the line police say the driver fled the scene but is now in custody. >> and a remind ever you can always find about more of all of our stories, click on for you is aljazeera.com aljazeera.com. [ ♪ music ♪ ] this week on "talk to al jazeera." author, globe trotter and commentator on race and culture, taiye selasi. >> there is a sense that certain people have to explain their presence. to say that racism is not that race isn't felt. >> the london born, twin daughter of african parents raises the question where are you from? >> it may mean a bit about your

background, or i'd like to know who you are as an individual, but it may mean why are you here. >> her novel "ghana must go", is a sim biographic hl novel. >> i inhabited the minds of all the characters, and the parents. i came to love them. >> taiye selasi afro-politics. >> if i knew it was going to last 10 years i would a picked something else. >> racism exists in america, as shooting. >> there are unarmed people killed on the veets of the united states and left for dead. no one is charged. >> i spoke to the author as she passed through new york. >> i read that you do not like to be asked where you are from. >> it's not that i don't line to be asked the question. it happens so often, that it

would be - it would create internal tension if i got mad every time i heard it. i have begun to question what it means, and where that convention comes from. i think that when sun says "where are you from, and is waiting to hear a country", that person is not accessing information that i think is essential to who i am or to who we are as people. >> there's another part of that which i know as an asian american, wh i'm asked that question "where are you from?" sometimes i take it to many you are not american. >> it's like a code for why are you here? if someone asks in the state where are you from, it's like you say. it may mean tell me a little bit about your background, or i'd like to know something about who you are as an individual. it may also mean are you here - same in germany, italy and england. there is a sense that certain

people have to explain their presence. and for other people they are entitled to that presence. that question, i think, innocent as it often is in the hearts and the mouths of the questioner, i think it has become code for a lot of conversations that are difficult to have. asking you that question is a complicated answer, because... >> forget the answer. >> you were born in london, raised in the united states, your father is from ghana. he left when you and your twin sister... . >> yes, were young. >>..about a year old. pick up from there. >> he went to saudi arabia, where he lived for most of my life. mum, from nigeria, was born in england and had us in england and brought us to the states and is now in ghana. my sister and i, for all of that, grew up with a firm sense of identity.

mine. >> identity was being a twin. >> it was being her twin, yes. her twin. we joked that there were two people in the world to sync with your strange assents, which is mostly american and loss other things in it - she and i. you go no the world, and the world tends to speak of itself in terms of categories, with this vocabulary. that was difficult for us, we were raised by a single mum who is proudly and ferociously yoruba. for her, it's her ethno linguistic cultural identity is more important. my mum is yoruba, we ate food from yoruba, and we did this in chestnut hill, massachusetts, suburbs.

>> when you grew up in boston, a white suburb, chestnut hill. >> especially when it snows. >> when was it apparent to you first? >> that's interesting. i think when i heard people refer to us as black people. >> you didn't think of yourself as a black person. >> it's an invention. one has to learn to think of oneself that way. i have brown skip, i spend as much time as i can in the sun to get browner. to call me black, what does this mean? this refs to a category, it refers to a race that we know is a social construct, constructed to support sociopolitical and sociopolitical hierarchy, they are not power categories, not culture or biological. >> did you feel oppressed by racial stereotypes existent around you?

>> i felt - well, yes. and that's the thing i should say, to say that racism invented is not real - i may not consider myself a black person. i may find other categories more salient. that will not stop someone who has incredibly simplistic and derogatory views of black people from treating me poorly, alas. you can't be racism, i don't believe in it. >> how you see yourself is not you. >> not at all. time and again we were discriminated against on account of our skip colour in boston massachusetts, time and again. no one in our family was blind to that reality. at the same time, when my sister and i got to high school, we spent time with brown skinned peoplele who were not all from west africa. african american people who were very unconvinced

by our cultural identity. and who would say "you don't act black", or "you don't talk black, you talk white." you felt you weren't fully effected by the blacks in america, the african-americans. >> it was clear that we didn't belong fully to a white american demographic or a black american sports are getting ready to unload a backload of goods, after a deal between labour, and a 5-year deal. it could take months to clear the backhaul. a nationwide oil refinery strike spread to port arthur, texas and the largest refinery. workers safety, wages, were among the issues.

now, a closer look at the refinery. the reasons behind the strikes, and the people it affects. >> reporter: 3 is-year-old amy perry is a single mum. she worked in toledo for five years. the strike made the future uncertain. how long could you go with four kids without? >> not long, not long at all. comfortably a month, if i stretch and push, maybe two months, taking everything out of the equation, going back to eating like before. >> reporter: the walk out has not gone on long enough for union strike pay to kick in. >> some workers earnt about $30 an hour. many saved money in anticipation for this. work. >> i look for temporary work.

other than that, i can pull through it. >> the nationwide walk out begone when talks between the united steel workers union and shell oil, the lead negotiator between the countries broke down, setting the stage for the largest strike in the u.s., since 1980. >> there are quite a few on the line who are terrified. >> absolutely. >> it's a very strange time. it's anxious for all of us. in the past decade. hundreds of workers were killed on the job. hiring more union workers make the work place safer. >> we have good wages and benefits. we work in a dangerous environment. and so for us it's about staffing levels. if you can't go home the way you came in, it's not worth it. >> the b.p. refineries are

operating using replace. workers. the company told us in a statement: university of toledo law reform implications. >> the interesting thing is gas prices have gone to lows that we have not seen in decades. if there was a significant change this prices, they'd go up. that wouldn't affect everyone. >> i want everything to be fair, it's important to me. i want to go to work, come home

and see my children. >> so far they have not reached an agreement. the strike is among many that continue to hit the picket line, no matter the cost 50 years since the assassination of cal come x. a ceremony was held today at the site where he was murdered in 1965. it has been turned into the malcolm x memorial and education center. his daughter said her father changed the course of the civil rights movement. >> a thing about malcolm is he redefined the civil rights movement. we are focussing on schools, integrating housing. malcolm said that we demand our necessary. >> she was 2.5 years old when her father was killed.

>> there are campaigns rolled out. some companies crossed the line exploitation. >> it looks like a civil rights documentary. martin luther king's march on washington d.c. but, in fact, it's a wal-mart add celebrating black history month. west airlines, black history month. it is not a new phenomenon, but the outrage over the adds is. >> anger, frustration, upset over marketing. this is an activist, an organizers on social media, and we asked him to gauge what twitter monitors thought of campaign. shoes and apparel. 28 different products honouring

black history month. this was posted on twitter. nike said it's celebrating athletes and leaders with influence, global culture. >> that's not how many saw it: mokking bay says: many of the 32,000 followers are black. politically active, under 30, and outraged. >> this hit a nerve because exploiting black culture for profit and gape is not honouring his death. >> he was one of many organizers behind the protests in ferguson, and around the country. he says social media plays a huge role in the lives of young black americans. >> mass

media is the power of creating and shaping the narrative. while social media is finding a chance to create the own narratives. narratives. >> it's where they are organised. you can send out a tweet saying everywhere meet us at this location. and in 15 minutes there's 200 at the location. >> a whopping 90% use social media. more blacks are on twitter than whites. it's referred to. some of the most popular hash tags of 2014 involved race like hashtag "i can't breathe", and black lives matter. >> it's one reason why companies might want to take heed.

>> one of n.a.s.c.a.r.'s top racers has been backhanded. kurt busch has been suspended for assaulting his ex-girlfriend. he's appealing the detention. coming up on al jazeera. laying the cable, 60 miles above the surface of the earth. aboard the international space station. post-traumatic stress disorder is being portrayed in some of this year's top oscar-nominated films.

>> -- to not be subjected to the fascism and dictatorship and tierney of a group like isil that rapes young girls and imprisons people women, and burns books, and destroys schools, and deprives people of their liberty, burns pilots cuts off of the heads of journalists, and basically declares a caliphate that challenges all of the nations in the middle east and elsewhere, and threatens all of us with violence. so we face a challenge, and i hope everybody here will stop and think about all of the components of how we respond to that. it's not just kinetic. the next president will be asking you to deal with somebody somewhere unless we start to think about how the world joins

together to drain the pool of recruits that are readily accessible to people with such a wharped and dangerous sense of what life ought to be like. so that's what this meeting, that's what these discussions about the budget are about, and i hope we're going to pull ourselves together in a way that facilitates my visits with a lot of leaders around the world when i walk in and say how are you doing with your budget? and they took at me and i can tell what they are thinking. we advocate democracy, and we have to say, well how is yours working? i have been asked that. so it's up to us and that's my message for my opening statement, and i look forward to the hearing. >> well we appreciate those opening comments and i know that people understand this is more of a budget hearing, but since you have moved into other policy issues i'm going to feel

very free to move into those also. i would just ask a question. i assume if we only spending 1% of our budget on state department and foreign aid operations, you would think we need to do that in the most efficient way possible do you agree with that? >> of course obviously. >> and i would think you would support, then an authorization being put in place. we haven't done one since 2003. i actually didn't do one the entire time you were chairman for reasons that i'm not aware of, but you do support that now as head of the state department; is that correct? >> we made a run at that authorization bill mr. chairman. i would have loved to have passed one. the last one that was passed i did it. and i'm delighted to see you

take this bull by the horns. we have not seen a state authorization enacted in law since 2002, it lapsed in 2004. and the reasons of the way the senate came to work that literally made it impossible to do. >> i hear that and i think that probably we'll spend a lot more quality time with heather and others in the department, i know you are dealing with a lot of other issues. but i do sense that you support that. and i am aware of the history regarding some of the complications and certainly that was not meant as a criticism. let's move on then to the -- i spent the last week in bagdad and erbil up in kurdistan, talking with turkish officials along with ours. you have sent a request for an authorization to use military

force, the president has, but it's your belief today that the administration has the legal authority to conduct operations against isis with existing authorities; is that correct? >> yes. >> that is correct. >> that we -- we're looking for a separate authority under the amf -- >> but you believe you have -- >> it's now 3:00 east coast time. you are listening to secretary of state john kerry testifying before the senate foreign relations committee, he is laying out the strategy when it comes to the situation with isil. let's listen in. >> you believe you have the thority, but one of the thing that people will be looking to is is there a real commitment by this administration to deal with isis? and i have to tell you, as i look at the authorization,