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Comment by Black Lily on July 2, 2010 at 12:43am

My bad....forgot the link. Love this provocative piece Race-Talk did deconstructing a fashion editorial in Interview Magazine...called "RACE IS SEXY?"
http://www.race-talk.org/?p=4375

Comment by afrocuban on July 1, 2010 at 11:37am

Ill have to check out race-talk

Comment by Black Lily on June 30, 2010 at 8:37pm

There's a really thoughtful magazine/blog called Race-Talk developed by the Kirwan Institute. Really well-written pieces. Just thought I'd share, if anyone ever wants to check out the work they're doing:

Comment by imani on March 11, 2010 at 7:29pm

can the word nigga/nigger/negro be excepted as a term of inderment for todays generation, or do mostt people still see it as a racial slur even if it is directed in a way not to be rude?

Comment by Fashionfreak on March 10, 2010 at 3:57pm

oh and i don't consider myself anything but black but i do feel like i have gone through identity crisis growing up culturally.

my mom is from jamaica and so is her whole family. my dad is from trinidad and his mom is from venezuela while his dad is from grenada. i was born here in the US and grew up around a variety of races. to people who aren't black they think i'm african american since i'm from here but to african american's i'm caribbean but to caribbean folk i'm just american. at the same time a lot of the hispanics i come across consider me 'one of them' because my dad's mom is. it's a complex situation.

Comment by Fashionfreak on March 10, 2010 at 3:46pm

hello peeps just want to share something i saw on oprah yesterday about tracing roots.

so there is this new show on tv where countless celebrities trace their roots to find out who they are. long story short they showed a few clips of eva longoria (mexican), emmit smith (african american), meryl streep (caucasion) etc...

so it turned out that eva was born in mexico with mexican parents and so forth. but her dna revealed that she is caucasion, african, and japanese....it was also revealed that she is a distant cousin on japanese musician yoyoma according to tests.

emmit smith's ancestry revealed that his ancestors were white and somewhere along the line one of them raped a slave thus bringing forth a biracial child and from then on other blacks were brought into this mix and some generations later bringing well him into the world.

another really cool discovery was that dr oz (muslim) and a famous jewish guy has the same ancestors

there were tons more but those striked me the most....very intriguing.

Comment by Faisal Awadallah on March 9, 2010 at 5:38pm

@DJ Ceiba

I agree with you fully, in my Black studies course, our teacher played a tim wise clip and many of the white people didn't agree with it or didn't know how to take it. It's hard to hear the harsh truth.

I know what you mean about only being able to learn about ourselves in college, Our culture and history should be taught to us at an early age. which brings into the picture separate schools for African Centered thought. Many people don't agree with this idea but why not have schools that are taught in an Afrocentric way of thinking? All the schools run by the government and private corporations are teaching the same Eurocentric ideology that is dominating the world.

I am half black and half italian and its interesting to hear you say it was the biracial children that were asking questions of interest on race. Race is something biracial people deal with daily in a different way than being just one race. Its confusing that people have to be labeled black or white and not be themselves.

Comment by bEeefF on February 26, 2010 at 4:19am

Tough situation , djc. lotta responsibility to shoulder, teachin kids an everything. They're at foundational stages of development and deserve tha best chance they can get. think its a brave endeavor to try to open eyes to this kind of subject cause most people in general seem to avoid it at almost all costs. Don't know how things go in Pennsylvania but it important if you wanna see the social climate for what it is.

Comment by dj ceiba on February 23, 2010 at 10:56am

4th or 5th block down (depending on how you're counting). i didn't give them labels (as if i assigned each kid a race, class, culture, class, etc). rather, i showed them a bunch of typical labels & had them pick out which one's applied to them. (the original sentence didn't read right). this page is not letting me edit my writing - what happened? there's some other awkward stuff down there too, AP. my bad.

Comment by dj ceiba on February 23, 2010 at 10:46am

tim wise is gettin' it in!

they were mad at me for teaching parts of this to my kids in a black country school in southwestern pennsylvania! i could see teachers and administrators cringing when i gave out the information. even some of the KIDS were resistant!
to deal with the military industrial complex as applies to of color americans, you have to understand where you sit in these different categories & if you don't know, it be as if "the world is against me (you, whoever)" without rhyme or reason. if you DO, you can dissect it & attack it at the cracks in it's defenses.

CASE IN POINT: from my classes (& my own experience), i got to understand that lots of families don't educate their kids about race in the home. the most sensitive to race, ethnicity and cultural education were the bi-racial kids. the bi-racial kids asked questions & had plenty to say - i assume they were having to deal with those topics all the time, & some were learning that there's a language to communicate these ideas. in the beginning, it seemed like a lot of the black kids were embarrassed to say that they were black & didn't want to identify racially ON PAPER. as time progressed & i took the surveys again, they had a deeper understanding & most, NOT ALL were more comfortable with the different labels, etc to be able to talk about the situation.

when i got to talking about how the prison system and race functions in different class & racial structures i had a universal reaction from the middle school kids. everybody knew somebody from prison - only one kid knew somebody that was a Ph.D. - the prison's influence is so strong with black kids. their eyes LIT up & everybody had a story about a relative or a family friend, etc. - it's normal to goto prison & abnormal to achieve through academics.

i have to say here that the goal was not to make them see them selves as only those labels that i gave them, but to see that this is how they are LOOKED AT & CATEGORIZED by the greater society.

even though i had taught concepts like race, ethnicity & culture before i got to the class on class, when i started talking about class, i could feel the sinking feeling coming in. it was hard work to bring the kids around to idea that they have as much access available to the Ph.D as they do to the prison. i asked them if they knew which kids around them would probably be in jail & which would be in college. sad but true, by 7th & 8th grade they had already slated THEMSELVES and EACH OTHER for the dorm room & the cell. & the truth was: without some serious help, i already knew who was going to college & to prison, too.

so yeah. i've rolled up my sleeves and started the process in my own way. this is just a small piece of what we were doing out there & it was really part of a section of what really meant to do there dance & drum class, or education through the arts. no, it's not perfect & some of you will probably be mad at me & have some things to say about my methodology, terms, results, etc.; but the fact is, talking about it in the universities usually only helps individuals. unless we synthesize & teach what we know after we complete our higher education - the information stays in the ivory tower.

our communities are hungry for this information & guys like time wise, who are hella interesting to me, are fucking boring to most people. if we find fun & interesting ways to put it all together to teach people EARLY in their lives about the structural challenges that face them, they'll be better prepared to deal with the influences that will try to mire them at the bottom. why should we gain a strong sense of our identities in our 20s & not in our early life?

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