We played the race card

As part of a lecture on identity, I shared with the University of New Haven students in my COMM1100 class (Human Communication) WNPR’s Michele Norris’s The Race Card Project, which asks participants to write something — anything — about race, but use only six words. We talked about the notion that we are a “post-racial” …

Children share what they know about the Confederate flag

This hurts. The video opens with a guy with a Southern accent, and then there’s a lot of f-bombs coming from children. Here’s more behind the video. Here’s the shirt company behind the video. Commodify your dissent, I guess.

How do you love a racist?

The recent publicity about the death or mistreatment of multiple people of color by law enforcement officials has me wondering about a lot of things, namely: Let’s get the superfluous one out of the way first: This has gone on forever, right? So is social media the conduit by which the rest of us (white …

If we stopped honoring racists by naming schools after them…

…that would allow us to honor people who really deserve the attention, yes? Read this Mother Jones piece on not just lowering the Confederate battle flag, but renaming all those schools after supporters of a white supremacist state, such as Nathan B. Forrest, pictured.

Anonymous announces a million-person march on July 4

You can read about it here. Citing the historic happenings of the recent weeks, the press release says: Anonymous, in conjunction with the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements – hereby calls forth a Million Person March for the only day when it could possibly happen, Independence Day. We call on every American of good …

Taking down the flag is only a first step

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, reversing an earlier stance, has called for removing the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds, after a white suspect shot and killed nine people in a historic black church in that state last week. Here’s a quote from her announcement on Monday: “For many people in our state, the flag stands …