on getting questions about racial background via Jezebel.com
Themes: Self & Identity
2nd Annual: What Are You?
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Let’s talk about race, ethnicity, and identity. Panelists will start the conversation and we hope you’ll join in.
Commentary on President Obama's Mixed Heritage
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via New York Magazine. An essay by John McWhorter
More News about President Obama's Ancestry
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via Ancestry.com: Research Connects First African-American President to First African Slave in the American Colonies
Secret Daughter
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In this podcast from The Moth, author June Cross tells how her mother made her keep her heritage a secret because she was mixed-race.
Elizabeth Velazquez
Oral History
"I think that it’s important to see role models in different positions because when we’re young, we kind of follow habits, and if kids see, again and again, that people that look like them are only working at the deli, or working in cleaning, and not to say that they won't do other things, because it has been done, but I think that for them to stop feeling that feeling that they're less than, that I think it creates.
Jonathan Blazon
Oral History
"I’m revealing to myself that it still hurts that Chinese people think of me as being less Chinese -- of not being Chinese, actually. I shouldn’t say 'less.' They just don’t even consider me as being Chinese. And I hate it. I really do."
Bette Yee
Oral History
"...It was 1956, I was in the first grade, and I still hadn’t spoken any English. We really didn’t have a TV until we were -- until I was like seven or eight years old, and we didn’t even know what other kids had. We just knew that we were different, but we also felt that we were special."
PHOTOS: Bridging the Gap Poetry Showcase Recap
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On April 4, 2012, BHS hosted a poetry showcase featuring Nichole Acosta, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Adrienne Lyric, and Tara Betts. Organized by Nichole Acosta, poets from Bridging the Gap used their voices, words, history, and music to discuss mixed heritage, racial identity, and gender issues.
Itamar Goldstein
Oral History
"Yiddish is German and Hebrew, and Yemenites have Hebrew and Arabic, and there’s the Sephardis have Ladino, which is Spanish and Hebrew. They’re all beautiful -- Yiddish is funny, but most of them are beautiful languages, they’re very poetic."
Sonnet Takahisa
Oral History
“I remember getting in trouble with a substitute teacher...I was looking at the window, and he said, 'You, sit down in your seat. You’re making a bad name for your race.' And I was like, 'Excuse me, but I’m probably the same race as you.'”
Alexander David
Oral History
"I was always the other…To the white kids I was Asian. To the Asian kids I was white. My girlfriend at the time was Asian and she considered me her white boyfriend."
Connection between storytelling and identity?
Discussion Topic
At the Identity & Oral History workshop at the Brooklyn Museum (grounded in the Question Bridge: Black Males exhibit), participants discussed important turning points in our lives and practiced deep listening skills, which inspired reflections on the role of storytelling and listening in our own liv
"Mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black..."
Article
An Opinion piece by Thomas Chatterton Williams
Harry Schwartzman
Oral History
"I grew up speaking Yiddish and Japanese, and a lot of people find that exotic and different, and I guess as exotic and different as growing up in New York. To me, it’s normal."
Asha Sundararaman
Oral History
"I dated a white guy and I felt very not-white. And I dated an Indian guy. I felt very not-Indian. So I’m kind of like, eh, it’s in between. Everything is just in between."
Sneak Preview: Black Folk Don't Season Two
Article
"Sometimes you substitute 'Black' for 'lower class' and they're not the same.
Lenge Hong
Oral History
"When I would say Eurasian, nobody would know what I was talking about. So I would go I’m half Chinese, and half Scottish - which I actually still do. I went through stages in my life of different emotional reactions to that question: What are you?"
PHOTOS: Talking about Race, Assumptions, & Vin Diesel
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Photos from BHS's screening & discussion of Vin Diesel's short film Multi-Facial