So just in case you were wondering, when a white man bellows that America is no longer great, and in fact is akin to a “third world” country, and that many other countries are better than we are at all kinds of things — and this is why we should elect him, so he can […]
Forget Barack Obama’s praise for legal scholar Derrick Bell. Never mind his decades-long association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Neither of these connections will matter once you get a load of what I’ve uncovered: a linkage between the president and someone at least as radical if not more so than either of those. A man […]
Van Jones, special advisor to the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, has resigned from the administration. To be honest, he was forced out. Oh, perhaps not directly, but if not, then by the stunning silence of his employer. An employer more concerned about appeasing the right-wing bullies who sought to make Jones a liability for […]
“…the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further…the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.” (James Baldwin, 1952) I have this fantasy, the indulgence of which I resist, due in part to the impracticality of it, but also (and mostly) out of a general […]
When Jeremiah Wright said that the U.S. has a history of violence against innocent people–the kind of thing that fits the textbook definition of the term, “terrorism”–and that this history can, at least in part, explain the attacks against us on September 11, 2001, he was excoriated in the press and by the public. How […]
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Thirteen years ago, when I first started out on the lecture circuit, speaking about the issue of racism, it seemed as though everywhere I went, someone wanted to know my opinion of Louis Farrakhan. To some extent, this was to be expected, I suppose. It […]
For most white folks, indignation fits about as well as a cardigan sweater accidentally placed in the washer then dried on high heat. Sadly, having long remained silent in the face of (and having even supported) so much injustice over the years in this country — including the genocidal extermination of indigenous persons, the enslavement […]
