Tag: Whiteness

Whiteness is “the politics of aggression, exclusion and domination,” according to Cristina Beltran, an associate professor at New York University. Whiteness is “a public health crisis,” claims Damon Young, in The Root. Whiteness is “a malignant, parasitic...

I must first of all say that I’m grateful to have alternative ways to publish my writing. In some publications, a title like the one I chose for this piece would likely be censored or edited, and I imagine I would receive pushback for it. That’s why I felt like Medium was the b...

Q: Do you have to acknowledge a mistake to fix it? Or is it easier to erase an error and start from scratch? Should we examine our missteps before we take another? Asking for a friend… A: Those are not the kind of existential questions a curator necessarily has to ponder. But, in my unique...

These two people so desperate to get out of their skin somehow raised a child who is not, or was not. Mostly, I have loved being neither-this-nor-that. I have never, ever wanted to trade my complex identity for a simpler one, a fairer complexion, though I have often wished others could stop trying t...

Defining whiteness is like defining air; it is all around. You are so accustomed to its existence that you mostly pay no attention to it except on a particularly windy day. It is typically benign, but during a tornado or hurricane, it can cause considerable damage or death. Whiteness is usually unno...

For as long as any American can recall, there has been a race problem, racial issues, racism, or white supremacy — depending on the era and depth of understanding. But in all of our lives, there has been precious little progress. One cause for the problem is that we do not have clear ways to u...

Ifyou are one of the millions of Americans who has filled in a family tree you will be familiar with the problem genealogists call a “brick wall,” those exasperating dead ends where the document trail dries up and the link to previous generations is broken. In the early days of invest...

I must first of all say that I’m grateful to have alternative ways to publish my writing. In some publications, a title like the one I chose for this piece would likely be censored or edited, and I imagine I would receive pushback for it. That’s why I felt like Medium was the b...

German and Irish and Italian immigrants to the United States were not always considered good candidates to become White Americans. In the nineteenth century, European immigrants, especially those who were Catholic, were considered an alien threat to mainstream “old stock” White Americans...