A metaphor for life in America being White is that it’s like having the difficulty of a video game set on easy mode. I first heard this metaphor when I was a teenager, approximately in middle school or early high school, and it’s stuck with me since then. The premise is simple, and the metaphor can be expanded on. It’s not just that White is the easy setting, it’s that those who are playing at …
As a Hispanic White woman, I can recall multiple times where I have not been “Hispanic” enough for White people and Hispanic people. One time in particular, in the sixth grade I was shown a picture of a darker Hispanic person and was told that if I was actually Hispanic I would look like them. I thought of my experience when I read the study Applying intersectionality to explore the relations between gendered racism and …
My first American history lesson started with the Crash Course series on YouTube in the summer of 2017, about two months before I came to the States. My “teacher” was a white woman from Texas whose name I failed to remember, who seemed nice and honestly was the spitting image of white Americans in media products I had consumed. She taught me everything from “checks and balances,” “electoral college,” and the Constitution to using “bathroom” …
I was scrolling through Tik Tok when I saw a woman of color speaking on how recently there has been a shift in how people perceive her. She was being told more and more frequently that she looks white. That got her wondering why people were saying that? Because for most of her life she has easily been identified as an ethnic minority. She started to hypothesize it was because recently ethnic features, especially Black …
“Wow you’re so exotic, I wish I looked different like you!” This is a sentiment many women of color hear and experience throughout their lives. From well meaning friends to romantic partners to strangers who pass you on the street. They are all just trying their best to hype you up, and give you the praise you deserve! Well, I’m here to break the news and set the record straight. Calling someone exotic isn’t the …
One of the clearest impressions I have of Greek Life is the movie Sydney White, where every member of the sorority portrayed in the movie is thin, white, and blonde, except for Sydney White, who is, *gasp*, a brunette. And that impression has not been disproven. When I entered Greek Life at Muhlenberg, there were no black women who had joined or were already members in my chapter. There was one Latina woman, who graduated, …
One of my favorite topics that we’ve covered in this course thus far is the creation of counter-spaces. I am intrigued by this concept because I have created these spaces for myself at Muhlenberg without knowing that it had a name attached to it. What is more, it intrigued me to know that counter-spaces are something students of color across the country are constantly creating for themselves. I think my interest lies in the naming …
We’re pleased to feature this special guest post authored by Muhlenberg College (and Contemporary Racism) alum, Brittany Smith (’17). Brittany is at Columbia University pursuing an MPH focusing on health promotion and children’s health equity. A few weeks ago, I went dancing at a few bars with some college friends who were visiting. I also encountered one of the most fragile and aggressive examples of masculinity I’ve ever seen. (And, as a woman who dates …
This idea that Black women are the perpetual mules of everyone else has been ingrained in our society. We see it in the media when all we see are Black women marching for Black lives. We see it portrayed in the media with Black women playing the help, the nanny, the supporting motherly character, or the best friend used simply to illuminate the main actress’s character. The image of the Black woman has been, historically …
In her essay “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe”, Hortense Spillers argues that the gendered configuration for Black people through slavery and its afterlife is “the dehumanizing, ungendering, defacing project of African persons” (Ziyad, 2017). She points out that, historically, Black gender has not been used to indicate a shared womanhood or manhood with people within white society, but to highlight how black people are out of step with womanhood and manhood. Essentially, Black gender can never …
Stereotypes of gender and race permeate our everyday discourses from classrooms to politics and throughout the media. When we aren’t viewing individuals through the impressions granted by stereotypes, we are commonly white-washing our outlooks across matters; from mental illness, physical health, poverty, education and so much more, we downplay the intersections of race and gender. There is typically little room in society for minority groups to speak up for themselves, to challenge the stereotypes allocated …
I recently read an article from the website Ebony that began circulating after the Grammy’s which features an interview with Mathew Knowles, father and former manager of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles. The first part of the interview discusses Mathew Knowles’s internal struggle with “colorism”, which can essentially be described as prejudiced treatment or preferential treatment of individuals of one’s same race based on their skin color. I had personally never heard this word before, but …