Tag: Medium

  • Before People Called Me A Spic, They Called Me A Nigger Medium 2016-03-11 Pablo Guzmán It was a throwaway line I used. Deliberately. Speaking to mostly Latino and African-American audiences. Back in the day. “Before people called me a spic, they called me a nigger.” And it hit the mark. The hoots, applause, whistles and…

  • “Kiss me, my slave owners were Irish” Medium 2015-03-16 Liam Hogam As many of you already know, I have engaged with the “we were slaves too!” narrative on multiple forums and platforms for the past few months. Now I plan to explore some of the uncomfortable truths that this mythology tends to obscure. This Saint…

  • Why I Created #ObamaAndKids Medium 2016-02-21 Michael Skolnik (Pete Souza/White House) THURSDAY, February 18, 2016. The White House. Washington, DC. President Barack Obama was about to enter the room, when I noticed a young boy standing next to me, dressed in a jacket and tie, looking to get to the front of the crowd. This…

  • Photographing Multiracial Families In Scotland: Celebrating mothers, daughters and diversity through portraits Medium for Pixel Magazine 2015-12-17 Interview by Emily von Hoffmann and Polarr Image courtesy of Kim Simpson. Portrait photographer Kim Simpson began her Exottish project after her daughter, who is of mixed heritage, experienced a series of racial insults in her primary school…

  • Obama: A Nation Divided Medium 2016-01-14 Delonte Harrod I was at grad school during the time President Obama campaigned for and eventually was elected to the highest office in this country. I remember listening to people talk about the potential of him becoming president. Some of my white friends complained, and were genuinely confused, about…

  • A note on race and racism Medium 2016-01-08 T.O. Molefe This week in South Africa has made it clear there are many people who have a limited understanding of race and racism — two very different things. Either that or they are working with different definitions (and moral theories) and don’t know it, or lack the diligence…

  • My white father and Black mother both encouraged me to be Black, to embrace Black, both as a label and as a way of being part of the world. To claim the Black community as my own. To them this was an act of resistance against a society that would devalue Black people and Blackness…

  • What’s Really Going On at Yale Medium 2015-11-08 Aaron Z. Lewis, Senior Yale University Dean Jonathan Holloway; Photo credit: Yale Daily News By now, you’ve probably seen the video of a Yale student yelling at a professor, the Facebook post about a “white girls only” party, or the email about offensive Halloween costumes. Unfortunately, the…

  • Mulattoes like Sally Hemings have been both weaponized and victimized in a complicated racial structure designed to protect white supremacy while satisfying the sexual fetishes of white, slave-owning rapists. Light skinned slaves were often given better positions on plantations, treated better. Sometimes they became enforcers over other, darker people. Sometimes they were freed upon the…

  • This is not another essay about how hard it is to be light skinned in a dark man’s world. Why? Because the suggestion that this is a dark man’s world is ridiculous. Unless you’ve had your head up your butt, we quite clearly do not live in a version of the universe where overall it…