I Honestly Thought White People Were Better Than This
I had forgotten about the first time.
Report: Water Is Wet, Fire Is Hot—Oh, and Race Relations Got Worse After Trump’s Election
A fascinating new report has revealed some important information of which you may not be aware: If you touch a hot stove, you might get burned. Water is wet, fire is hot, and most Americans believe race relations in our country got worse after Donald Trump was elected.
I Tried It: I’m Not Mad at the ‘Come Meet a Black Person’ Event Organizer and You Shouldn’t Be Either
When I told my mother I was going to the “Come Meet a Black Person” event in Lawrenceville, Ga., she readily told me, “Pickeny gal, a mind dem a nah sum ku klux klan sin ting yah nuh.” This is Jamaican patois for “It’s a trap!” My friends also warned me that it was a trap.
According to Republicans, Black People Are Stupid and Lazy
In the latest round of “studies confirming stuff we already knew,” newly released opinion-poll data from the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center shows that people who identify as Republican are more likely to believe that blacks are less motivated and less intelligent than whites. The survey…
How Obama Ruined Race Relations
One of my favorite true-life parables is the story of Hungarian Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis. In the mid-1800s, Semmelweis worked in a maternity clinic where a large number of women died during childbirth. He believed that the problem was neither the medicine nor their treatments. Semmelweis believed that there were tiny…
Trevor Noah, Tomi Lahren and When Black Twitter Gets It Wrong
In the summer of 2007, I spent time in Johannesburg, South Africa, working with government officials and activists to improve local elections. South Africans were generally friendly, but I was struck by how optimistic they were about the future of the country even though apartheid had only ended, like, 15 minutes ago…
Open Letter to White People Who Are Obsessed With Black-on-Black Crime
Dear Caucasian Brethren,
Ga. Police Sergeant Terminated for Having Confederate Flag
In Roswell, Ga., a police officer was fired in July after a complaint was filed against her but is planning to contest the firing, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Former Sgt. Silvia Cotriss had a Confederate flag on display underneath the American flag outside her home. She had apparently been flying…
10 Thoughts On President Obama's Town Hall On Race Relations and Policing
Report: Race Relations in US Are Still Bad
Almost eight years after the election of the nation's first black president, a new study finds that the racial divide between whites and blacks in America is still at Grand Canyon levels—which proves that a racially harmonious country remains an elusive dream that even the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would have had…
They’re Called ‘Microaggressions’ but There’s Nothing Small About Them
For 11 months I regretted that I had not glared at my white therapist and said, “You are dead to me. You are not the person I thought you were. You never knew me. You only saw the stereotype.” For 18 years he had been my favorite doctor, yet I stayed away. Previously, I would have sworn that he would be the last…
