Race
Over at RI Future yesterday, Matt Jerzyk wrote…When the immigration debate becomes about “them” and the “them” is largely determined by race and ethnicity, then racism is a clear component of the debate.But how about the definition of “them” in other areas of public debate? In a post from just two days earlier, Paul Bovenzi…
Race’s status as an umbrella term for an amorphous category of qualities — from skin color to lifestyle choices — justify a significant degree of skepticism about claims of racial profiling. In the context of a recent University of Rhode Island investigation of state police traffic stops and searches (concerning which, I haven’t been able…
A few weeks ago, Dan Yorke brought one of his coworkers (a sports guy) into the studio to discuss his Massachusetts primary vote for Barack Obama. That coworker characterized himself as the only non-racist person he knew and sought to explain why it was appropriate to look at Obama and see only a black man…
I have a piece in today’s Christian Science Monitor about the recent resolution by the New Jersey legislature apologizing for slavery. On the one hand, such an apology is harmless. But on the other, it feeds off of the idea that the United States has been racist from the start, obscuring the fact that it…
It’s one thing for Reverend Al Sharpton to use the racial gaffes of others principally as a means of attracting a spotlight or a microphone to himself. It’s an annoyance but the ultimate impact is on the credibility of Reverend Sharpton. It’s another thing for him to do so when the gaffe involves the word…
State Republican Chairman Giovanni Cicione touched off a minor firestorm in political circles with his statement that unions are a source of institutional racism. Monday’s Political Scene column in the Projo summarized and exchange between Chairman Cicione and reporter Bill Rappleye on WJAR-TV‘s (NBC 10) 10 News Conference…State Republican Chairman Giovanni Cicione’s description of labor…
It’s been clear that the sort of thought that the Providence Journal editorial board criticizes has been permeating university faculty halls for decades: The Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence has been making use of a handbook called “dismantling racism 2006” put together by a consultancy called Dismantling Racism Works. Here’s a passage: “Racism =…
I recently caught a C-SPAN Q&A with Janks Morton, Jr., who was promoting his new film, What Black Men Think. It attempts to dig into some of the problems–both cause and affect–facing African-Americans today. According to his website: Since the triumphs of the civil rights legislations of the early 1960′s havoc and decimation has been…
In a ProJo story about the annual reading of George Washington’s Letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Brown University President Ruth Simmons is quoted thusly: She touched upon the moral contradictions underlying the noble desires of past leaders who were eager to uphold freedom, despite an indifference to the injustice of slavery. “We all…
Responding to my post on the Democratic Party’s legacy of racism, Bobby Oliveira wrote: Up until the Voting Rights Act, which LBJ predicted “would lose the South for years to come”, you are exactly correct. However, since that day, all those folks, foreshadowed by Strom Thurmond in 1948, have left and now hang out with…
