Race and Ethnicity

‘Usually Offensive’ [1]

Submitted by Jennifer Holladay [2] on November 16, 2009

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Race and Ethnicity [3]

red·skin \ˈred-ˌskin\
(noun) usually offensive : American Indian

Note the “usually offensive” — a warning from one of the more neutral arbitrators of American English, Merriam-Webster. “Redskin” is a pejorative term, and should be used with caution, if at all.

red·skin \ˈred-ˌskin\
(noun) usually offensive : American Indian

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All About Hair [5]

Submitted by Jennifer Holladay [2] on October 9, 2009

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When my daughter was three, she showed up at preschool without her normal braids or twists, her glorious afro present for all to see and celebrate. Her little peers didn’t respond kindly though; they chimed in instead — quite loudly — with criticism: “What’s wrong with Zoe’s hair?”

When my daughter was three, she showed up at preschool without her normal braids or twists, her glorious afro present for all to see and celebrate.

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A Wise Latina Woman: Reflections on Sonia Sotomayor [7]

Submitted by Sonia Nieto [8] on September 4, 2009

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Gender Equity [9]

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” These few words, spoken casually by Sonia Sotomayor at the annual Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at UC-Berkeley in 2001, came back to haunt President Barack Obama’s nominee for the United States Supreme Court during the spring and summer of 2009. Hard to believe that this brief statement could cause such anguish, particularly among the conservative white senators who form part of the Senate Judiciary Committee, yet they led to days of arrogant grilling by the Senators and weeks of newspaper articles and commentary by television pundits speculating on what Sotomayor meant, whether it would hurt her confirmation, and what it would signal for the new court.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” These few words, spo

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Pushed Out [11]

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Race and Ethnicity [3]
Discipline and Behavior [12]

Number 36: Fall 2009 [13]

Eight year-old “Jenny” was suspended from her third-grade class for two days for bringing a pair of cuticle scissors to open the wrapper on her school breakfast.

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Talking Race [15]

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Number 36: Fall 2009 [13]

Nuri Vargas knows how it feels to be silenced.

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Colorblindness: the New Racism? [17]

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Number 36: Fall 2009 [13]

Kawania Wooten’s voice tightens when she describes the struggle she’s having at the school her son attends.

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Our Journey to Kindergarten [19]

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Number 36: Fall 2009 [13]

The butcher-paper display outside the classroom was as tall as me and twice as wide, a sweeping visual reminder of one of the school’s goals: Move 10% of students from unsatisfactory to proficient.

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Our Challenges as a People [21]

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Number 35: Spring 2009 [22]

Barack Obama's ascension to the highest elected office in our land is surely a milestone in the American narrative. The events of Nov. 4, 2008, and Jan.

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Does My Town Have a Racist Past? [24]

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Number 33: Spring 2008 [25]

In 1999, I started researching sundown towns. These are overwhelmingly white communities that for decades stayed that way on purpose.

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