History Commons^™

The Changing Significance Of Race For People Of Color, Juanita Tamayo Lott

Trotter Review

For more than two hundred years, race in the United States has been viewed as a black/white issue. Blacks have been defined not as a people unto themselves, but only in relationship to whites. This relationship is one of power with blacks as a “minority subordinate” group and whites as a “majority dominant” group. Other people of color—whether indigenous to the Americas, settlers who predated Western Europeans, nonwhite settlers with several generations of U.S.-born residents, or newly arrived immigrants and refugees—have been primarily defined as nonexistent. When other people of color have been recognized, it has been in a marginal …

The Chinese In Mississippi: A Race In-Between, Vivian Wu Wong

Trotter Review

There is this shot in the opening scene of the movie, Mississippi Burning, where you see two water fountains. One is broken, and chipped, and water is dripping from it. The other is modern, and shining. A white guy goes up to the nice one, and the black kid goes up to the old one. I remember saying to myself "If I was in the scene, where would I drink?”

As a kid, I remember going to the theater and not knowing where I was supposed to sit. Blacks were segregated then. Colored people had to sit upstairs, and …