Marcia Dawkins

It's official: The United States is officially "tan." According to the U.S. Census Bureau's first population estimate by age, race, ethnicity, and sex since the 2010 Census, "50.4 percent of our nation's population younger than age 1 were minorities as of July 1, 2011. This is up from...

Suzanne Collins's young adult trilogy The Hunger Games, dubbed the "racial games" by some cultural commentators, takes place in the dystopian nation-state called Panem. And, as recent controversy suggests, it also takes place in our minds.

As I argue in my forthcoming book, Clearly Invisible: Racial...

With Rick Santorum now out of the way it looks like the road is clear for Mitt Romney. That is, if anybody knows who he really is.

The Romney campaign has been plagued with accusations of Mitt's "passing," or representing himself as a...

TIME Magazine's latest cover story (Feb. 2/24) is called "Yo Decido. Why Latinos will pick the next President." It reports that about 9% of all voters in...

As a kid from Queens, NY it's not hard to understand why Spider-Man has always been my favorite superhero. Aside from a shared geographical location Spider-Man reflected many of the qualities of urban youth. He came from a working class background. He lived with extended family. He was open-minded. Sometimes...

It's been a meteoric month for Adele (21) and Eminem (Recovery). Their digital album sales, exceeding 1.017 million and 1.005 million respectively, have made music history. The artists seem to be a pair of space bound rocket ships aiming for the moon. But soaring...

On a clear night in June I watched a man kill himself. He said he was going to do it. I don't know why. And I'm not the only one.

All we have to go on is the note he left behind. It said that he was "space...

About a week ago Fox News started a "Common Controversy" about whether the Chicago-based poet and rapper should have been invited to a White House poetry reading by the First Lady.

Claims surfaced that Common's lyrics promote cop killing, misogyny, and prejudice against interracial relationships. Karl Rove...

The phone rings. I can't believe what I'm hearing. My father tells me about a book, a play and a man with whom he knew I would resonate -- Incognito: An American Odyssey of Race and Self Discovery and Michael Sidney Fosberg. As usual, Dad was right. By...

As we await the results of the 2010 Census it's tempting to think that our growing comfort with categorizing people as multiracial has erased racism and the fear of interracial relations. But
in a recent interview with Ebony Magazine, Halle Berry says that we're neither as...

The greatest thing about public school is that it is, in fact, public. Anyone can attend and everyone has the opportunity to achieve. I have been a public school student and educator and I've had the privilege of encountering learners of all kinds: from brilliant artists, math whizzes and persuasive...

While conducting research for my forthcoming book on passing -- the fact of being accepted, or representing oneself successfully as, a member of a different group -- I came across the amazing story of Ellen and William Craft. The Crafts were an enslaved couple who escaped when Ellen...

Last week, Nettleton Middle School was forced to drop its 30-year policy of race-based selections for school government and homecoming positions. The selection rules were brought to light by Brandy Springer, a mother of four multiracial children in Nettleton, Mississippi. Springer, a recent transplant from Florida, said her daughter was...

In his first major comment on race and race relations in our nation since his "A More Perfect Union Speech" on March 18, 2008, President Barack Obama called for frank discussion about race last week. In both a speech to the National Urban League and on the ABC...

Even though the 21st century is seeing an exponential increase in reports of multiracial ancestry worldwide, exactly what makes a person multiracial remains a puzzling concept. According to the Association of Multiethnic Americans and Project RACE, the definition of a multiracial/interracial person is either someone whose...

In 1958, a newly married couple, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were indicted on charges of violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages. On January 6, 1959 they pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to one year in jail. However, "the trial judge suspended the sentence for...

Professors Ravinder Barn and Vicki Harman from the Centre for Criminology and Sociology at Royal Holloway, University of London are carrying out a groundbreaking research project about white mothers and mixed race children. Theirs is part of a wider study of mixed race children, youth and...

Cross-posted from TruthDig.com

Today's trying times bring to mind the lyrics of "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield. "There's something happening here / What it is ain't exactly clear." I experienced exactly that sort of feeling when I saw Lloyd Marcus perform the "American Tea Party Anthem,"...

Cross-posted from TruthDig.com.

After days of protests over reform, the Obama administration has, in fact, created a change that many Americans can now see and feel. The new law, though imperfect, represents progress in a new direction. However, it seems that for this step forward some Americans have...

Robert M. Groves, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, sent me a letter today. Mr. Groves told me that my 2010 Census form will be arriving sometime next week and that my "response is important. Results from the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get...