You might find this naive, but until several days ago, I had thought I would never again encounter anyone passing. Passing is the term used to describe someone who denies his or her racial, ethnic or religious heritage to enjoy the privilege or favor of the larger more accepted culture. During Jim Crow, some light skinned black people would deny their black ancestry and live as white people. There are movies about this phenomenon including the Academy Award nominated Imitation of Life  starring Lana Turner and Juanita Moore, and more recently The …

I was disappointed with much of Bob Morris’ New York Times  article ‘When You Meet an Imus’. The article discussed the sometimes tricky predicament of confronting subtle or not so subtle racist comments and jokes one hears in the regular course of life. I know this is a hard one for many people. There is fear of confrontation, but also of the discomfort that comes with the isolation of staking out a position that may not be popular with friends or colleagues.
Morris’ article, however, proposes to resist confronting a racist comment …

I am on the road for the next couple of days, so I thought I’d bring back a couple of posts you might have missed. New posts resume Thursday. Enjoy.
I was a youngster when the movie Serpico, starring Al Pacino, opened. The movie captured the true life story of Frank Serpico, an honest, undercover, New York City cop, and his battle against crime and corruption perpetrated by other New York City cops. I had read the book, my mom had it, and I pretty much read everything that came into …

Turner County High School in Ashburn, Georgia held its FIRST racially integrated prom, on Saturday. The prom was reasonably well attended, although many white students held a separate, private party a week later. Read about it here:
First Integrated Prom in Ashburn, Georgia

I came across this post about an experiment conducted in Belgium to study the correlation between the desire for money and the desire for food. In a nutshell, results demonstrated that poor people with a strong desire for money, unable to acquire money, will turn to food and instead, acquire calories. I have a few problems with this post, like toward the end, when Herbert states that “poor men prefer heavier women” and then in the next line implies that this preference is “a distorted perception.” But still, it’s certainly worth …

YAY!  AllAboutRace.com has been selected to participate in this month’s Erase Racism Carnival.
The Erase Racism Carnival  is a collection of blog posts dedicated to creating a world free of racism. The Carnival is published around the 20th of every month.
So, head on over to Double Consciousness and enjoy the carnival!

This post comes from contributor Dawn Comer Jefferson; read on. 
My name is Dawn Comer Jefferson and I’m an African American, married, mother of two.  I’m a writer.  I write for magazines, ezines, radio, television, features, anyone who will pay me.  I’d write the fortunes for fortune cookies if the check cleared.  Probably something like, “You are destined for great things.  Try the Moo Shu Pork.”  So, as a writer, I was delighted when my daughter Nicole, who is seven, told me that she and her friends were writing plays.  Nicole …

This photo articulates my views about our interconnectedness better than a year of posts ever would. Thank you Andrew Padula for passing it along.
Does anyone know the full story behind this photo? If you do, please share your knowledge with us. I would like to find and credit the photographer. 
What do you see?

Contributor Andrew Padula obtained his AA in Mass Communications at Montgomery College and then went on to receive his BA in Media Arts from the University of Maryland. He tossed it, his words, to do post graduate studies at Musicians Institute of Hollywood (rock star school). Andrew has been teaching and touring the U.S. and Europe since 1993. He can be seen with blues legend Bobby Parker on B.E.T. Jazz Central as well as on Carlos Santana’s recent DVD release “Montreux Blues Summit”. This is his post.

In light of the …

I presume that we are all deeply saddened by the mass murder of Virginia Tech students and faculty. It was a savage and cowardly act. The gunman chained the doors to prevent his targets from having any real chance of escaping his rage. Then, he shot himself to would evade any justice this world could mete out. There will be commentary and analysis ad nauseam. And in the next while, there will be another school shooting. I suggest we take the energy from our grief and do something other than shake …

Gary was my friend in fourth grade. He had big brown eyes, dark brown, bowl cut hair, and a little turned up nose, sprinkled with freckles. Oh, and he had a wide happy smile and dimples. Gary was one of the first friends I made at Calverton Elementary. In the search for educational parity, I was bussed from the local school, which served the projects where I lived, to an almost all white school, Calverton, 35 minutes away.

I was a tomboy. My only nod to being a little girl was my …

Gary was my friend in fourth grade. He had big brown eyes, dark brown, bowl cut hair, and a little turned up nose, sprinkled with freckles. Oh, and he had a wide happy smile and dimples. Gary was one of the first friends I made at Calverton Elementary. In the search for educational parity, I was bussed from the local school, which served the projects where I lived, to an almost all white school 35 minutes away.I was a tomboy. My only nod to being a little girl was my red vinyl, …

I was feeling particularly affronted and aggressive when I wrote this. What I want us to think about now is how race affects our perceptions of the stories making news headlines. I want to look at the Duke Lacrosse news coverage in a slightly different way.  How do you think the media would cover a similar story if:  
The accuser was white and claimed she was raped in an Asian fraternity.  
The accuser was black and claimed she was raped in a black fraternity.
The accuser was white and claimed she was raped …

I took a step back yesterday in an attempt to see the trees in the forest of this latest cacophony of racial conflict. What I see is troublesome because the problem is not only about race, but also about the broader balkanization of America. The reason? I see more and more people ‘playing to their base’ in pursuit of money and cultural power. 

Numerous hip-hop and urban music artists have ‘sold out’ their black culture and the important legacy of early rap music to pander to the tastes of a predominately …

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a crazy week for me. In the past six days, I’ve had about a dozen engaging, but exhausting conversations about race; two of these with strangers who asked me to explain the term, ‘nappy,’ and why Imus was in so much ‘trouble.’ On Tuesday, I was called a ‘nappy headed ho’ by a white, male, adult neighbor. That incident got heated, but I am smarter than he is. He lost and just walked away grumbling.  I’ve got no new, fully formed ideas …