Tag: Los Angeles Times

  • A young playwright’s quest to ask difficult questions about race, class and gender The Los Angeles Times 2016-12-02 Margaret Gray Leah Nanako Winkler’s new play “Kentucky” is a comedy about a Japanese American woman raised in the South. Like her protagonist Hiro, Winkler is half-Japanese and grew up in Kentucky. Like Hiro, she left  for New York…

  • Genevieve Gaignard tackles race, class and identity at the California African American Museum The Los Angeles Times 2016-11-17 Deborah Vankin, Contact Reporter Genevieve Gaignard’s identity-bending “Extra Value (After Venus)” (2016). (Genevieve Gaignard / Shulamit Nazarian) Growing up in the working-class mill town of Orange, Mass., Genevieve Gaignard wrestled with her identity. She was the fair-skinned…

  • Hollywood has long shown discomfort with interracial couples, but change is happening The Los Angeles Times 2016-11-10 Lewis Beale Katherine Houghton puts a flower in Sidney Poitier’s hair in a scene from the film “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.” (Getty Images) In 1967, the same year the Supreme Court case Loving vs. Virginia struck down…

  • One man’s quest for Loving Day, a holiday for multiracial Americans The Los Angeles Times 2016-06-10 Jaweed Kaleem Ken Tanabe founded Loving Day in 2004, and leads celebrations and workshops across the U.S. on being multiracial. (Pearl Shavzin-Dremeaux) Forty-nine years ago on June 12, the Supreme Court struck down laws in 16 states that banned…

  • #myLovingDay: How the Lovings’ trials paved the way for today’s multiracial families The Los Angeles Times 2016-06-03 Michelle Maltais Mildred and Richard Loving, convicted in Virginia of marrying while interracial. (Associated Press) I like to say that I am because of Loving. Mildred and Richard Loving. In the early 1970s when my parents met, the…

  • Mixed-race indigenous people should get benefits extended to those with Indian status, Canadian court rules The Los Angeles Times 2016-04-14 Christopher Guly For decades in Canada, people of mixed indigenous and European ancestry didn’t qualify for “Indian” status and were denied a host of benefits granted to other First Nations people, including government funding, free…

  • What Obama’s visit means for Cuba’s national conversation about race The Los Angeles Times 2016-03-21 Kate Linthicum, Contact Reporter In recent years, Afro-Cuban intellectuals have started gathering in a cramped Havana apartment to discuss a topic long considered off-limits in Cuba: race. Fidel Castro’s communist revolution 60 years ago promised to wipe out racial divisions…

  • Review ‘A Ballerina’s Tale’ follows Misty Copeland’s incredible rise in the ballet world The Los Angeles Times 2016-02-08 Mary McNamara, Contact Reporter Misty Copeland in the documentary “A Ballerina’s Tale.” (Oskar Landi / Sundance Selects) If you think #OscarsSoWhite, consider the world of elite ballet. And if you want to understand why the current conversation…

  • Review ‘Democracy in Black’ is a bracing call to action for African Americans The Los Angeles Times 2016-01-21 Kiese Laymon, Professor of English Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul (New York: Crown, 2016) “We laud our democratic virtues to others and represent…

  • Op-Ed Thomas Chatterton Williams: My black privilege The Los Angeles Times 2016-01-03 Thomas Chatterton Williams A couple of years ago, I participated in an Aspen Institute symposium on the state of race. During the roundtable that followed the panels, as I spoke about my experiences growing up black in the 1990s, I was interrupted by…