racism
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ESPN Takes Asian Announcer off UVA Game Because His Name Is Robert Lee
Oh, I see what you did there. Because Robert Lee, an Asian announcer for ESPN, happens to share the same name as the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, ESPN thought it was a good move to take him off a University of Virginia home-opener football game because, well, awkward. CNN reports that Lee—the announcer, not…
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Hillary Is Not Your White Savior
This weekend I had the misfortune to read Roxane Gay’s recent New York Times op-ed, in which she reflects on Charlottesville, Va., and waxes poetic about how much she wishes Hillary Clinton had won. She writes: I keep thinking about how different things would be if Hillary Clinton had been elected president. I was, like…
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KKK Leader Called Univision Reporter the N-Word, Threatened to ‘Burn’ Her as She Conducted Interview
A Univision news anchor, who has the patience of a saint and a will of steel, somehow managed to get through an interview with the leader of a Ku Klux Klan chapter who called her a nigger and threatened to burn her, all while she was doing her job. The incident started when Christian Barker,…
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Va. Catholic Priest Temporarily Steps Down After Revealing That He Was Once a Member of the KKK
An Arlington, Va., Catholic priest has decided to temporarily step down after revealing that before becoming a member of the clergy, he used to burn crosses as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The Rev. William Aitcheson revealed his dark past in an editorial published Monday in the Arlington Catholic Herald, speaking candidly about…
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Charlottesville, Va., to Cover Confederate Statues in Black Fabric to Mourn Heather Heyer
The city of Charlottesville, Va., is planning to cover the statues of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in black fabric to represent the city’s mourning of Heather Heyer. The Daily Progress reports that the City Council voted unanimously early Tuesday to drape the fabric in Heyer’s honor. Heyer, 32, was killed…
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‘If I Were KKK, Would I Hold You Like This?’ Viral Picture Supposedly Shows Confederate-Monument Defender and Black Lives Matter Supporter
So, there’s apparently a viral photo circulating the interwebs that purportedly shows a Confederate-monument defender embracing a Black Lives Matter supporter … and I have some serious questions. On Friday the Virginia Flaggers, a group committed to defending Confederate monuments and memorials, stationed “Monument Guards” around a monument in Lynchburg, Va., in response to a…
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University of Texas Removing 4 Confederate Statues From Campus
When students at the University of Texas at Austin return to classes Aug. 30, they may notice that the air on campus is cleaner, and the view clearer and brighter, since the university took action to remove four second-place trophies (aka Confederate statues) from campus. University President Greg Fenves announced the removal of the statues…
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To Be Clear, White Supremacy Is the Foundation of Our Country. We Won’t Destroy It by Toppling Statues
From the white supremacist “rally” and terror attack in Charlottesville, Va., to the current president’s public defense of Nazis to the recent uproar over HBO’s controversial decision to green-light a new series portraying a Confederate victory, it is clear that our nation is in the midst of a very public—and painful—reckoning with the memory (and…
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3 Facts That Prove the Reality of White Supremacy
When I was 16 years old, my entire family thought my little sister was going crazy (and by “sister” I mean my cousin who lived with us because black people do that, which could be the subject of an entirely different article). Every morning, she would tell us that there was a monster under her…
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Why All Confederate Statues Must Fall
Following the horrific events in Charlottesville, Va., where one woman was killed during a white supremacist rally to save a statue of Robert E. Lee, cities across the country are moving swiftly to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces. Even citizen protesters in Durham, N.C., took matters into their own hands to remove a Confederate…