Archive
In OtherWords: July 20, 2016
This week, Donald Trump officially accepts the Republican Party's nomination for president. The party's convention in Cleveland has produced a batch of headlines that, like a lot of general election news these days, seems likely to inspire a spike in Google searches...
I Can’t Watch Another Police Killing
Philando Castile and Alton Sterling became the latest black Americans to turn into Twitter hashtags when videos of their deaths at the hands of police circulated on social media. But I couldn't bring myself to watch them. I still remember the helpless frustration I...
The American Dream Moved to Canada
Does your family aspire to the American Dream of a decent paying job, a few weeks of paid vacation, a home of your own, and the hope of retiring before you die? Maybe try Canada. Our country has historically prided itself on being a socially mobile society, where your...
Trump Isn’t the Only Republican with a Woman Problem
Long before he set his sights on the White House, Donald Trump was showing his misogynistic colors. He became notorious for using the press and social media to publicly attack women, calling them "dogs" and "fat pigs." He objectified and degraded women while making...
Loving America Means Finding Fault With It
I was sitting on a bus one summer, chatting with a man behind me who'd worked all over the world in the U.S. foreign service. Like many conversations today, ours turned eventually to the many problems with our country. That's when his companion, who'd been silent so...
An Unregulated Militia
In OtherWords: July 13, 2016
Over a century and a half ago, Roger Taney — the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court — wrote in the infamous Dred Scott decision that black Americans had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." This week in OtherWords, Ebony Slaughter-Johnson looks...
Still Second-Class Citizens
When I heard about the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, I thought back to another name etched into American history: Dred Scott. In 1857, the Supreme Court was tasked with deciding whether Scott, an African American man born into slavery,...
America’s Huge Racial Wealth Gap Is No Accident
Party platforms are dense and often morosely boring documents filled with wonkish policy proposals and partisan jeers at the other side. At over 40 pages, this year’s Democratic Party platform lives up to its predecessors in length and ennui. However, it also includes...
The Problem with ‘Blue Lives Matter’
We're not long into summer, but already we're long on tragedy. Police shootings of black men in Minnesota, Louisiana, and beyond. A mass shooting of police officers in Dallas. Yet this surplus of tragedy seems to have created some confusion. So let's clear things up....
