If, as the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, then hoping against hope that this time an officer who shot a black man in cold blood would be held to account, is a type of insanity most profound. Or at the very least evidence of […]
At the risk of sounding preposterously trite, I love my daughters. I love them the same way my parents loved me, I suspect, and their parents loved them: unconditionally and forever. That said, I also see their flaws and shortcomings. They are teenagers after all and human beings, and their membership in both clubs provides […]
This essay was written originally for CNN.com and can be found here. ______ There’s an old saying that it’s hard to know what you don’t know, the premise being that when you’re ignorant about something, you aren’t likely to realize your blind spots. But I’m not so sure. Sometimes, knowing what you don’t know just […]
Though perhaps overused, there are few statements that so thoroughly burrow to the heart of the nation’s racial condition as the following, written fifty-three years ago by James Baldwin: …this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, […]
Video of the first of two presentations I made at Portland Community College, 1/29/15
Tim Wise on the Rock Newman Show (Washington DC, WHUT/PBS), December 10, 2014
My appearance via Skype on the ZoWhat!? Show, December 8, 2014 to discuss racism and white privilege post-Ferguson…
This past week, Chris Rock noted in an interview that in his estimation, America is producing the nicest white people in its history. Perhaps. But if so, this only suggests the pitiable limits of niceness and its utter irrelevance for the production of something approaching justice, or for that matter even insight. And if so, […]
“Personal anecdotes don’t prove anything. The justice system isn’t racist. Black people are arrested more often because they commit more crime. Period. End of story.” So read the message in my inbox this morning, sent by someone who had happened across my essay about Ferguson, the grand jury decision in the Darren Wilson case, and […]
It seems like no exaggeration to suggest that at this moment, a half-century after the greatest victories of the civil rights movement, America is drifting backwards towards apartheid. It’s not a word I use lightly, nor one we are accustomed to using when describing our current condition. Indeed, its not even a word that most […]
