Continuing the slow march through the archives that I promised/threatened to engage in a few weeks ago, here’s a conference paper that I wrote, but never delivered. This was supposed to be part of a panel at the 2018 “Crossroads in Cultural Studies” conference in Shanghai . . . but Air Canada decided (wrongly!) that […]
Fifty shades of red
The more I read about the Rachel Dolezal story, the angrier I get. But not at her. Because, as I mentioned before, none of us know enough to say with any certainty who or what she “really” is. Race isn’t that simple. Identity isn’t that simple. Yet all sorts of people — too many to […]
Fifty shades of black
I don’t know the truth about Rachel Dolezal or her heritage. And neither do you. Yet an awful lot of people seem quite confident — even as they acknowledge the slipperiness of racial identity and/or the artificiality of race itself — that they know she’s really white. Maybe they’re right. Maybe. But the swiftness with […]