Author: Lori Tharps
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Talking Diverse Books with “Honeysmoke” author, Monique Fields
Back in the day when I started blogging, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I had a long lists of blogs I followed about parenting multiracial children. One of those blogs was called Honeysmoke. The woman behind the blog, Monique Fields, was a Black mom raising two biracial daughters, and she was a journalist like…
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The Threat of Teenage White Boys
The irony isn’t lost on me, that I’m writing this post on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a day presumably meant to focus our energies and attention on racial reconciliation and justice. Instead, I’m thinking about an incident that has captured the nation’s attention and involves people of color in conflict with white people. Of…
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Colorism Explained in 22-Minutes or Less on Blackish
I’m not mad. Not mad at all that executive producer, Peter Saji covered the same ground regarding colorism and family dynamics in a 22-minute Black-ish episode, that I covered in my 200-page heavily researched 2016 book, Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families (Beacon). I’m not upset that the basic premise of…
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MAMP Podcast Episode #5 Behind the Music with Sumi Tonooka
On episode # 5 of My American Meltingpot, we’re going behind the music with legendary jazz composer, Sumi Tonooka. You might recognize Sumi’s name because not only is she the woman who created our Meltingpot theme music, she’s also a world class composer, jazz pianist and educator. I talk to Sumi about her decades-long career…
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Celebrate Diversity 2019 Challenge
Hello Meltingpot Readers, I hope you didn’t miss me while I was gone. But I really needed to do some reflection and planning for the upcoming year. I love this blog and I love the opportunities it affords me to share news, information and opinion on all things pop culture, parenting and identity politics. I…
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Hitting Refresh
Hello Meltingpot Readers, The beginning of the year always seems like a perfect time to take inventory. Retail stores do it. Major corporations do it. And I try to do it too. This is more than creating a simple list of New Year’s Resolutions. I like to really examine what I’m doing well in the…
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MAMP Podcast Ep #4: Revisiting the One-Drop Rule
On episode #4 of the MAMP podcast, we’re revisiting the one-drop rule with two women who both believed they were white, until they discovered by accident, that they weren’t. My guests are Gail Lukasik and Shannon Wink. Gail is the author of the new book, White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial…
