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 […]
There is none so dangerous as the white American who waxes nostalgic about what he or she likes to call “the good old days.” Or, alternately, those “simpler” times, or the era of so-called “innocence” remembered from their childhoods, memorialized in a Norman Rockwell painting, or via televised re-runs of the Cleaver family, or Opie […]
“…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 […]
For a group that regularly decries what they view as “minority” whining, and the politics of victimization, white conservatives are demonstrating a penchant for the unhinged histrionics of victimhood, virtually unparalleled in modern times. Facing a nation led by a black man, with a black wife and black children, sullying the hallowed halls of a […]
“What about Oprah?” So came the question from the middle of the crowded lecture hall, spat out from a contorted face whose owner had just sat through an hour-long talk, the substance of which I can only imagine he had found excruciating. Needing a bit more information before I could confidently respond, I replied the […]
By Tim Wise and Molly Secours Published in the Nashville Tennessean, 2/9/05 Combing through headlines in the paper can be like trolling past a nine-vehicle pile-up. You know if you look it’s going to be gruesome, but you peek anyway. Such is the case with most any op-ed by Tim Chavez. Typical of the Tennessean’s […]
