race
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Talking About Oppression
Writers who deal with oppression are as varied as the forms of oppression they face. Kiese Laymon and Leigh Stein come from two disparate backgrounds, writes Rachel Edelman in Critical Flame, but both end up critiquing gender and racial oppression…
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I Wasn’t the White Boy Everyone Thought I Was
My connection to my Puerto Rican heritage seemed as tenuous as my connection to my white skin. I didn’t feel white, didn’t believe I had the privileges that came with whiteness.
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Race, Power, Publishing
The disproportionally white publishing industry matters because agents and editors stand between writers and readers. Anika Noni Rose put it perfectly in Vanity Fair this month: “There are so many writers of color out there, and often what they get when they bring…
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White People Everywhere
White male editors still dominate publishing and white male authors still dominate bestseller lists. Writing over at Plougshares, literary agent Eric Nelson explores the problem: I have frequently presented books as an editor to a room full of only white people.…
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All the Shades of Black and White
Writing for The New Inquiry, Hannah Black explores race in Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird and the relationship of white, black, and mixed racial identities in modern western culture. Similarly, race-authenticity does not spring up from the mere fact of…
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How Toxic Is Online Feminism?
There’s a heated conversation about online feminism happening—where else?—online right now. Ignited by a piece in the Nation about Internet toxicity as well as an ill-advised xoJane piece about white privilege in yoga class, the discussion is focusing on intersectionality in…
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Am I Black Enough For You?
“Oh, she’s double-handed,” the jumping girl said. “I knew it.” It was akin to the Sandman tap-dancing to abort a stinker of a performance at the Apollo Theater. I was done.
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“That Pesky Racism Again”
For Human Parts, the dazzling collection of essays curated by Stephanie Georgopulos on Medium, Djenab Conde writes about the complexities of eating at a Chinese restaurant with her Chinese mother and Guinean father. Conde writes about how frustrating it is…
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When Racist Stereotypes Work in Your Favor
At Slate, computer-science professor Philip Guo discusses an odd side effect of stereotypes about Asian men: when he was first learning to code, they actually worked in his favor. Even when Guo was a novice, people gave him the benefit of…
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“I Am an Alien”
Moving to the US as a person of color isn’t easy, even when you do everything completely above-board, come from a nation friendly with the US, and arrive with a respectable family in tow. Toni Nealie discusses her experience coming…
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People of Color in Medieval Art
A few days ago, Morning Coffee dispenser Dan Weiss mentioned Medieval POC, a blog examining the appearance of people of color in European art history. The blog’s creator, Malisha Dewalt, recently participated in a roundtable chat with other art historians and…
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Michelle Obama: Not Feminist Enough?
I was not heretofore aware feminists were disappointed in [Michelle] Obama and how she chooses to live her life. I was not aware that Obama was not an activist. Now I know. For Salon, our essays editor Roxane Gay takes on a…