Tag: Rachel Swarns

  • “Now, I have a black son in Baltimore,” the white police detective remembered thinking as he cradled his baby boy. Rachel L. Swarns, “‘I Have a Black Son in Baltimore’: Anxious New Parents and an Era of Unease,” The New York Times, August 23, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/us/i-have-a-black-son-in-baltimore-anxious-new-parents-and-an-era-of-unease.html.

  • BALTIMORE — He assembled the crib and mounted the bookshelves. She unpacked the bedding and filled the closet with onesies and rompers. Then husband and wife stood in the nursery and worried. Bill Janu, a police officer, is white. Shanna Janu, a lawyer, is black. As they eagerly awaited their baby’s birth this spring, they…

  • Words of Obama’s Father Still Waiting to Be Read by His Son The New York Times 2016-06-18 Rachel L. Swarns Family portraits, including one of President Barack Obama’s father, center, hang in his family’s house in Kogelo, western Kenya, in 2008. Credit Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Letters written long ago by Barack Obama Sr. shed new…

  • The Science Behind ‘They All Look Alike to Me’ The New York Times 2015-09-20 Rachel L. Swarns The outcry was immediate and ferocious when a white New York City police officer tackled James Blake, the retired biracial tennis star, while arresting him this month in a case of mistaken identity. The officer mistook Mr. Blake…

  • Driven by Love or Ambition, Slipping Across the Color Line Through the Ages The New York Times 2015-06-28 Rachel L. Swarns Clarence King, a Yale-educated white man who worked as a geologist in the 1800s and dined at the White House, lived a secret life as James Todd, a black train porter with a wife…

  • The First Family: A New Glimpse of Michelle Obama’s White Ancestors The New York Times 2016-06-22 Rachel L. Swarns, Correspondent New York Times We knew that the Sunday article about Mrs. Obama’s white ancestors would stir considerable interest so we decided to invite readers to pose questions and make comments. We never imagined that one…

  • Slavery, Race, and Reunion: The NY Times White Washes the Rape of Michelle Obama’s Ancestors (Again) We Are Respectable Negroes 2012-06-18 Chauncey DeVega Why would any person honor rapist’s blood? In an effort to write the Obamas, who are de facto American royalty, back into a larger post-racial narrative that ostensibly makes some white folks…

  • Meet Your Cousin, the First Lady: A Family Story, Long Hidden The New York Times 2012-06-16 Rachel L. Swarns This article is adapted from “American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama” by Rachel L. Swarns, to be published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, on Tuesday. REX,…

  • For Asian-American Couples, a Tie That Binds The New York Times 2012-03-30 Rachel L. Swarns WHEN she was a philosophy student at Harvard College eight years ago, Liane Young never thought twice about all the interracial couples who flitted across campus, arm and arm, hand in hand. Most of her Asian friends had white boyfriends…

  • With DNA Testing, Suddenly They Are Family The New York Times 2011-01-24 Rachel L. Swarns ST. LOUIS — Growing up, Khrys Vaughan always believed that she had inherited her looks and mannerisms from her father, and that her appreciation for tradition and old-fashioned gentility stemmed from her parents’ Southern roots. But those facets of her…