Tag: Slate

  • The Obama Paradox Slate 2017-01-09 Jamelle Bouie, Chief Political Correspondent Our first black president has an unyielding faith in the goodness of America. It got him elected. And it will cost him his legacy. The myth of Barack Obama usually begins with his speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and for good reason—it was…

  • Zadie Smith on Male Critics, Appropriation, and What Interests Her Novelistically About Trump The Slate Book Review Slate 2016-11-16 Isaac Chotiner A wide-ranging conversation. In an interview in 2000, Zadie Smith told the Guardian about the pressure she felt after the astonishing success of her debut novel, White Teeth. “I was expected to be some…

  • A DNA Test Won’t Explain Elizabeth Warren’s Ancestry Slate 2016-06-29 Matt Miller You’re not 28 percent Finnish, either. Our genes dictate certain things about us, but ethnicity is not derived from a single gene. Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator who lost to Elizabeth Warren in the 2012 election, has decided to dredge up old…

  • How Trump Happened Slate 2016-03-13 Jamelle Bouie, Chief Political Correspondent It’s not just anger over jobs and immigration. White voters hope Trump will restore the racial hierarchy upended by Barack Obama. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” goes the line attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. Typically,…

  • The Terrible Things People Say to Interracial Couples Slate 2015-10-01 David Rosenberg Donna Pinckley For the past couple of decades, most of Donna Pinckley’s photographs have focused on children and the objects that have personal significance for them. A few years ago, though, the University of Central Arkansas photography teacher noticed a post on Facebook…

  • Are There Really Just Five Racial Groups? Slate 2012-05-17 Brian Palmer, Chief Explainer How the government developed its racial-classification system. For the first time in history, more than half of American children under the age of 1 are members of a minority group, according to figures released Wednesday by the Census Bureau. Everyone is familiar…

  • ‘Stunning Portraits of Mixed Race Families’?: Slate’s Human Zoo of Race Mongrelization We Are Respectable Negroes: Happy Non-Threatening Coloured Folks, Even in the Age of Obama Wednesday, 2014-06-25 Chauncey DeVega, Editor and Founder Am I the only person who found Slate.com’s photo essay “Stunning Portraits of Mixed Race Families” to be very problematic? To my…

  • Stunning Portraits of Mixed-Race Families Slate 2014-06-24 David Rosenberg, Editor of Slate’s Behold blog Fascinated by the evolution of identity, the photographer Cyjo, who styles her name CYJO, has created a series of portraits that examines how race, ethnicity, and heritage contextualize a person as an individual, and how they coexist within the framework of…

  • Will Today’s Hispanics Be Tomorrow’s Whites? Slate 2014-04-15 Jamelle Bouie, staff writer covering politics, policy, and race How Hispanics perceive themselves may shape the future of race in America. The Trayvon Martin shooting was hardly in the national consciousness before fault lines emerged around the case. Was Martin as innocent as he seemed? Did Zimmerman…

  • Baseball’s Secret Pioneer Slate 2014-02-04 Peter Morris, Baseball Historian Haslett, Michigan Stefan Fatsis, Sports Writer William Edward White, the first black player in major-league history, lived his life as a white man. On June 22, 1937, Joe Louis knocked out James Braddock with a right to the jaw to become the world heavyweight champion. At…