as black as we wish to be

Hear a fascinating audio documentary about a county in Ohio where racial identity has been historically defined by place of residence and exceptionally ambiguous for generations. This State of the Re:Union story is comprised of interviews about local racial formation practices and attitudes, where physical features and ethnic identity often do not match. The interviews are set within a historical narrative on racism within the locale. In this area
"...residents have shared the common bond of identifying as African-American despite the fact that they look white. Racial lines have been blurred to invisibility, and people inside the same family can vehemently disagree about whether they are black or white. It can be tense and confusing. As a result, everyone’s choosing: Am I black? Am I mixed race? Or, am I white?"

color grading

This blog post was contributed by Tichana Griffith, student in Miller's SOC 3013 class. 

I wanted to share this video with the class because the topic was not touched on a lot over the semester. The video addresses skin-color preferences, among a number of concerns related to racial identity. Despite the late-1960's Black Power claim that "black is beautiful," even today black teen girls still seem to believe that light skin is better than dark skin. This idea appears to have been prevalent since slavery when lighter blacks were given preference and permitted to work inside slave-owners' dwellings, while those who were darker remained outside to toil at hard labor in the fields. This video brings me to question actual changes in racial identity. Do we black Americans today really see our blackness in ways that radically oppose traditional racist definitions, or do we just think we do?

For a similar discussion about skin-color preference, see this clip from Dark Girls.