JC
The Los Angeles Times reviews “Tea“, the new production by Velina Hasu Houston about war brides and their lives and families. The show is currently running at the International City Theater in Long Beach, CA. This reviewer doesn’t have many nice things to say and seems to think that it is all done in a […]

CVK
The New York Daily News reports that Heidi Klum and Seal are tying the knot today:
Heidi Klum and Seal are due to wed today in Mexico, we hear.
Word is the five-months-pregnant supermodel, who’ll wear Vera Wang, will exchange vows with the R&B crooner in a beach ceremony witnessed by about 40 of their closest friends […]

JC
Stanley Crouch of the New York Daily News ponders the rising rates of black female-white male relationships. He attributes the growth of these couples to the vast shortage of black men available to black women. He blames high rates of incarceration and fear of medical care. Thanks to Kim D. for the heads up on […]

JC
Newswise reports on a study to come out of the University of Maryland about marriages where one partner is black and one partner is white. While many of the interviewees mention that race is not central to the issues they face as a couple, the study shows that it remains an important dimension of the […]

CVK
Personally I’m sick to death of the whole Strom Thurmond / Essie Mae Washington-Williams thing, but it is my duty to report that yet another book is coming out soon on the topic later this month. Dateline Alabama reviews Strom: The Complicated Personal and Political Life of Strom Thurmond by Jack Bass and Marilyn W. […]

JC
On the 50th Anniversary of the death of Emmett Till, federal authorities have taken interest in further exploring the case and plan to exhume Till’s body. In 1955, this black youth who was visiting relatives was dragged from his bed and brutally murdered after he was witnessed whistling at a white woman earlier in […]

CVK
An article in AsianWeek questions why everyone is so blase about the recent attacks at Princeton University, in which 28-year-old doctoral student Michael Lohman (pictured) surreptitiously cut locks of hair from at least nine Asian women, poured his urine and semen into the drinks of Asian women more than 50 times, and stole Asian women’s […]

CVK
Paris Hilton’s character in the recent film “House of Wax” dates a black man and believes she is pregnant by him. When reporters asked her what she thought of the fact that the black man/white girl pairing would have been controversial just 20 years ago, this is what she had to say:
“I never would look […]

CVK
Sad that this kind of thing is still so commonplace. An interracial couple in Charlotte, NC found a cross burning in their backyard recently. Police are trying to determine if it’s a hate crime. By the sounds of it, this isn’t the first act of intimidation the couple has faced:
Kim and Robert Mackey say […]

CVK

Last week’s New York magazine had an interesting article about how gentrification is affecting one single block in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood long known as one of the most dangerous slums in Brooklyn, but now being prized for its supply of well-maintained brownstones and proximity to Manhattan.
The article points out that many of the neighborhood’s new […]

CVK
(Thanks to Asian Dude for this one!) Blog Purifying Flames questions the double standard of media coverage surrounding the Princeton attacks on Asian women. Why is it that these attacks are described merely as “lewd behavior,” when an almost-identical case involving all white female victims is referred to as “assault” and involves much harsher punishment?
As […]

CVK
Wow, this guy wins the Asian Fetishist of the Year award. Princeton grad student Michael J. Lohman was arrested for more than 50 incidents of harassment targeting Asian women on the Princeton University campus. His crimes? Stealing panties, cutting locks of hair, squirting into women’s drinks… should I go on? Here’s a report from ZWire:
Investigators […]

CVK
The Philadelphia Inquirer interviews former NBA star Charles Barkley, who is promoting his new book, Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man? in which he interviews 13 influential Americans - from Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to Tiger Woods and George Lopez - who speak frankly about race and racism:
Barkley’s complexity enhances his controversial nature. […]

CVK
The Contra Costa Times interviews Emily Raboteau, author of the newly released novel, The Professor’s Daughter. The article is pretty cheesy (the doll metaphor they start off with is STRAIGHT out of “Imitation of Life”) but the book sounds good. Like the novel’s protagonist, Raboteau is a young biracial woman. Here’s part of the Publisher’s […]

CVK
The Office for National Statistics has published a new report on inter-ethnic marriage statistics in the U.K:
Two per cent of marriages were between people from different ethnic backgrounds (219,000). Of these inter-ethnic marriages, most (198,000) included a White person…
The most common inter-ethnic marriages were between White and Mixed race people, 26 per cent of all […]

CVK
The New York Times reviews the new film “Face”:
“Face” takes a conventional culture-clash theme and gives it the kick (and hop) of a good music mix tape. In the 1970’s, a young woman in New York’s Chinatown (Bai Ling, who has the demure beauty of Audrey Hepburn) is date-raped and forced to marry her assailant […]

CVK
This is the letter I wrote to Essence magazine, complimenting them on their profile of Mariah Carey. Historically, Essence has not been the most forward-looking in the way they’ve handled mixed race issues or interracial relationships. Therefore, it was refreshing to see a very different take on the topic in their April 2005 issue. In […]

CVK
Ew! Ew! Ew! and Ew! Just saw this on Angry Asian Man. There’s a “club” for Hawaiian women who married white men, it’s called the Haole Hubby Club - they even have t-shirts and crap like that. The Honolulu Advertiser did a story on them. Here’s what the Club says in their About Us section:
The […]

JC

OK, so Ashton Kutcher doesn’t get paid the big bucks because of his highly developed intellect. Sorry, that’s mean….but check out what he has to say about interracial dating. About.com prints an interview with Ashton from the Hollywood Premiere of “Guess Who“.
When “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” came out decades ago, it made an […]

CVK
Mariah Carey graces the cover of Essence’s April issue. Though the coverline takes a one-drop stance (”Mariah Carey: America’s Most Misunderstood Black Woman”), the article inside deals almost completely with her mixed identity, and makes for pretty interesting reading. Here are some excerpts:
So this isn’t a twenty-first-century version of Imitation of Life. Still, race and […]