Wow, the Tea Partiers just make it so damned easy to ridicule them. Just when you thought nobody could make Sarah Palin look informed by comparison, along comes Christine O’Donnell, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Delaware, she of the “masturbation is a sin” school of evangelical Christian silliness. O’Donnell is such an extreme […]
This is part one of a two-part series on racism on the right and left of the United States’ political/ideological spectrum. Part One provides the reader with a working definition of racism, and then explores how racism at both the ideological and institutional levels is connected to and enhanced by American conservatism. Part Two will […]
As a writer, there are times when you have something to say, and yet no particular “hook” upon which to hang the missive you are burning to release. In these moments, it is often best to wait, to hold on to the material you find so compelling, secure in the knowledge that soon enough something […]
Recently, I received an e-mail from a college professor who shows a video of one of my speeches in her classroom. She explained that she was in need of a citation for a claim I had made in the video, to the effect that although blacks and Latinos are far more likely than whites to […]
“…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 […]
Recently, after a presentation to teachers about racial bias in high school curricula, I got into a tiny spat with an instructor who objected to my using the word “holocaust” to describe the process by which nearly 99% of indigenous Americans perished from the 1400s to the present day. He also objected to the use […]
…Yeah, I said it, and I meant it too. The New Yorker staffers and editors who thought it was acceptable to run the cover of Barack-and-Michelle-Obama-as-Muslim-and/or-black-nationalist-militants are racists. And assholes. Their liberalism does not acquit them. The fact that most of them will probably vote for Obama in November doesn’t acquit them. The fact that […]
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 […]
Dear Mayor McMillin, I hear that you’re angry. Me too. But it appears our outrage is directed at decidedly different targets. I, for one, am angry at the three young white men in your town who, last year, hung nooses from a tree after a black student dared sit under it, thereby touching off several […]
Published as a ZNet Commentary, 11/08/03 Imagine that in Germany, public officials and teachers decided to develop a school curriculum about the horrors of racism and intolerance. Now imagine that this curriculum never mentioned the Holocaust of European Jewry, or Germany’s persecution of homosexuals, Romany, persons with disabilities, or any of the other groups singled […]
