Category: Privilege

Racism in America: Counting Down the Years

Racism in America: Counting Down the Years

Here’s some help for white folk not understanding why black folk in America might feel like the issue of race isn’t “fixed”… 1619 – 1865 – Legalized slavery says “black” people are property, beasts of burden. Women may be raped with impunity and at any age. Men may be raped, or beaten, or killed without any loss other than the […]

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Lower (A poem about the White Imagination)

Lower (A poem about the White Imagination)

Lowerby Jon TrottYoung, I imagined the limbs of black women wrapped around me, desperate for rescue, desperate for one white heart that understood. I strove with them in loving lust, Knew gentle every inch of skin, a Kiss kiss kiss of my own body, The hope of love rushing toward Only me, there, in the darkness of my white and […]

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Can a False Story Create a True Reality? Of Course It Can.

Can a False Story Create a True Reality? Of Course It Can.

All self-defined truths are not true. Much Evangelical commentary has been made against a culture where tolerance says all self-narratives should be treated respectfully… the Evangelical response is that this is an illogical and deceptive idea. Cultural “tolerance” for all narratives is too often, say these critics, equated with acceptance of all narratives as equally true — an idea which […]

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Porch Monkey Paradigms: how the Old South lives on in the New Right

Porch Monkey Paradigms: how the Old South lives on in the New Right

FOX News gave Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher, massive amounts of airtime. U. S. Senator Rand Paul and FOX pundit Sean Hannity praised Bundy’s stance against the federal government. (Never mind the federal government owns the land Mr. Bundy grazes his cattle on, which is what the dispute is about, and has owned the land for generations.) The entire conservative […]

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Happy Birthday MLK: His 1967 Chicago Sermon “Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool”

Martin Luther King’s birthday, January 15 (today), seems a fine time to offer up a lesser-known sermon he gave at the Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church August 27 1967. Entitled “Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool,” it still has a shocking resonance today. Perhaps it isn’t as polished, as memorable in some ways, as “I Have a Dream” or […]

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Zimmerman Verdict: Bitterness and the Death of Hope

Zimmerman Verdict: Bitterness and the Death of Hope

“You can’t make me do nothing but die!” ― Richard Wright, Native Son Perhaps I have no right to say what I’m thinking tonight — there’s no room for so-called “objectivity” in the midst of this tsunami of emotions — but I will say it anyway. Racism in all its power to distort justice has once again won a victory. […]

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