ED262 mylineONLINE: Ethnicity, Race & Racism

"While Gullah was not originally a written language and has never had a governing authority or dictionary, linguistic scholars have found that the language is internally consistent and in some ways more efficient and expressive than standard English. Elements of the language have seeped into African-American Vernacular English across the country."

For the first time in recent memory, the Charleston County School Board is discussing how to address the specific needs of Gullah and Geechee students, children of a culture whose linguistic origins trace back to the west coast of Africa via the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Some teachers have said the students' way of speaking — whether in the heavily West African-influenced Gullah language or in the more Anglicized dialects sometimes known as Geechee — can present an obstacle to understanding in the classroom. Like many Lowcountry Gullah speakers of her generation, the current head of state for the Gullah/Geechee Nation carries painful memories of adults who taught her to hold her family's way of speaking in contempt.

Tags: language, culture, race, education, historical.

On February 2nd 1848, following a short and one-sided war, Mexico agreed to cede more than half its territory to the United States. An area covering most of present-day Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, plus parts of several other states, was handed over to gringolandia. The rebellious state of Tejas, which had declared its independence from Mexico in 1836, was recognised as American soil too. But a century and a half later, communities have proved more durable than borders. The counties with the highest concentration of Mexicans (as defined by ethnicity, rather than citizenship) overlap closely with the area that belonged to Mexico before the great gringo land-grab of 1848. Some are recent arrivals; others trace their roots to long before the map was redrawn. They didn’t jump the border—it jumped them.

Tags: culture, demographics, North America, historical, colonialism, borders, political.

You may know exactly what race you are, but how would you prove it if somebody disagreed with you? Jenée Desmond Harris explains. And for more on how race is a social construct:
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/10/6943461...

Tags: culture, race.

"Everyone and their mom has an opinion about former NAACP chapter president Rachel Dolezal. We break down the arguments for you."

Many experts agree with an appeals court's decision last month that dreadlocks aren't a common racial characteristic. But left undecided: What's a common racial characteristic?