This week’s events at the University of Missouri don’t surprise me one bit. As a graduate student in Mizzou’s journalism school with a Japanese and Jewish background, I know what it’s like to be a minority. There, I am regularly reminded that I am different. Without [...]
My father is listed as white on his birth certificate. His great-grandfather was the founder of America’s first black daily newspaper. But when I tell the story of my family, inextricably linked to the narrative of New Orleans and, in fact, to the country, I [...]
The Edmund Pettus Bridge is a symbol of freedom all over the world. It is also a symbol of voting rights and democracy. However, the very name stands for the exact opposite. Symbols are powerful. Symbols enter into our conscious and subconscious without our screening them. [...]
A one minute review of the recent events unfolding, as it seems that’s all the time we have left. As of August 30t, 2015, I will no longer be a Local School Council Facilitator, as my medium, and long term goals conflict with this [...]
What follows is the text of a “sermon” that I gave as a “congregational reflection” to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th. The sermon was begun with a reading of The Good Samaritan story, and [...]
There is a Mississippi that we remember and the one in which we live. Beginning today these might differ. Judge Carlton Reeves recounts our history and declares there is A New Mississippi. For as long as most of us can [...]
I created #BlackLivesMatter with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, two of my sisters, as a call to action for Black people after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the [...]
Surrounded by girls, Rasheed Curtis, 6, talks about why Overton should stay open before the last day of school at Overton Elementary School, June 19, 2013. | Jessica Koscielniak ~ Sun-Times Mayor You Stole My Children’s Safe, Sane Neighborhood SchoolA second open letter from Irene Robinson [...]
I’VE LEFT EARTH in search of darker planets, a solar system that revolves too near a black hole. I have left a patch of dirt in my place & many of you won’t know the difference; we are indeed the same color, one of us [...]
