Ever struggle with checking the box on a questionnaire that asks you to identify what race you are? Is your racial backgraound so diverse that it’s hard to put into one box?
Meet Professor Michele Elam: the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor, associate professor of English and former director of the program in African and African American studies at Stanford University. Her courses and research interests span the 18th through 21st centuries, from race and narrative to black cultural performance. In her most recent publication, The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics and Aesthetics in the New Millennium, Elam explores how literature, television, theater and art shape mixed race identity and politics in the U.S.
Consider this: Many people identify strongly with the ethnic or racial group to which they belong – as Jews, or African-Americans, or Latinos. But to which groups does a person truly belong? President Obama has a white mother from Kansas and an African father from Kenya. Why is he seen as our first African-American president, rather than our forty-fourth white president?
