VIDEO: The Many Problems With, “You Sound White”

This video is not only well articulated, but it hits on topics we’ve learned such as double-consciousness, race-talking, and ascription. Enjoy!

PHOTOS: The Model Minority Reality, by Cynthia Trinh

“This photo essay portrays Asian Americans working in low-wage service jobs. Asian Americans are often stereotyped to be the “model minority” because they are viewed as highly educated and hold professional jobs. However, this is not true for many Asian Americans working as street vendors, nail salon workers, store clerks, cooks, and more. This photo essay aims to combat the stereotype that Asians are the “model minority” and also shows the tenacity, hard work, and struggle of an immigrant population to survive in a big city.”

Click here.

This photo series has been featured in popular media, including .Mic, The New York Daily News, and Angry Asian Man.

Black Man in a White Coat by Damon Tweedy, M.D.

“One doctor’s passionate and profound memoir of his experience grappling with race, bias, and the unique health problems of black Americans

When Damon Tweedy begins medical school, he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school, a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his career. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture the common refrain for numerous diseases resounds, “More common in blacks than in whites.”

Black Man in a White Coat examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosed with a chronic disease far more common among black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care.”

Click here – Time magazine book excerpt

Click here – NPR interview with Dr. Damon Tweedy

Click here – CBS news article

A Look at Race as a Social Construct

Sometimes a picture is truly worth a thousand words. For those of us from the ‘multiracial’ or mixed race community, photos of our population — our people, our families, our children — aren’t as shocking as they are an affirmation of what we have already known: Race is a social construct.

Click here.

 

Conversations on Philosophy and Race

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Click here to read an ongoing series of interviews with philosophers on race by George Yancy, philosophy professor at Emory University.

Ariana Miyamoto: the Black Miss Japan

In March 2015 Ariana Miyamoto became the first half-black Japanese woman to be named Miss Japan. This video feature by Al Jazeera America explores the varied reactions to a mixed-race woman, or what the Japanese refer to as a “hafu”,  being crowned Miss Japan.

“I don’t think the equivalent word for ‘hafu’ exists overseas; but in Japan, you need that word to explain who you are.” — Ariana Miyamoto

Furthermore, the video communicates to viewers the often misused and mislead power of assigning meaning to bodies and outward appearances as opposed to acknowledging individuals’ ethnicities or nationalities .

“My appearance isn’t Asian, but I believe I’m very much Japanese on the inside.” — Ariana Miyamoto

This piece connects well with our discussion of what it means to talk about race, how we use or misuse the term ‘race’ to assign meaning, and the significance of the language we use in race-talk.

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/live-news/2015/9/miss-japan-challenges-the-norm.html

 

VIDEO: Bill Nye – Race is a Human Construct

Check out this video of Bill Nye the Science Guy using scientific evidence to argue that “race” doesn’t exist from a biological perspective. Nye first debunks the myth of purebred dogs by analyzing that canine breeding and evolution has yielded a broad spectrum of physical characteristics but no actual variance in species:

“We obsess about whether our dog is a pug-Jack Russell terrier mix with corgi overtones and an oaky finish…whatever. They’re all dogs, okay? And so the idea of a purebred is just a human construct. There’s no such thing – in a sense there’s no such thing as a purebred dog.”

He then draws s comparison between the idea of dog “breeds” and human “races”, both just being constructs:

“If a Papua New Guinean hooks up with a Swedish person all you get is a human.  There’s no new thing you’re going to get. You just get a human…for humankind there’s really no such thing as race. There’s different tribes but not different races. We’re all one species.

Any thoughts on Nye’s argument?