Donald Trump is a participant as well as a beneficiary of the negative racial climate in the country. He helped to create the hostile racial climate by demeaning the black president. Apparently, he became the Republican nominee for the presidency by casting himself as one who would restore the country to the way it was … [Read more…]
As the Republicans meet in Cleveland this week to anoint their standard bearer, Donald Trump, many are still asking–and with good reason–how did we get to this point of having such a person as a presidential nominee. How can a man be taken seriously when his main policy prescriptions are such outrageous plans as (1) … [Read more…]
In 1920, in conjunction with the anti-lynching campaign, the NAACP began flying a flag from the windows of its headquarters on Fifth Avenue in New York City when a lynching occurred. The words on the flag said simply, “A man was lynched yesterday.” Last week after Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were shot and killed … [Read more…]
The police killings last week of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile demonstrate quite clearly that even though guns and gun rights proliferate in this country beyond all reasonable boundaries, black men with guns are just as endangered now as they were during slavery. See the following URL for an article in The Atlantic magazine which contains quotes … [Read more…]
We know that Francis Scott Key wrote the poem, “The Star Spangled Banner,” which eventually became the national anthem, and many of us know the first verse; however, the song has four verses. Few of us know about these other verses, especially the third verse, which supports slavery and is specifically hostile to slaves. This … [Read more…]
When I learned that a new version of the Roots television miniseries was being developed I wondered whether it was needed since 130 million people watched the excellent original series and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, had read the book. But that was a long time ago, and two recent events made me realize … [Read more…]
For about 20 years Donald Trump was a punchline in some of the undergraduate classes I taught. In teaching about social class I would introduce the classifications developed by W. Lloyd Warner in the 1930’s and 1940’s–upper, middle, and lower classes, each divided into upper and lower. In distinguishing the upper upper class from the … [Read more…]
When I learned of Muhammad Ali’s death I shed a tear as I reflected on the life and times of a real hero. I have never quite understood the practice of labelling sport stars as heroes; however, describing Ali as a hero is quite proper. It helps to define the term. Sports Illustrated and the … [Read more…]
Since this blog is mostly about race, racism, and social policy, I need to insure that we are speaking the same language and discussing the same phenomenon. Please see my ten minute TEDx talk from 2014 at the following URL for background on my future discussions.
Last September, 107-year-old Mamie Kirkland returned to Ellisville, Mississippi, a town she left at seven years of age in 1915. Fleeing a lynch mob, Mamie’s father, Edward Lang, a laborer and aspiring minister, left town abruptly in the middle of the night with instructions for his wife to catch the train with their five children … [Read more…]