Traveling with Twain

In Search of America's Identity

Race and Ethnicity

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), like many Americans before and after him, struggled to overcome his disdain for the Other–African Americans, Irish, Chinese and other newly arrived immigrants, and Native Americans. This project focuses on interviewing a wide variety of Americans on issues of race and ethnicity, in anticipation of the 2012 presidential election, during which America’s first African-American president will be seeking re-election.

Posts in Race and Ethnicity

Juan Williams: A political analyst whose writing provokes a “ludicrous” charge

The writings and remarks of Juan Williams, Fox News political analyst and provocateur, have a habit of generating controversy. He titled his recent tribute on The Root to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, after 20 years … Read more >>

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson defines the four classes of black America

Eugene Robinson spoke to us in his office at the Washington Post, where he’s a Pulitzer-prize winning columnist. On one of many book-lined shelves in his office, there’s a piece of paper stuffed among coffee mugs, … Read more >>

Reminiscing with a former Southbridge (and current New York Times) reporter after a decade

Raymond Hernandez, 45, and I reminisced over coffee at a Starbucks in Chevy Chase, Md., about a career that has taken him from cub reporter for a 6,000-circulation, Massachusetts-mill-town daily to Washington-based investigative reporter for The … Read more >>

Diversity: A Blind Spot in College History?

As a graduate of Haverford College in 1963, when the student body of 450 was all male and virtually all white (James B. MacRae Jr., was the only black student in our class), I was curious … Read more >>

‘Who Is The Other?’ Interviews at the Yale School of Drama

What makes a woman The Other? Race? Ethnicity? Sexual orientation? Skin color? Wanting a family, not a career, first? Or does a woman become The Other by just being a woman, not a man? I’m asking … Read more >>