Mixed Race Studies

Birthers’ shameful racist roots

The Boston Globe
2011-05-02

James Carroll

It was not up to President Obama to label the birther movement as racist in his extraordinary address on the subject last week, but plenty of commentary has done it for him. There can be no doubt that the lurid contempt shown to the president by antagonists who question his constitutional right to hold office is rooted in white-supremacist hysteria. The issue has never been the authenticity of documentation related to Barack Obama’s date and place of birth, which is why the production of birth certificates—first short, then long—has not stilled the controversy.

The issue has been his character as—well, as the issue of a Caucasian mother and an African father. An inch below the surface of this discussion is the perceived offense not just of blackness, but of miscegenation, that peculiarly demonic legacy of a slave system which took for granted the white owners’ sexual exploitation of slaves, while outlawing interracial sex. The biological fact of Obama’s existence, not the bureaucratic fact of government records, is what generates the lunatic rage…

Read the entire editorial here.

Shady’s Back

New Matilda
Surry Hills NSW, Australia
2011-05-02

Jennifer Mills

As Obama is called to prove his place of birth, Indigenous Australians are being asked to account for their origins too. Not black enough, not white enough: Jennifer Mills on public anxiety about biracial identity

The release of Obama’s birth certificate by the White House on Thursday has drawn a variety of responses—from conspiracists’ disbelief in its veracity to analysts’ disbelief in its necessity. Some say it arrives too late to dispel doubts about his origins, and others that Obama has cleverly sprung a right-wing trap by drawing conspiracists out.

At the same time, the case of nine Aboriginal people seeking an apology from Andrew Bolt for two columns in which he questioned their right to claim Aboriginal heritage has been fuelling public discussion, the best thing about which has been its domination by the voices of Indigenous women. The argument that Aboriginal people should be the ones who choose who gets to be Aboriginal has been made well elsewhere. But the fact that these discussions are happening with such vitriol and in the public sphere is worth noting, as it says more about the culture at large than about any of the individuals involved.

Where does this yawning discomfort and anxiety around biracial or multicultural identities come from? Are we seeing a return to blood quantums or to centralised, institutional definitions of race? Why does it matter if you’re black and white?

…The release of the birth certificate may achieve little, because it doesn’t address the real question of the birthers, to whom Obama will continue to exhibit a certain uncomfortable quality which the easily frightened are apt to label “foreignness.” There is indeed “something shady” about Obama—his colour. There is a vagueness about him which threatens those who seek to categorise and divide. That vague quality is a multicultural identity…

…Race is a fiction, an invention. It doesn’t show on a family tree, it can’t be proven with birth certificates or in a court of law. A legal definition of Indigenousness would be dangerously divisive, just as it is in the United States where Certificates of Degree of Indigenous Blood are still controversially issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Blood quantum laws in the US date back to the early 18th century and were used as a colonial tool to keep track of Indigenous populations. Now most sovereign tribes make their own definitions of Indigenous heritage and tribal membership. In Australia, the legal definition is similarly loose, autonomous and consensus based…

Read the entire article here.

Birtherism’s real anxiety

The Carletonian
Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota
2011 Spring Issue 4 (2011-04-29)

David Heifetz

Can we put this issue to rest now? On Wednesday morning, President Obama surprised a lot of people by suddenly releasing his long-form birth certificate, which, of course, showed that he was born in Hawaii. In explaining why he had decided to release it now, Obama explained that the issue had simply become too much of a distraction. There are more important things to do, and it is a waste of everyone’s time to be dwelling on this, he said.

But will facts make this go away? Doubtful. And the reason is because this conspiracy theory always had less to do with doubting the physical place where Obama was born and more to do with a deep discomfort about who he is and what he represents. Whether it is a dislike of his policies and party, racism, or a combination of the two, the birther idea is just the manifestation of a deeper dislike of Obama….

…In addition to the plain dislike of having a black man as president, what doubts about Obama’s birthplace also signify is a deep xenophobia in parts of this country. It is the attitude that goes deeper than just believing in American exceptionalism; it is the belief that America has nothing to learn from anyone else, that we have all the answers, and that it is un-America to suggest that there is value in other ways of life.

President Obama’s upbringing was unique in that he was constantly immersed in different cultures and surrounded by different perspectives. Whether it was reconciling his biracial identity, spending years of his childhood in Indonesia, or visiting his family in Kenya later in his life, Obama has grown up with a distinct sense that there is not one right way to do things. He has learned that although Judeo-Christian America is beautiful for all of its many strengths, there are peoples in the world who come from different traditions that have things to offer as well…

Read the entire article here.

Controversy: Race and Sexuality on the American Frontier (FRO 100.023)

Goucher College, Baltimore, Maryland

Angelo Robinson, Associate Professor of English

“Am I Black or White? Am I Straight or Gay? CONTROVERSY?”  Since its founding, and long before recording artist Prince penned these lyrics in the 1980s, America has been a space and a place demanding and mandating polarized definitions of race and sexuality. This course will examine the reasoning behind and ramifications of these dichotomies from the Colonial Period to the present in genres that include literature, film, and music.  We will also explore how these binaries affect people who identify as biracial and bisexual.

This discussion-based course requires intensive reading, viewing, and listening and will foster your critical thinking and analytical writing.  Topics of discussion will include the “one-drop rule,” the slavery debate, miscegenation, racial passing, segregation, integration, interracial desire, and sexual passing.  Special attention will be given to individuals who and organizations that refuse to follow racial and sexual dictates. Authors will include Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Jacobs, Mark Twain, Nella Larsen, James Weldon Johnson, Ralph Ellison, June Jordan, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Adrienne Rich, E. Lynn Harris, and Barack Obama.

Transcending Blackness in the 21st Century, or How Can I Be Like Barack Obama?

Global Studies: A Member of the International Instutute
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Multiracial Tales and Multicultural Discourses
494 Van Hise Hall
2011-04-18, 17:30 CDT (Local Time)

Ralina L. Joseph, Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Washington

As “postrace” is the buzzword of the new century, and Barack Obama has quickly become a poster child of the postrace, the question arises: must multiracial African Americans metaphorically transcend blackness in order to achieve success? This talk will critique the notion that mixed-race black subjects function as bridges offering safe passage to a third, interstitial, or hybridized space. I argue that a two-sided stereotype, comprised in the “new millennium mulatta” and the “exceptional multiracial,” has arisen instead through a variety of mediated discourses.

Ralina Joseph is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Washington. Her forthcoming book from Duke University Press entitled Transcending Blackness: Anti-Black Racism and African American Multiraciality from the New Milennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial investigates 1998-2008 era pop culture representations of multiracial African Americans.

For more information, click here.
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President Underscores Similarities With Brazilians, but Ignores One

The New York Times
2011-03-20

Alexei Barrionuevo

Jackie Calmes

RIO de JANEIRO — From a visit to this city’s most infamous slum to a national address amid the gilded elegance of a celebrated theater, President Obama on Sunday sought to underscore the shared histories and futures of the United States and Brazil, reaching out to the people of one of the most racially diverse countries in the Americas.

But Mr. Obama, on the second day of a five-day tour of Latin America, once again seemed to sidestep mentioning his own racial background in appearances here, even as Brazilians who gathered at a plaza trying to catch a glimpse of him said that he had inspired millions in this country because of his African heritage.

“Because he knows the reality of discrimination against blacks, it would be very important for him to pass on the message that it is possible to get somewhere, to be someone, in spite of all the difficulties,” said Célio Frias, a 46-year-old businessman. “He is an inspiration.”…

…But Brazilians see the issue differently. Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery, having done it in 1888. Yet unlike the United States, Brazil never passed Jim Crow segregation laws, and despite the persistence of racism here, many Brazilians take pride in having intermarried more than whites and blacks in the United States.

In the months leading up to his election, Mr. Obama’s popularity soared in Brazil with a wide cross-section of Brazilians. Many proclaimed that Mr. Obama’s gregarious personality made him seem like a Brazilian masquerading as an American, even as many Americans see him as too cool and detached.

“I was moved by his election, I followed everything, saved magazines, newspapers, everything that came out about him,” said Maria Helena Reis, 62, a nurse. “He gives a lot of pride to blacks.”

Opinion polls in the region show that Mr. Obama’s election has also improved Latin American countries’ opinion of the United States as a whole. Among Brazilians, those with a favorable view increased by 16 percentage points from 57 percent in 2008 to 73 percent in 2009, according to Latinobarometro, a polling company in Santiago, Chile. The increase was higher among blacks and those of mixed race surveyed than among whites.

Mr. Obama’s activities on Sunday in Rio—first, his visit to the sprawling City of God favela, or slum, made famous the world over in the 2002 movie that bears its name, followed by a televised speech to a large audience at a historic theater—illustrated the White House’s efforts to take advantage of the president’s unique appeal to the broad and heavily mixed-race Brazilian public…

Read the entire article here.

American Identity in the Age of Obama

Northeastern University
Amilcar Cabral Center in the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute
Boston, Massachusetts
Friday, 2011-03-25, 08:30-15:30 EDT (Local Time)

The election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States has opened a new chapter in the country’s long and often tortured history of inter-racial and inter-ethnic relations. Many relished in the inauguration of the country’s first African American president—an event foreseen by another White House aspirant, Senator Robert Kennedy, four decades earlier. What could have only been categorized as a dream in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education was now a reality. Some dared to contemplate a post-racial America. Still, soon after Obama’s election a small but persistent faction questioned his eligibility to hold office; they insisted that Obama was foreign-born. Following the Civil Rights battles of the 20th century hate speech, at least in public, is no longer as free flowing as it had been. Perhaps xenophobia, in a land of immigrants, is the new rhetorical device to assail what which is non-white and hence un-American. Furthermore, recent debates about immigration and racial profiling in Arizona along with the battle over rewriting of history and civics textbooks in Texas suggest that a post-racial America is a long way off. Indeed, in his 1995 book, Dreams from My Father, Obama observed both how far we have come and how far we yet to traverse.

This conference will provide an opportunity to discuss changing and persistent notions of American identity in the Age of Obama. What roles do race, ethnicity, ancestry, immigration status, locus of birth play in the public and private conversations that defy and reinforce existing conceptions of what it means to be American?

Morning Session 08:30 – 12:00 EDT

Paper 2: “The First Black President?: Cross-racial Perceptions of Barack Obama’s Race”

Matthew Hunt, Associate Professor of Sociology
Northeastern University

David C. Wilson, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations
University of Delaware

Barack Obama’s ancestry can aptly be described as racially-mixed given his “black” Kenyan father and “white” American mother. At the same time, Obama self-identifies as African American and is widely regarded as the country’s first black president. These latter facts, of course, stem from the socially constructed nature of racial identities, America’s malevolent racial history and pattern of racial formation (think “one drop rule”), and (related) contemporary patterns of racial classification and experience. Nonetheless, the nature of Obama’s racial status does not go uncontested in the public arena. African Americans have questioned Obama’s racial authenticity (“Is he Black enough?”). And, among many whites, Obama is seen as something other than truly “black” – a fact that made him more palatable to whites as a candidate and likely contributed to his electoral success. These issues all point to the importance of understanding how and why people view Barack Obama as occupying one or another racial status/category in America. This paper explores these issues empirically via an analysis of 2009 polling data from the Pew Research Center’s “Racial Attitudes in America II” project (N = 2,850). Our analyses center on whether Obama is seen as “black” or “mixed race.” Specifically, we explore how a host of factors – including demographics, concerns about Obama’s political focus on Whites and Blacks, perceptions of discrimination, perceptions of the nature of Obama “values, racial stereotypes, and respondents” own racial identities (including a “mixed race” option) – shape how the public views the President in terms of race. In so doing, we hope to shed light on the ways in which persons’ social locations, identities, and views on racial and societal issues contribute to how Obama’s racial status is constructed by the lay public.

Paper 3: “Racial Identification in a Post Obama era: Multiracialism, Immigration and Identity Choice”

Natalie Masuoka, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Tufts University

In 2008, 2.2% of Americans identified with two or more racial categories. Indeed, assertions of non-traditional identities evoking a mixed race (or multiracial) back-ground are more prevalent in society today, particularly among younger generations. The rise of multiracial identification is indicative of new social norms that govern racial identification which offer a more inviting environment for individuals to assert multiracial identities. Yet, as a trend of multiracial self-identification grows, it demands the attention of those that self-identify with the established racial categories, such as white or black, who must then consider and respond to these identities. I anticipate that response to multiracial identities will vary by racial background. As a general pattern, I argue that whites tend to interpret multiracial identities with normative optimism about U.S. race relations while racial minorities generally respond more unfavorably to the assertions of these identities. Because of this, racial minorities will be more critical of multiracial identities and challenge the legitimacy of these identities. Using recent public opinion data, I examine the relationship between views on multiracial identities and other racial and political attitudes and compare how this relationship may differ across whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians.

For more information, click here.

Containing Multitudes

Mixed Dreams: towards a radical multiracial/ethnic movement
2011-02-21

Nicole Asong Nfonoyim

“Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens. They expanded or contracted with the dreams of men– and in the civil rights movement those dreams had seemed large. In the sit-ins, the marches, the jailhouse songs, I saw the African-American community becoming more than just the place where you’d been born or the house where you’d been raised. Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned–because this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself—I believed that it might over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life.”

Barack Obama from Dreams From My Father

Alright, I know, I know, talking about Obama and multiraciality is like beating a dead horse. But, I swear, I have a really good point (or two) to make!

Point 1: NO IDENTITY IS MONOLITHIC

It sounds simple enough: Race is not biological, it’s a social construct. Identities are fluid, they change and even expand over time. But most of U.S. society hasn’t caught on yet. And ultimately we need to ask, who gains from keeping these strict boundaries around identities?

In the U.S. we’ve gotten pretty good at essentializing identities into strictly defined, carefully bound, digestible boxes. The black American community, in particular, has long been seen as a monolith—a static and unassimilable one at that—and yet nothing could be further from the truth. I recently watched the Kobina Aidoo documentary film The Neo African-Americans.  The film aims to explore issues facing Caribbean and continental African immigrant communities and their descendants in the U.S. Though, it was at best an introduction to some very deeply rooted issues concerning black people in the Diaspora, the film definitely brings up some provocative points around identity, authenticity and community. The film got me thinking about the (often invisible) multitudes racial and ethnic identities contain and how crucial and yet limiting the process of “self-naming” can be for historically marginalized groups. As people of color, many of us live on the “hyphen”—as hyphen “Americans” in a way that members of white ethnic groups do not.

Indeed, many of the issues faced by mixed people, mirror those faced by many “monoracial” people of color, especially as our society becomes increasingly defined by it’s heterogeneity while migration, gender, socioeconomic class and sexuality further shape and shift our identities over time. We’re all struggling to define and (re)define who we are as individuals and as collectives. Thus, crises of authenticity, legitimacy, community, progress and belonging are not the sole domain of one particular ethnic or racial group. In significant ways, we can say that they have become woven into the very fabric of our racial inheritance in this country and as such we are all implicated:  black, brown and (perhaps especially) white in tackling these issues head on…

Read the entire essay here.

The President, the Census and the Multiracial “Community”

Open Salon
2011-02-20

Ulli K. Ryder, Ph.D.

What is the connection between Obama, the 2010 U.S. Census and multiracials?  Not as much as some may think. While it is tempting to look to Obama as a mixed race icon and to see the Census as publicly acknowledging a multiracial “community,” we may need to rethink these ideas. 

The 2010 Census data is being released a few states at a time but already the data suggests a large increase in those identifying as “more than one race.”… …What does this data tell us? First, all states that have been released so far have shown an increase in those who identify as more than one race. Second, even with this increase, the actual percentage of people who identify as more than one race is still a relatively small percentage of the population.

Yet, multiracials are a growing and highly visible population. Multiracials, specifically the mixed race Millennials, are everywhere asserting their right to check more than one box and have all their heritages respected, counted and acknowledged.  Public discussions of multiracial identity demonstrate  the importance of this group to current debates about race in the United States.  Whether in popular culture such as Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry’s daughter or in the world of academia such as the recent New York Times article exploring multiracial students, we seem determined to understand multiracial identities and what they mean about race relations in the United States. In these debates, President Obama is frequently evoked as an icon of multiraciality.  However, on the 2010 Census, he chose to identify as “Black” and only “Black.” Multiracial discomfort with Obama’s choice seems to speak less about Obama and his views of race (either public or private) and more about multiracials’ desire for public acknowledgement of private identities. Is this how we should develop and create our identities?  Is self-affirmation driven by external forces or internal comfort and wholeness?…

Read the entire article here.

Racial Paradox and Eclipse: Obama as a Balm for What Ails Us

Denver University Law Review
Volume 86, Special Issue (Obama Phenomena: A Special Issue on the Election of President Barack Obama (2009)
pages 743-783

Camille A. Nelson, Dean and Professor of Law
Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts

I. Introduction

The 2008 political season provided us with sublime political spectacle. The contest for presidential nominee of the Democratic National party was an exciting and historic race. The subsequent presidential race whipped Americans, and indeed many throughout the world, into a frenzy. Never before did two white women and a black man exemplify the dreams and aspirations of so many. People the world over hoped and sought to change the course of history through the selection of the President and Vice President of the United States of America. There appearedto be a captivating yet ironic handwringing around identitarian politics at the same time that this elephant in the room was downplayed. The contest elevated, yet simultaneously sublimated, Americans’ struggle with race, gender, religion and national origin. As everyone was well aware of the monumental contests for symbolic firsts1 the 2008 Presidential race took on added momentum. With the designation of “First black President of the United States of America” looming within sight, supporters and detractors of Barack Obama were plagued by the weighty history of America. This racist history was cast as both past and prologue. With so many “firsts” at stake—either the potential for the first woman President and Vice President or the first black President—both crude and subtle identity politics were revealed which challenged claims that the citizenry of the United States had moved beyond identity politics, or race more specifically.

However, transcendent colorblind theories have been echoed in recent U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence—they buttress a disconnect from our racialized past and present. In 2003, Justice O’Connor in Grutter v. Bollinger remarked that in twenty-five years we should no longer require affirmative action initiatives, presumably because we will have reached a post-racial epoch of cultural colorblindness. A few years later Chief Justice Roberts in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 15—a case addressing affirmative action initiatives undertaken by school districts—similarly asserted that the best way to stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating. Cases such as these encode a normative boundary between public and private. They establish a terrain of identity schizophrenia on which we are often deluded by our perceptions of reality—no longer can we tell what is real from what is fiction.

This is the terrain on which I would like to examine the Obama phenomenon to reveal Barack Obama as somewhat of a paradox, black but white, manly but feminist, alien yet familiar, foreign but quintessentially American, and of course dubiously Christian. Accordingly, this essay will explore what might be described as the disordered identity politics revealed at the site of Obama’s ascendance. I will focus largely upon racial dynamics while recognizing the work of other identity constructs in constituting and reinforcing each other. Admittedly, race and racial politicking are the focus of this essay, but gender (specifically masculinity), religion, class and national origin also occupied the political landscape in meaningful ways. Essential to this exploration, therefore, is the intersecting identity of Barack Obama as not only a man, but a heterosexual black man of mixed racial, cultural and religious heritage. This multifaceted identity nexus carries incredible baggage in America—it complicates the desire for simplified identitarian politics but does not eliminate its force.

While to some people Barack Obama, as a mixed-race man who is Black identified, holds within him the specter of a post-racial America, it is my sense that we have not yet achieved this lofty goal, despite his election. Instead, America remains deeply invested in identitarian politics and race more specifically. No doubt some citizens cast a vote for Obama because of his race and others refused to do so for the same reason.  Rather than being irrelevant, the visibility and salience of race in America is starkly demonstrated by Obama mania—Obamania—the frenzy, excitement and furor surrounding his candidacy for President of the United States. Obama supporters and detractors alike have seized specifically upon race, consciously or unconsciously, to reveal deepseated identity-based paranoia. Thus, contrary to what the Supreme Court of the United States proclaims, race is not irrelevant in America, especially when politics and power are concerned.

This essay will explore some of the disordered permutations of race, specifically racial construction and deconstruction, as publicly demonstrated through Obamania. In Part I, particular emphasis will be placed upon the mixed-race rhetoric surrounding Obama—this framework casts Obama as racially transcendent and celebrates public American postracialism.  Curiously, though, despite this philosophy that dismisses the centrality of race in America, Obama himself acknowledges that he has had to make private race-based identity choices. Obama asserts that he is a black man in America—it is unlikely that he could assert that he is a white man and be legitimated and embraced as such. U.S. Representative G. K. Butterfield states, “Obama has chosen the heritage he feels comfortable with. His physical appearance is black. I don’t know how he could have chosen to be any other race. Let’s just say [if] he decided to be white people would have laughed at him.” Indeed, it is folly to believe that those who see him in dark, distrustful hues would embrace his white-half identity thereby seeing themselves in him to overcome their perception of his troublesome blackness. American public progressivity is out of step with our private racial ordering. Ironically, many in America can publicly celebrate the incredible reality of our first black President, yet self-righteously return to markedly and intentionally segregated private lives.

Part II will explore the racial tightrope that Obama skillfully crossed. Of all the major political candidates, only Obama was asked to be all things to all people. At times, he was not seen as black enough. At other times, Obama was too black. Yet on other occasions, Obama’s Christianity was questioned with the post-9/11 weightiness of an ascribed Muslim identity. There were other occasions on which his masculinity was questioned, even as he undoubtedly felt the historical burden of hyper-masculinized black manhood. Identity politics were cast upon Obama with a furor seldom demonstrated in national politics. Skillful as ever, however, Obama emerged victorious and relatively unscathed. To my mind, navigating the swath of identitarian complaints and politics thrown only his way was one of his greatest accomplishments.

Ultimately, Part III will conclude with an exploration of the ways in which the political contest for the Democratic Party nominee exposed the primacy of identitarian politics, specifically of race, in America. In conclusion, this essay will assert that, in keeping with America’s schizophrenic socio-legal history, race remains a challenging concept and its persistent relevance indicates that we have not yet achieved the racial healing or transcendence which Obama’s public ascendancy proclaims. Obama, therefore, is not the balm for our racial ailments. Instead, Obama’s ascendancy reveals our racial disorder. At the same time that Obama’s eclipsing blackness comforts many of us in the knowledge that we have finally elected a black President, others are equally disappointed by this fact. Moreover, Obama’s public trajectory to the forefront of the political super strata eclipses the pervasive reality that private prejudices remain steadfast throughout the social landscape and we remain more racially segregated than ever…

…To many people Obama’s mixed-race heritage indicates the triumph of colorblindness over racism. That colorblindness, as opposed to colorconsciousness without negative ascription, is seen as the sine qua non of racial progress is itself revealing of our racial disorder. For many in America the only way to overcome racism is to deny the consequences of race and colorism. Instead I suggest that we think about eliminating the negative connotations and consequences tethered to racialization rather than seeking to avoid any recognition of the socio-cultural concept of race itself. In the political landscape Obama was paradoxically wedged between these two competing viewpoints. [Shelby] Steele summarized these perspectives as follows:

There is the unspoken hope that his mixed-race freshness carries a broader political originality. And, in fact, he does embody something that no other presidential candidate possibly can: the idealism that race is but a negligible human difference. Here is the radicalism, innate to his pedigree, which automatically casts him as the perfect antidote to America’s exhausted racial politics. This is the radicalism by which Martin Luther King Jr. put Americans in touch—if only briefly—with their human universality. Barack Obama is the progeny of this idealism. As such, he is a living rebuke to both racism and racialism, to both segregation and identity politics—any form of collective chauvinism.

I read the identitarian discourses surrounding Obama differently. The posing of these questions around identity betrays our subconscious recognition that we are not there yet—we remain burdened by a default racial calculus. Even the semantics of being post-racial reveals the persistence of race and racial constructions. We do not even have terminology, let alone the ideological substance, to take us beyond racial fixity. These questions further indicate our quest for a racial healing that we know has not yet been achieved. Hence the racial schizophrenia. We aredeeply conflicted. It is unclear what is reality versus what is merely our distorted perception. It is my ultimate conclusion that our distorted racial perception is our reality…

Read the entire article here.