When it comes to refining vocabulary, I often think it’s better to inject history back into a term (sorry to be Barthesian, but the erasure of history is typically how terms lose their basic meaning) than to coin a new one. Why? Because people who don’t get where ‘Black’ comes from or the idea that [...]
You know, I feel for the Muslim community in this, in part because my lack of religious belief is treated pretty much the same way when it comes to being addressed by politicians. Atheists are at least as invisible as Muslims to mainstream politicians. There are twice as many Muslims serving in the US House [...]
When I think of my father, I think of a dynamic, tyrannical consistency. He cut his children off at every pass, and his message was terrifying: “I am bigger than you, stronger than you and smarter than you. I will win.” We felt a constant pressure, a pervading sense that ending up as a nothing [...]
The Idea of becoming “Post-Racial” is not only tragic, it is impossible. We are what we are, and the idea that one can transcend their very essence is pure myth. Like Ta-Nehisi intimated, in the end the “Post-Racial” and “Transcending Race” concepts just become subtle control mechanisms. The notion that one needs to move away [...]
Solutions may be hard to come by. It’s tempting to place blame, and there are so many possible culprits, but it appears to be so multivariable a problem that, and I hesitate to say this, “consciousness raising” may be the only place to start.
Payday lenders and other corporations that specialize in predatory lending have only one really useful argument in defending their business practices, and it goes like this: They provide a public service by catering to the “unbanked” and other financially underserved communities–i.e., those discriminated against by white banks that won’t make loans to African Americans. Without [...]
