Allyson Hobbs – “A Chosen Exile”

Posted in Audio, History, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2014-11-02 01:46Z by Steven

Allyson Hobbs – “A Chosen Exile”

The Tavis Smiley Show
2014-10-31

Between the 18th and mid-20th centuries, countless fair-skinned African Americans abandoned families, friends and communities to forge new lives as white people. In her new book, “A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life”, Stanford University historian Allyson Hobbs explores the ways in which passing was a strategy for survival and an avenue to loss.


Listen to the episode here.

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Dorothy Roberts – Fatal Invention

Posted in Audio, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2011-09-18 04:12Z by Steven

Dorothy Roberts – Fatal Invention

The Tavis Smiley Show
PRI: Public Radio International
2011-07-08

Tavis Smiley, Host

Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of Pennsylvania

Professor and legal scholar Dorothy Roberts explores the effects of race-based science in her new book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century. It’s the first text of its kind to document the development of racial science and biotechnology based on genetics and to map its implications for equality in America.

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Casta Paintings: Inventing Race Through Art

Posted in Articles, Arts, Audio, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, Mexico, United States on 2010-11-26 02:47Z by Steven

Casta Paintings: Inventing Race Through Art

The Tavis Smiley Show
National Public Radio
2004-06-30

Mexican Art Genre Reveals 18th-Century Attitudes on Racial Mixing

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is hosting the first-ever major exhibition paintings that reflect what many upper-class Spaniards thought about race, class and skin color during the 1700s, when Mexico was a colony of Spain. NPR producer Nova Safo reports on the controversial exhibit.

The genre of art, called casta, reveals more about prejudices in Spain at the time than the reality in Mexico. One portrait of a family, used as the centerpiece of the LACMA exhibit, is typical of the genre: A mother with snow-white skin, a dark-skinned father and a daughter with skin tone in between the two appear as prosperous and well-dressed.

But the title of the portrait is curious: “De Espaniol y Albina, Torna Atras”—literally, “From a Spaniard and Albino, return backwards.” The prevailing theory at the time was that albinos were thought to be part African. So the union of an albino with a Spaniard was actually seen as a step backward, towards African heritage…

Read the entire article here.  Listen to the story (00:05:26) here in Real Media or Windows format.

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