Reading Time: 4 minutes Mel Gibson was fired Sunday night. The noted actor and antisemite was scheduled to be one of the grand marshals of one of the yearly Mardi Gras parades. And the fact that he was even slated to be one of the two grand marshals will strike many of you odd because, well, Mel Gibson is […]
Racial justice
Posted inNonreligious News
Atheist groups are reviewing ethics complaints about a notable Black leader
Reading Time: 6 minutes Mandisa Thomas, the president of Black Nonbelievers and one of the most visible Black atheist leaders in the country, has taken a “leave of absence” from the American Humanist Association (where she’s a board member) and faces an ethics review by American Atheists (where she’s also on the board). It comes weeks after an open […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
The lure and toxicity of pro football
Reading Time: 4 minutes What does it say about American culture that the most-watched television programming this fall has been (as it’s been for most of your lifetime and mine) a sport that leaves many of its players, most of them Black, with damaged brains and battered bodies? What does it say about the country that it continues fueling […]
Posted inAnalysis
Why secular Americans are pivotal allies in the fight for racial justice
Reading Time: 6 minutes New research from the Pew Center points to the powerful potential of secularism as an avenue for forging multiracial coalitions.
Posted inRacial justice
The capitalist roots of anti-Asian hate
Reading Time: 9 minutes More policing is not the solution to anti-Asian hate crimes, says political scientist Susan Kang. There is a flawed system in play.
Posted inLaw
A long overdue pardon on marijuana possession calls for further change
Reading Time: 3 minutes On October 6, US President Joe Biden announced a pardon for all current citizens and lawful residents of the US convicted for the simple possession of marijuana. This pardon restores “full political, civil, and other rights” to some 6,500 individuals convicted between 1992 and 2021 under federal or District of Columbia law. It does not […]
Posted inResearch
How deep does ‘anti-woke’ opinion go among atheists?
Reading Time: 12 minutes Several globally-prominent atheists have established themselves as opponents of what they call “wokeness.” But an attempt to compare them to atheists generally, and even the prominent atheists’ most ardent fans, shows that the sentiment is not widespread.
Posted inNews
Florida joins Texas, Arizona in weaponizing migrants by sending them to other states
Reading Time: 2 minutes Don’t get too caught up in recent headlines around Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where two planes of some 50 migrants, many Venezuelan, showed up suddenly on Wednesday. Yes, this caused great confusion and a scrambling of community resources to provide basic necessities and aid to very confused arrivals who spoke little English. But it’s also nothing […]
Posted inRacial justice
‘Ask how the Americans did it’: How racial bias in US medicine inspired Hitler and persists today
Reading Time: 8 minutes The California state investigation into racial bias in healthcare only scratches the surface of a deeply-ingrained system.
Posted inRacial justice
Failure of Jackson’s water system leaves residents without drinking water indefinitely
Reading Time: < 1 minute Jackson is Mississippi’s largest city, with over 160,000 residents. As of Monday, almost all of those residents are without safe drinking water. And neither city nor state officials know when the water will be drinkable again. The issues with Jackson’s water system were caused by river flooding, which caused critical damage to the city’s main […]