The Alternative History of 2013: Alt-Weeklies Year in Review

Posted in Articles, Communications/Media Studies, Media Archive, United States on 2014-01-03 18:38Z by Steven

The Alternative History of 2013: Alt-Weeklies Year in Review

AAN News
Association of Alternative Newsmedia
2013-12-19

Jason Zaragoza

For our first-ever Alt-Weeklies Year in Review, we asked AAN editors and reporters to share the stories they are the most — and least — proud of from the past year. What follows is an edited version of their responses.

Stephen Segal, Philadelphia Weekly

Philly Weekly produced an awful lot in 2013 that I’m proud of — but if I have to pick one single piece I found most noteworthy, I’ll point to an issue where our staff got out of the way and let the primary source speak for itself. We excerpted as a cover story Prof. Yaba Blay’s provocative new book “One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race,” which presents stunning photographic portraits of variously-hued and multiracial Black Americans alongside essays by those subjects in which they discussed how their specific skin color, and its relationship to their lives, has shaped their unique identities. Just fascinating reading. (And an editorial note: Among other things, I find this story has pushed me into the school of thought that, AP style notwithstanding, “Black” should indeed be a capitalized ethnic term.)…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Being Black: It’s not the skin color

Posted in Articles, Arts, Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2013-11-13 16:37Z by Steven

Being Black: It’s not the skin color

Philadelphia Weekly
2013-11-13

Kennedy Allen et al.

Drexel prof Yaba Blay’s striking new photo book “One Drop” explores how a wide range of different skin tones affects Americans’ personal identities. In  this PW excerpt, eight Philadelphia-area residents of mixed heritage concur: However light they may be, they’re still most certainly Black. Our own Kennedy Allen agrees…

Growing up in Mt. Airy, an ethnic and economically diverse neighborhood, instilled within me a level of acceptance and tolerance regarding my fellow man that, confoundingly, many didn’t seem to share. I was one of seven Black kids in a class of 42. Because I spoke English properly and preferred rock to rap, I was deemed “White girl” by my racial peers—a label that haunted me for what felt like eons. I knew I wasn’t White, nor did I ever have the urge to be, outside of wishing my hair would blow in the wind like some of the girls in my class. Flash-forward to my final years of high school, in a black school where I was the “light-bright girl who talks White.” Dark-skinned people still sneer at me, somehow assuming that I believe myself to be “better” than they are because of my buttered-toffee skin tone.

When all is said and done, racial or ethnic identity rests upon the individual and their experiences. I identify myself as a black woman who happens to have Irish and Cherokee lineage. What of all the others who identify as black, but appear otherwise? Scholar and activist Arturo Schomburg, whose extensive collection of books and historical records of African people’s achievements eventually became the famed Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, N.Y., identified as an Afro-Puerto Rican. (In fact, his passion for gathering all those documents was born after a grade-school teacher told him that black people had no history, heroes or accomplishments.) Would Schomburg’s experience be less valid because it fails to meet some homogenous notion of Blackness? Who has the right to determine these standards in the first place? And in an age of global interconnectedness and the instant, worldwide exchange of information and ideals, why does it still even matter?

Dr. Yaba Blay wondered some of the same things. A first-generation Ghanian-American and the co-director of Drexel’s Africana studies program, Blay has spent the past two years gathering vibrant portraits and intimate stories from nearly 60 individuals across the country in an attempt to shine some light upon questions of racial ambiguity and legitimacy. Those portraits now comprise a new book that she’s edited and published, (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race—as well as an exhibit of the same name, currently on display at the Painted Bride Art Center

Read the entire article and eight subject profiles from the book here.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,