Reading Time: 6 minutes It seems we may be focusing on too many of the wrong things in the fraught aftermath of an enraged fatal beating by seven cops of an unarmed Black motorist last week after a traffic stop in Memphis, Tennessee. Potential solutions might be far less complicated and opaque than many people suspect. Misusing terms like […]
racism
Great lies of our time
Reading Time: 4 minutes As humans, we are “mediocre” at identifying when someone is lying. Professional lie detectors, like police officers, do not perform better. However, they believe they do, possibly due to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The worst lies, however, are the ones we tell ourselves. Here are some of them. “I’m a good and loyal friend.” You’re about […]
Is America on the precipice of Civil War II?
Reading Time: 5 minutes The American Civil War is still far from over. A powerful metaphor for this worry was the violent insurrection Jan. 6, 2021, at the US Capitol, during which a Confederate battle flag was carried triumphantly, by an aggrieved Southerner, through the hallowed confines of Statuary Hall. Many, if not most, in the Jan. 6 mob […]
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.
Report: At least 318,981 dead Covid anti-vaxxers can thank Trump
Reading Time: 6 minutes White Americans are now more likely than Black Americans to die of COVID. That’s just one more telling artifact littering the landscape of destruction Donald Trump’s one-term presidency inflicted—and continues to inflict—on the United States. In the early days of the pandemic in America, Black Americans were dying of COVID at triple the rate of […]
‘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.
Why a Black Targaryen makes more sense than a white Jesus
Reading Time: 6 minutes If your orbit includes Amazon Prime, HBO, and social media, you may well be aware of a whole lot of fuss being kicked up in terms of casting decisions. It has come to the horror of many fantasy fiction literalists that recent TV prequels to The Lord of the Rings and The Game of Thrones […]
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 […]
Mental illness doesn’t cause mass shootings. Hate armed for war does
Reading Time: 6 minutes First Amendment-loving conservatives have long blamed isolated mental-health issues in very angry individuals but never the availability of guns as the proximate cause of America’s decades-long epidemic of horrific mass shootings in America. Or they claim mass shootings are hardly a problem at all and that, by the way, overall gun violence is supposedly down […]
Former pastor on trial for plotting to exterminate Black South Africans
Reading Time: 5 minutes Knoesen, head of the National Christian Resistance Movement (NCRM)—also known as The Crusaders—is accused of planning to overthrow the South African government. He is on trial for high treason in a case currently taking place in the Mpumalanga High Court. According to the Middelberg Observer, his trial began at the end of April with the submission […]