Stephanie CurtisWe asked our Friday Roundtable guests who they are turning to for thoughts about race and identity.
Alexs Pate: James Baldwin’s “The Price of the Ticket” is “still ahead of us by 10 years in terms of understanding and thinking about and talking about race.”
Pate also thinks “Black Skin, White Masks,” the 1952 classic by Frantz Fanon, is worth a read. “It’s about the way that we look at each other,” he said.
Leola Johnson: “I am really interested in Ella Baker, the unheralded leader of the civil rights movement, and Essie Robeson, the wife of Paul Robeson. I am more and more thinking about how cutting edge these women were.”
Jose Santos: Check out the casta paintings that depict the mixing of races and the caste system in Spanish colonies. Santos also recommends reading Octavio Paz, who wrote about “mestizos” and how a mix of races “means that there is a necessary conflict in the idea of Mexico.”
About the blogger
Stephanie Curtis
scurtis@mpr.org • @stephcurtisStephanie Curtis has produced events, daily news shows, documentaries, conferences and call-ins for MPR News. She also was among the pioneering producers who launched The Current. You can hear her discuss movies every Thursday on The Cube Critics.