By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García
Soledad O’Brien says she wants Latino In America to “start a conversation.” Unfortunately for viewers, the series’ message seems to be, what? Woe is us? Abandon ship? What did Brown ever do to you?
Grounded in depressing case studies and missed questions, the series’ first installment was less “Latinos In America” [...]

By Guest Contributor Fiqah, originally published at Possum Stew

Some background:  for most of my adult life, I have been a fugitive from religion, the monotheistic “Big Three”, anyway. (Sorry, any faith doctrine that includes an interventionist, anthropomorphic, masculine god/godhead is prolly gonna earn some side-eye from me.)  Because my sociopolitical views and general life philosophy are [...]

by Latoya Peterson
“What do you mean you don’t know what Easter is?”
I appraised Best Boy with all the understated annoyance I could muster at the ripe old age of fifteen.
“Again,” I said with an eye roll, “not raised with a religion.  And all that comes out around Easter time is new patent leather shoes, [...]

by Guest Contributor Akshay, originally published at b-listed

Shmuel Beru arrived in Israel at age 8 with the first wave of Ethiopian immigrants in 1984. Classmates, who’d never seen a black person before, rubbed his skin to see if the color would come off. Growing up, they called him the “chocolate boy” and worse.
Today the actor-writer [...]

by Guest Contributor Alex Felipe originally published at AlexFelipe.com

Filipinos don’t celebrate Halloween, they instead have a day dedicated to the dead on 1 November, the Araw ng mga Patay [Day of the Dead]. It’s a holiday that is the perfect metaphor for Philippine spirituality: an imported Catholic holiday that hints at an animist past.
Having [...]

by Guest Contributor (and frequent commenter) Atlasien

The “religion” tag at Racialicious pulls up pieces that are almost entirely focused on Islam. There’s not much coverage of other minority religions yet. I’m pointing this out not to blame — after all, to be published in Racialicious, you have to submit pieces in the first [...]

by Latoya Peterson

I’ve been fascinated by religion most of my life.
This is probably because I wasn’t raised with one.
When I say this, people – particularly other black people – tend to hear what I say and interpret it as “lapsed Christian.” As in, a girl who used to go to church and doesn’t go [...]

by Guest Contributor Joesph Shahadi, originally published at Vs. the Pomegranate
I never intended to write about the scarf/veil/hijab/niqaab. Like a lot of people who write about the Middle East and North Africa (Muslim and otherwise) I roll my eyes at the Western preoccupation with the scarf, which seems to dominate the discourse. The Islamic practice [...]

by Guest Contributor Tiara the Merch Girl
Depending on who you ask, burlesque can either be a tool to poke fun at the Establishment by bringing them down to the “low-brow”, or a way to bask in vintage 1940s and 1950s glamour. It’s a growing art form with plenty of enthusiasts jumping in for a chance [...]

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse
I must open this piece by stating that as someone who believes in equality between men and women, I would not be happy if my country or my religion or my culture told me I must dress or look differently from my male peers. I am not happy when it happens [...]

Compiled by Latoya Peterson and Fatemeh Fakhraie

Rolling Ruminations has hosted a blog carnival on White Privilege and the Muslim Ummah. As regular readers know, it gets kind of heavy around here when we start discussing the intersection of race and religion. True to form, the carnival featured a range of opinions. Our favorites [...]

by Guest Contributor Shannon Prince

Two years ago while I was studying abroad in Paris, my younger sister called me from the U.S. giggling that she had delicious news to share with me. She announced breathlessly that Disney was creating its first black princess movie. Despite the fact that I was a sophomore in [...]

by Guest Contributor Krista, originally published at Muslim Lookout

Be prepared for some major eye-rolling in this article from the Calgary Herald. In it, Mahfooz Kanwar praises Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (see here for why this is a bad idea), and berates Canadians that he perceives as not having “assimilated” enough. A Muslim originally [...]

by Guest Contributor Neesha Meminger

A couple of weeks ago I had the Toronto launch of my novel, Shine, Coconut Moon. I prepared myself in the usual way, going over what I would read, how I would introduce myself and the book to the guests, and anticipating audience questions during the Q&A. This Q&A, however, threw [...]

by Guest Contributor Tami, originally published at What Tami Said

The Devil is wearing mittens and I expect a ham to fly past my window any second now. Why? Salon has published a letter from an African American in its Cary Tennis advice column. To be fair, most writers to the column don’t mention their [...]