I finished Claudia Rankine’s Just Us: An American Conversation yesterday (coincidentally on Martin Luther King Day). Just Us is once again a fascinating mix of poetry, art, criticism and (personal) essay on the current state of race and racism in the United States. The title is (probably) adapted from a Richard Pryor quote Rankine also …
Tag Archives: whiteness
Citizen: An American Lyric
“because white men can’t police their imaginationblack men are dying” I reread Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric recently. Published in 2014, this poetic, artistic snapshot of Black life in the US is stunning in its impact and intellectual heft. The book is decidedly not written for white men like me, and can, maybe should make …
“Ebola” Illustration by André Carrilho.
#IStandwithJamilah and Civil Inattention
Last weekend, Ebony editor Jamilah Lemieux, a Black woman, was severely attacked by (mostly) U.S. republicans after she mistakenly identified a right-wing critic of color as white. (She quickly apologized after realizing her mistake.) Racism ensued. I didn’t follow the mess in close detail, here is a good way to get a sense of it. …
When Vanilla Was Brown And How We Came To See It As White : Code Switch : NPR
Kat Chow on NPR’s code switch blog wrote a great article on the history of vanilla. As with so many things originating on the American continent, the history is inextricably connected to colonialism, slavery, and appropriation by whiteness. For instance, the Totonac Indians of Mexico had the knowledge how to efficiently cultivate vanilla beans, a …
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CLARITY AND CHAOS 