Racism

Stop telling yourself that “everything is okay” because you know it’s not — I had a couple of conversations over the weekend that got me thinking. One was with the father of a girl who plays on one of my daughter’s teams. He has a black daughter, and I got the impression that we have had some similar experiences with racism in our…

Black women have a long history of wearing hair covers in public — At Dr. Sutton's dentist's office, a sign reads, "No bonnets, no house shoes, no pajama bottoms," and the response from Black women online has exposed a frayed thread. On the one hand, some suggested that Black women should never wear bonnets in public and that we are responsible for presenting…

My friend’s tearful rant made me realize that I’m not alone. Do you feel left out, too? — At around 2 AM, one of my best friends called me up to vent. Since becoming single, he has been struggling in the gay community. He has been feeling something that I call “the Invisible Wall.” You see, my friend Bobby* is overweight. He’s not the skinny, youthful twink that…

A better America means reckoning with our past. — One of the more absurd things President Biden has ever said on race issues is that Trump was the first racist president. “No sitting president has ever done this [referring to one of Trump’s antagonistic ‘China virus’ remarks] … Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic…

Eight Months Pregnant And Lynched For Complaining About Her Husband's Lynching — Depending on the date you choose, slavery ended either on January 1, 1863 (the Emancipation Proclamation), April 9, 1865, when the Civil War Ended, June 19, 1865, when word got to Texas (Juneteenth), December 6, 1865, when the 13th Amendment was ratified. Ironically it was when Georgia, where Mary Turner…

We face harassment and violence both as women and as trans people – but is carceral justice the solution? — This week a young man, 19 years old, was convicted of brutally assaulting a transgender woman. The case is just one of many where the perpetrator was given a more lenient sentence — in this case, avoiding jail time — due to their use of the ‘trans panic’ defence. It’s…

A 1850–1930 Journey into America’s ‘Racial Purity’ Obsession — In 1850, America was a pot simmering with tension. On one side of the boiling argument were the Northern radicals, increasingly vocal in their opposition to slavery. On the other side, Southern Fire Eaters were vehemently defending their right to own slaves, arguing that it was vital to their economy. …

We have all heard the many claims Putin has made about Ukraine’s “Nazi” leadership and his mission to “free” Ukraine from Nazis. What we have not heard so much about is the problem Russia has had with Nazism and how many neo-Nazis actually support Putin’s regime. So, I thought I’d…

Stand-your-ground laws attempt to justify the unjustifiable — America’s racial hierarchy is a monstrous beast that must be fed with violence. It’s always been this way. The Transatlantic Slave Trade was the largest forced migration in world history, a system that involved violently uprooting millions of African people from their homeland. According to historians, 1.8 million died on…