The United States is one of the only countries, if not the only country, that defines a person by biological percentages. How much of a certain ethnicity you are matters significantly to this day. For example, to stay on a reserve, you need to be a certain percentage of Native American, and in

While studying abroad, I quickly became friends with one of my neighbors on my floor, Thomas. Thomas is Dutch and spent most of his early adult life in St. Croix, an island in the Caribbean that has a lot of melanin — in other words, he grew up around black folks. Thomas also has a son who is

Jodi Picoult is going to take some heat for her new book, Small Great Things. There are going to be plenty of black folks who think, What does she know about our struggle? She may very well lose some white readers as well — the ones who love to tell themselves that they don't have a racist bone in

Over the last 16 months of this exhaustive election circus cycle, we have watched as Republican elected officials have stood steadfast by their presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Twisting themselves into knots to defend the indefensible, all because they decided to place Party and perceived power

For as long as I can remember, I was the only black kid in my circle of friends. Even now, as an adult, I have only one close friend who is black. I don't really know why it is, but I have often found it difficult to relate to women of my own race. I grew up on Staten Island, the most suburban