CARIBBEAN WORLD

Afrofeminism, Interview With Antoinette Torres Soler Last update: June 12, 2025 Pilar García Antoinette Torres Soler is an Afro-descendant activist and communicator born in Havana, Cuba and living in Spain. She has dedicated her career to fighting against racism and discrimination against racialized women through what is known as Afrofeminism, as well as making visible the presence of people of African descent in Spain. She is known for her work as founder and editor of Afroféminas, a Top-Tier media portal dedicated to making women of African descent visible and giving a voice in Spain. In addition, he has collaborated in various media such as El País, Eldiario.es, Cadena SER and RTVE, in which he has addressed issues such as racial discrimination and the presence of people of African descent in Spanish society. In her work, Antoinette has stood out for her commitment and dedication in the fight against racism and discrimination, as well as for her ability to make people of Afri...

Researchers are now working to locate others who may carry the same ultra-rare blood group. More than a decade after a woman from Guadeloupe underwent routine blood tests before surgery, scientists in France have identified an entirely new blood group in her gwadaThe EFS said that expanding blood group knowledge “means offering patients with rare blood types a better level of care.” (Credit: Pixabay) More than a decade after a woman from Guadeloupe underwent routine blood tests before surgery, scientists in France have identified an entirely new blood group in her — the 48th ever discovered globally. The French Blood Establishment (EFS), the country’s national blood transfusion agency, made the announcement on LinkedIn, calling it a “world first.” The new group, officially recognised this month by the International Society of Blood Transfusion, has been named “Gwada Negative” in reference to the woman’s Caribbean heritage. EFS medical biologist Thierry Peyrard told AFP that a rare a...

Jake and Mary Jacobs marked 70 years of a joyful marriage last year, but the journey wasn’t simple. In the 1940s in Britain, Mary, a White woman, and Jake, a Black man, lived in the same city. Jake was one of the few black men around. Even though Mary’s father told her to leave, she stayed because she was in love with Jake and was determined to be with him. “When I told my dad I was going to marry Jake, he said, ‘If you marry him, you won’t come back home.'” Mary and Jake met at a technical college where Mary was learning typing and shorthand, and Jake was training in the Air Force. They crossed paths when Jake moved from Trinidad during the war. Jake started talking to Mary, who lived in Lancashire. She liked that he understood Shakespeare. Later, Jake and his friend invited Mary and her friend to a picnic. Unfortunately, a woman on a bike saw them and told Mary’s father. He was shocked to see his daughter with black guys and forbade her from visiting him again. Jake and...

The Indian Heritage of Tanya S. Chutkan, U.S. District Judge Assigned to Trump’s Jan. 6 Trial August 25, 2023 She was born in Kingston, Jamaica to Indo-Jamaican father and Afro-Jamaican mother. Despite her qualifications and experience, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan has faced virulent criticism because of the color of her skin. “For a lot of people, I seem to check a lot of boxes: immigrant, woman, Black, Asian. Your qualifications are always going to be subject to criticism and you have to develop a thick skin,” she wrote in an article published on the United States Courts website in February in recognition of African American History Month. She was nominated in December 2013 by President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She was confirmed by the Senate in a 95-0 vote. Chutkan was born and raised in Jamaica to an Indo-Jamaican father and an Afro-Jamaican mother. Indo-Jamaicans are the descendants of people who came from the Indian ...

International Day of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean, and Diaspora Women, July 25th Latin America is home to 130 million African Americans, of which 51% are women. Afro-descendant people generally face racial discrimination and marginalization resulting from historical events, such as slavery and colonialism, but Afro-descendant women face double discrimination because of their gender. Therefore, they are more likely to suffer objectification and sexualization, as well as physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. In addition, they have less access to quality education, employment, housing, and healthcare. On July 25th, 1992, 300 Afro-descendant women from 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries met in the Dominican Republic. They reviewed their struggles and challenges, formed partnerships to overcome racism from a gender perspective, and defined advocacy strategies for visibility and recognition of the contributions of Afro-descendant women to culture and society. They fou...

Um retrato de política e resistência negra no Brasil Leia a introdução à última edição do NACLA Report. June 17, 2022 Luciana Brito Sendo o Brasil um país de maioria composta por pessoas negras, 56 por cento da população total, esta é a maior população negra das Américas. Assim, toda e qualquer questão sobre política, economia, sociedade e cultura no Brasil tem a questão racial, melhor, a questão das desigualdades raciais como elemento central da análise. Durante muito tempo, na academia e no senso comum, convencionou-se afirmar que o problema do Brasil seria o problema das desigualdades de classe. Esta perspectiva era compartilhada tanto pela direita, quanto pelo própria esquerda brasileira que se recusava a enfrentar e reconhecer o problema racial brasileiro. O mito da democracia racial, da harmonia entre as raças e a ideia de que a mistura racial eram principais indicativos da ausência de hostilidades raciais eram exemplos frequentemente utilizados para defender essa ideia. Co...

There are 62 Black members of the current Congress, the most ever. The current meeting of Congress is one of the most racially diverse in history. About 11% of congressional members identify as Black. A quarter of members from the 118th Congress identify as something other than non-Hispanic white, according to the most recent data from the Congressional Research Service. Congress is a ways away from 1870, when Rep. Hiram Rhodes Revel of Mississippi was elected to serve as the first Black person in Congress. Revels filled an empty Senate seat and only served a year. It was decades until Black representation really started to grow. Here’s the current state of Black Americans in Congress and what it took to get there. A record 62 Black Congressmembers (11.5% of total membership) are serving in the 118th Congress — three more than the 117th Congress. Fifty-nine of those members serve in the House and three serve in the Senate. Twenty-seven House members including two Delegates (p...

Become a Minority in America? Other majority-minority societies offer positive examples—and cautionary tales. By Justin Gest, a professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. An applicant holds a U.S. flag and a packet while waiting to take the oath to become a U.S. citizen at a naturalization ceremony in Salt Lake City on April 10, 2019. March 22, 2022, 5:31 PM In 2021, the U.S. population expanded at its slowest rate in history, and for the first time, the majority of its population growth came from immigration. So, despite four years of former President Donald Trump’s policies limiting the admission of foreigners, the United States is on track to reach its anticipated 2044 “majority minority” milestone: the moment when the majority ethnic group, non-Hispanic white people, becomes one of multiple minorities. This article is adapted from Majority Minority by Justin Gest (Oxford University Press, 424 pp., $29.95, March 2022). For centuries, countr...

Contre l’assignation identitaire qui gagne Publié le 10 mars 2021 Les questions identitaires sont au centre du débat politique depuis de nombreuses années déjà. Elles avaient jusque dans les années 2000 une dimension émancipatrice par rapport à l’appartenance à des minorités mal reconnues. Il s’agissait de trouver sa place dans une société française ouverte sur l’extérieur. Les questions identitaires avaient également une dimension politique très forte face à la montée de l’extrême droite qui en faisait un sujet politique contre l’immigration. Puis les revendications identitaires se sont développées également sur d’autres terrain : les questions de genre et la montée en puissance des revendications liées aux libertés sexuelles, à la procréation médicalement assistée ; les questions religieuses et notamment le port du voile dans l’espace public. Elles ont également investi le champ de la mémoire avec les débats sur le colonialisme, le « racialisme », l’esclavage, la repentance et pl...

Question Is the brown bag test real or is it an urban legend? --Jeremy Village, Chicago, Illinois Answer Brown Paper Bag Test I am sad to report that the brown paper bag test was real. It was an example of colorism-discrimination based on skin color. In his 1996 book The Future of the Race, Henry Louis Gates Jr., the prominent Harvard historian, described his introduction to this practice as an undergraduate student at Yale in the late 1960s. According to Gates, "Some of the brothers who came from New Orleans held a bag party. As a classmate explained it to me, a bag party was a New Orleans custom wherein a brown paper bag was stuck on the door. Anyone darker than the bag was denied entrance. That was one cultural legacy that would be put to rest in a hurry-we all made sure of that. But in a manner of speaking, it was replaced by an opposite test whereby those who were deemed "not black enough' ideologically were to be shunned. I was not sure this was an improvement....

Not at this point. According to the INSEE (National Institute for Statistics) , there are 19 million people who have immigration background on three generations in metropolitan France. Out of 65 million, this would amount to 69% being entirely of native stock. If you count oversea territories, you still have 66% people of French metropolitan origin. However, there are no official and accurate data like you have in English speaking countries (i.e : « white British » in the UK). Being French was always legally a question of citizenship instead of ethicity, unlike for instance in Germany. Moreover, the only ethnic statistics that have existed were the ones for Jews during the Vichy regime, which has created a taboo. It is possible to have estimates of French people’s ethnic background, but they make France a very complex mosaic. Within the native population proper, there are already six linguistic and regional minorities (Breton, Alsatian, Flemish, Basque, Catalan and Corsican). Som...

Edna Liliana Valencia Murillo Journalist, France24 Colombia Quién es Edna Liliana Valencia. Edna Liliana Valencia Murillo es una periodista con más de quince años de experiencia en medios de comunicación nacionales e internacionales; durante cuatro años hizo parte del equipo periodístico de la cadena francesa France 24 (que transmite en ciento ochenta países del mundo y en cuatro idiomas), como presentadora del programa África 7 días, el único informativo en español, dedicado cien por cien a dicho continente. Fue la primera periodista afro en el canal nacional Noticias RCN en donde, por cuatro años más, destacó con sus informes sobre las poblaciones diversas del país y recibió cuatro premios como creadora de la primera fuente de noticias enfocada en temas de diversidad. Asimismo, fue galardonada como la periodista afrocolombiana del año en 2015, reconocimiento otorgado por el periódico El Espectador y la fundación Color de Colombia. Al ser la primera presentadora de América...

US’s white population declines for first time ever, 2020 census finds White population falls below 60%, underscoring what’s at stake as lawmakers begin drawing political maps Fri 13 Aug 2021 01.57 BST First published on Thu 12 Aug 2021 21.44 BST People walk in Santa Monica, California. The Census Bureau results showed that US metro areas accounted for almost all the country’s population growth. Photograph: Caroline Brehman/EPA America’s white population declined for the first time while US metro areas were responsible for almost all of the country’s population growth, according to groundbreaking new data released on Thursday by the US Census Bureau. Overall, the white-alone population fell by 8.6% since 2010, the bureau said on Thursday. Non-Hispanic whites now account for around 58% of America’s population, a drop from 2010 when they made up 63.7% of the population. It was the first time that the non-Hispanic white population has fallen below 60% since the census began. Meanw...

If you're Native American, there's a good chance that you've thought a lot about blood quantum — a highly controversial measurement of the amount of "Indian blood" you have. It can affect your identity, your relationships and whether or not you — or your children — may become a citizen of your tribe. Blood quantum was initially a system that the federal government placed onto tribes in an effort to limit their citizenship. Many Native nations, including the Navajo Nation and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, still use it as part of their citizenship requirements. The Difficult Math Of Being Native American Code Switch Love And Blood Quantum: Buy In Or Die Out? And how tribes use blood quantum varies from tribe to tribe. The Navajo Nation requires a minimum of 25 percent "Navajo blood," and Turtle Mountain requires a minimum of 25 percent of any Indian blood, as long as its in combination with some Turtle Mountain. Blood quantum minimums re...

The African Diaspora in Europe Today By Stephen Small June 15, 2018 2 *This post is part of our new blog series on Black Europe. This series, edited by Kira Thurman and Anne-Marie Angelo, explores what it means to bring the category of Black Europe to the foreground of scholarship on Europe and the Black Atlantic. The 2008 Marche des libertés demonstration in Paris celebrated the 160th anniversary of the 1848 abolition of slavery in France. The March also served to protest the continuing discrimination against Black people in France (Photo: looking4poetry, Flickr). In Europe today, non-Black people often ask—why are there so many Black people in Europe? But a far better question is ‘why are there so few Black people in Europe?’ The African diaspora in Europe began when Europeans first invaded and colonized Africa. Racist/sexist stereotypes and caricatures were first developed and disseminated across Europe before the United States and other nations across the Americas were ev...