Rankism

I don’t know if you have to experience discrimination, first hand, in order to be able to see it, but I do know that I learned a when my uncle became wheelchair bound 20 years ago. For that reason, I have hope that maybe the Civil Rights Division under the Obama administration will do what it has often failed to do in the past – provide a line of defense for this country’s most vulnerable people.

Mark Naison: My grandfather, when he worked, was a presser in the garment trades, making extra income as a bartender and bootegger. He was a strong arm man for his union who fought gangsters from Murder Incorporated in the streets of the Garment district.

Mark Naison: What makes "whiteness" a legitimate field of study is that throughout American history, huge advantages were given to people who were defined as "white"- but the definitions of who was "white" changed over time

Steve Moya and Alvaro Huerta: To provide an even playing field for all Latinos, especially those in low-income communities, we need to better collaborate to support targeted communities with an emphasis on families.

Sikivu Hutchinson: Sterling’s racist references to shiftless black untouchables are simply yet another snapshot of how caste, ethnicity and the bootstraps mythology play out in “post-racial” America.

Scot Nakagawa: Given his obvious good intentions (yes, there should be no place in our culture for a football franchise that uses a racist, anti-Indian epithet as their brand name), I would much rather educate Colbert than cancel him.

Charles D. Hayes: I grew up with a sheltered worldview much in agreement with the same politics and prejudices of my community. It was a world of black-and-white notions of morality, and it was a literal interpretation of racial superiority that white was right. But reading Martin Luther King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail changed my reality.

Soya Jung -- The book, The Triple Package, is rife with American exceptionalism and model minority thinking – the notion that anyone can succeed in America if they just act right, and those who don’t will get what they deserve.

It is disingenuous to claim the recent Duck Dynasty controversies are not about race.

African American College Statistics -- Black boys are suspended and expelled at higher rates for lesser offenses than are white students.

Rev. Irene Monroe: Immediately following the Boston bombing, several "Muslim-looking" suspects were apprehended to the chagrin of law enforcement that later released them and offered an apology. Not much has changed since September 11, 2001.

Robert Fuller: At the moment, the greatest threats to China and America come not from each other, but from flaws in their own systems of governance. Chinese and Americans alike are burdened by political systems that are not keeping pace with the times.

Robert Fuller: The twentieth century witnessed the successful application of the strategies and tactics of identity politics. Those same organizational techniques, applied to overcoming rankism, can render it as insupportable as the isms that identity politics has now put on the defensive.

Peter Dreier: Rosa Parks' defiance of Montgomery's segregation laws was not an isolated incident. It was part of a lifelong crusade to dismantle Jim Crow.

Charles D. Hayes: Devoid of compassion, mainstream indifference is a hostile, authoritative, and testosterone-laden environment where the weak are ridiculed and the poor are held in contempt.

Sharon Kyle: On the heels of the re-election of President Obama, signs tell us we are NOT yet living in post-racial America

Sheria Reid: The depth of depravity that feeds racism at this level counts on being able to stay in the shadows. They don't want those of us who find their beliefs repulsive to see them.