still distort darker skin? For decades, the color film available to consumers was built for white people. The chemicals coating the film simply…

  • The Shaun King controversy, explained Vox 2015-08-20 German Lopez, Staff writer Shaun King (Source: Twitter) Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King is currently at the center of a controversy that has nothing to do with a police shooting or brutality — it’s, instead, about his personal life and racial identity. Over the past several weeks,…

  • America’s largest multiracial group doesn’t think of itself that way Vox 2015-06-18 Jenée Desmond-Harris People who have both white and Native American heritage make up America’s biggest multiracial group. But they’re the least likely to embrace the label. This is one of the findings of a Pew Research Center study that took an incredibly detailed…

  • Study illuminates why multiracial Americans almost never call themselves white Vox 2015-06-15 Jenée Desmond-Harris Look up any article about President Obama that focuses on his role as the first black president. Go ahead, do it now. Scroll down to the comments. I promise you, you’ll find earnest inquiries asking why the president is considered black…

  • White people have been passing for black for centuries. A historian explains. Vox 2015-06-15 Dara Lind, Jetpack Comandante The story of Rachel Dolezal — the now-former Spokane NAACP president whose parents have claimed she’s white — has opened up an enormously complicated debate about race and identity in general, and blackness in America in particular.…

  • Was pro baseball’s first African-American player passing for white? Vox 2015-04-11 Jenée Desmond-Harris William Edward White on the 1879 Brown baseball team. White is in the second row, seated and wearing a hat. (Source: Brown University Archives via Slate) A story about professional baseball’s little-known first black player (well, possible first black player) raises as…

  • 6 things I wish people understood about being biracial Vox 2015-03-11 Jenée Desmond-Harris, Race, Law, and Politics Reporter According to the results of a DNA test I took recently, my ancestors on my father’s side are mostly from West Africa (via Arkansas), and the ones on my mom’s side come from Europe. When strangers inquire…

  • The myth of race, debunked in 3 minutes Vox 2015-01-13 Jenée Desmond Harris You may know exactly what race you are, but how would you prove it if somebody disagreed with you? Jenée Desmond Harris explains. And for more on how race is a social construct, click here.

  • Researchers have been thinking about race all wrong Vox 2014-12-15 Jenée Desmond-Harris Studies on race are a dime a dozen: researchers examine its relationship to everything from elementary school test scores to who’s most likely to develop diabetes to which groups are overrepresented in ethnic militias to who Americans vote for, and we read about…

  • How a biracial woman grew up thinking she was white Vox 2014-11-19 Jenée Desmond-Harris When Lacey Schwartz was accepted to Georgetown University, the school saw her photo and passed her name along to the black student association. The organization contacted her. The only issue: Schwartz had grown up in a Jewish household in Woodstock New…