Walter Brasch: While most Tea Partiers are White, middle-aged or senior citizens who are angry but not violent, whenever there is violence, whenever there is racism, discrimination, or homophobia, there are Tea Party sympathizers present.
Preserving Artistic Integrity, or Ethnic Property Rights?
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Rev. Irene Monroe: I am troubled, however, in this recent kerfuffle concerning the n-word how many of us African Americans, in particular, go back and forth on its politically correct use.
The Confederacy Must Be Destroyed
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Haley Barbour’s Yazoo City and Mine
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James Loewen: The issue isn’t that Barbour misremembers the past. Nor is the problem that when he was a teenager, he was not attentive to Martin Luther King’s visit. The problem is that Haley Barbour has spent his entire life not seeing injustice, so he could work to perpetrate injustice.
The Real Story of the White Citizens’ Council
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James C. Cobb: Pledged to maintain white supremacy, the councils foreswore violence but did their best to intimidate blacks who might think about challenging the status quo and to make painful examples of those who did.
Christian Nation
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Steve Hochstadt: I don’t want to live in any version of a “Christian nation”. I want to live in the United States, in which religious ideas are a private matter, in which my government plays no role in my spiritual life, and denominational beliefs play no role in government.
Internment and Detainment for National Security?
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The politics of fear led to the post-Pearl Harbor internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans yet, not a single one of the interned was ever found to have any connection to the bombing. For them, simply being born Japanese-American was reason enough to be treated like criminals.
European Racism vs. “Underground” Racism in the U.S.
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Jessie Daniels: While it’s true that it’s no longer ok to say the n-word in some mixed groups, there’s plenty of evidence that racism – even the crudest forms, and alongside some new forms – still abounds in the contemporary U.S. in plenty of above ground.
U.S. Native Prisoners of War
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Jessie Daniels: My father identified as Native American. In his view, Native Americans had it “much worse” than black Americans and still do. I argue that rather than trying to rank order oppression and which group “had it worse,” it’s important that we see these as connected.
Retired Supreme Court Justice: Capital Punishment ‘Shot Through with Racism’
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Jessie Daniels: This bold move against racism and the death penalty by a retired Supreme Court Justice is good news for those concerned with the injustice of capital punishment.
Color Blindness
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Steve Hochstadt: Our nation also has far to go. Claiming that we are color blind, that whites no longer have privileges in America, that we need no longer worry about preventing discrimination is nonsense. One need only have observed the reception of our first black President to know how important skin color still is in America.
What Center?
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Joseph Palermo: The political “center” of American politics is a moving target. And for the last thirty years it has moved in only one direction: Rightward.
Why Jon Stewart Is Wrong
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Randy Shaw: America is not threatened by isolated “selfish jerks,” but by an organized cadre of wealthy individuals and powerful corporations whose agendas are far more destructive to other people and the planet than a selfish driver.
An Old Fart’s Admonition: Please, Don’t Let Yourself Get Disillusioned
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Bob Letcher: NPR reported that many of the first-time voters in 2008, whose votes provided Obama his winning margin, might stay home in the upcoming elections. To them I say, please vote.
Why I Keep Talking about Race
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Steve Hochstadt: I will keep talking about race because my students cannot understand American history without knowing the role played by racism.
Creeping Fascism and the American Politics of Madness
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David Love: Burning the Holy Qur’an, bombing and burning mosques, banning houses of worship on private property, widespread denial of the president’s citizenship, efforts to nullify the Fourteenth Amendment, states scrambling to enact punitive, unjust laws to target Latinos—these are the ingredients of which fascism is made.
Human Nature = Prejudice
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Adam Eran: Vedantam suggests education, rather than confrontation, is what gets us beyond prejudice. The Obama presidential run ignored the obviously bigotry coming from his opponent’s proxies, and suggested, without recrimination, that we give Obama a chance. That tactic, not Reverend Wright’s understandable anger, was what worked.
With Friends Like These, Who Needs Glenn Beck? Racism and White Privilege on the Liberal-Left
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Tim Wise: How even liberals, progressives and leftists, despite our advocacy for equity and stated commitment to racial justice, still manage to manifest and further racism — whether deliberately or not — in our activism, messages and policy prescriptions.
Blacks and The N-Word
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Rev. Irene Monroe: But, our culture’s present-day cavalier use of the n-word speaks less about our rights to free speech and more about how we as Americans — both White and Black — have become anesthetized to the damaging and destructive use of this epithet.
In One Weekend, Tea Party, Neo-Nazis, and ‘Border Activists’ Rally behind Arizona
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Andrea Nill: As proponents of SB-1070 insist that their support of the law has nothing to do with race, they can’t deny that for some people it boils down to “white people who are not afraid to stand up,” as one Tennessee rally attendee noted.
Destroying America to Save It: Reflections on a Mosque
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John Peeler: There is a more fundamental issue: if we allow our response to be governed by intolerance, we deal a hard blow to the version of America that embodies freedom of religion for all. Will we then turn in upon ourselves, resentful and repressive towards the Other, and terrified to live by our own truth?
Living in a ‘Post-Racist’ Society
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Tina Dupuy: Pandering to our darkest fears about “the others” coming to our side of the island to kill us is, also, officially no longer racist.
Why Won’t the FCC Treat Hate Speech the Same As Foul Language?
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Sylvia Moore: It seems to be far easier to punish a broadcaster for one f-bomb dropped on the air, than it is if the same on-air personality unleashed a tirade of bigoted garbage.
Dear Tea Party Member
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Mike Price: Okay, not hate. But we surely feel sorry for sheep-like tea party puppets destroying our country for no other reason than they’re too mentally lazy to think for themselves.
The New Know-Nothings
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Berry Craig: Of course, the Republicans – and even the Tea Baggers – would have us belief that their beef is with “illegal” immigrants. But they’re not fooling anybody. Most of these neo-Know Nothings are white people who have a problem with Latinos north of the border, period.
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Racism in Review, A Look Back and a Look Ahead
Jessie Daniels: Amid all the racist flame throwing of 2010, politicians managed to achieve a bipartisan consensus when it came to one boogeyman. China-bashing profilerated on both sides of the aisle as candidates blamed the ascendant superpower for America’s economic woes