Memoranda @temasmith - Tumblr Blog

#TBT - I took this picture almost two years ago. How many more black lives have turned into hashtags since then? Too many. My heart breaks for my brothers and my sisters. #blacklivesmatter

#tbt #blacklivesmatter

And me? I've learned to flaunt my mixedness at dinner parties, where the guests (most of them white) ooh and aah about my flavourful background. I've found it's not so bad to be a fetishized object, an exotic bird soaring above the racial landscape...

"The Mulatto Millennium" by Danzy Senna, in "Half and Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural"

#mixedkidproblems #multiracial #mixed race #black and white #diversity #race politics #race #mulatto

armedpublishing

Rachel Dolezal Has Hijacked what It Means To Be Mixed-Race In America

By Sophia Softky

Since the Rachel Dolezal trainwreck began unfolding, each day has brought ever-weirder allegations to light. From her upbringing, days at Howard University, involvement in the NAACP, and position as an Africana Studies professor – along with the predictable flood of hot takes and twitter memes. This week’s interviews with Matt Lauer and Melissa Harris-Perry have only compounded the public outrage. Dolezal’s claims that she “identifies as black” and that presenting herself as a Black woman is a matter of “survival” are breathtakingly audacious, obtuse, and bizarre.

I spent the last several years studying, thinking, and publishing opinions about race in America–even writing a thesis about racial performance and the history of “passing”. So, for me, this scandal should have been low-hanging fruit. Dolezal has been roundly condemned and ridiculed by progressives, and rightly so, but the more I learn, the more I have felt a deeply personal sense of discomfort and anxiety.

Of course, whatever her self-justifications, a white woman deliberately misrepresenting her racial background for personal and professional gain is indefensible, and plenty of ink has already been spilled on dismantling the absurd notion of “transracial”. But I have not been able to avoid drawing uncomfortable parallels between Rachel’s situation and my own life. The Dolezal scandal erases experiences of those who actually experience not ‘feeling’ like the race people assume, and I worry that the public outcry threatens to drown out and delegitimize the voices of people like myself, who exist in complicated racial borderlands and who struggle with social scrutiny and suspicion of our identities.

Keep reading

My thoughts on passing and Rachel Dolezal...

#race #racheldozeal #jewish #blackandjewish #mixed girls #mixed race #interracial #multiracial #biracial #passing #diversity #jewishdiversity

The Confederate flag should come down because it is embarrassing to all Americans. The embarrassment is not limited to the flag, itself. The fact that it still flies, that one must debate its meaning in 2015, reflects an incredible ignorance.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, "What This Cruel War Was Over" in The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/

#race #blacklivesmatter #race politics #confederate flag

There's the whole issue of personal identity: African-American, Irish-American, Jewish-American, Arab-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American. Scratch the surface-level homogeneity and America's deep ethic schizophrenia is going to surface. No one can escape an identity clash if they bounce off of the "received culture" if commercialized information, not even WASPs. Identity is about creating an environment where you can make the world act as your own reflection.

"Rhythm Science", by Paul D Miller, aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid

B'rosh hashana yikateivun uv'yom tzom kippur yekhateimun. On Rosh Hashanah our destiny is inscribed And on the fast of Yom Kippur it is sealed How many shall pass away, And how many shall be brought into existence; Who shall live & who shall die; Whose end will be timely & who will die too soon; Who by fire & who by water... Who will rest & who will wander Who will be quiet & who will be crazy Who will be tranquil & who will be troubled... Fast easily & healthily, friends.

#music #spotify

Bringing some Jewish Diversity to Shavuot! Excited to be teaching at 10pm. Where Sinai Meets Spadina. (at Miles Nadal JCC)

An annual heritage and advocacy month for mixed kids at the University of Maryland. I *love* this concept!

I'm featured! The "Moshe is Married to a Non-Jewish Black Woman" Episode... Each week(-ish), we look at and discuss a portion of the Tanakh from Genesis to 2 Chronicles. It might take a while. Please be patient. This week, Episode 35 - Numbers 12-15! www.tanakhcast.com

#jewishdiversity diverse jews black and jewish tanakhcast

A great post on being a light-skinned mixed kid and the identity questions that come along with it.

#black and jewish #mixedkidproblems #biracial #identity

humansofnewyork

"I’m going to Israel next week." “You’re not Jewish, are you?” “I am.” “Jewish and what?” “Jewish and German, Iraqi, African, Irish, Portuguese, French, Cherokee, Lenape, and Blackfoot.”

temasmith

I'm late on this one, but here it is. Amazing.

#Jewish Diversity

A new project beautifully answering pointed questions like, "What are you?" and "Where are you from?"

On the complexity of black identity in multiracial America.

#biracial #multiracial #black and jewish #interracial #one drop #photo essay

Covered in Grass by Aaron Levy Samuels.

I can't shout him out enough. Check him out.

#yarmulkesandfittedcaps #black and jewish #diverse jews #jewish diversity #poetry #spoken word

My first op-ed, on the subject of the politicization of the Holocaust in Canada, published in the Globe and Mail.

newyorker

In today’s Daily Comment, Dexter Filkins looks at the truth about drone warfare, and the information black hole in America’s secret wars: “The best and most painstaking attempts to get at the truth of the drone war—like one by the New America foundation—acknowledge the difficulty of the enterprise.” Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/XpGxUF

temasmith

Drones. A truly postmodern way of waging war, taking the immediacy of the "kill" out of the picture.

#USPoli

Please note up front that I am not Palestinian, or Arab, or Muslim. I am an American Jew. So any list I draw up with this title is doomed to be incomplete, because there are a lot of facets of the...

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