‘Indian’ Mascots Are a Slap in the Face

‘Indian’ Mascots Are a Slap in the Face

The Washington, D.C. football team is scheduled to play in London later this year. But the controversy over its name has preceded it there. Two members of the British Parliament have asked the NFL to change the R*dskins’ team name — or “at the minimum, send a...
I Am Kalief Browder

I Am Kalief Browder

The day before I started high school, my father took me up to the park around the corner from our house to have “the talk.” It’s the talk black families had when Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Florida. It’s the talk we had when Michael Brown was shot and killed...
The Blind Spots of Dead White Men

The Blind Spots of Dead White Men

As the rest of the nation celebrates Black History Month this February, I’m taking a graduate level course I call “Dead White Men.” It’s actually a classic theory class that covers a number of influential thinkers, like free market theorist Adam Smith and the...
Political Poison

Political Poison

One big difference between the rich and the poor in our country is that the rich don’t tend to have their drinking water poisoned by their own governor. Not that Republican Governor Rick Snyder personally dumped poison into Flint, Michigan’s water. But by...
We Still Need Black History Month

We Still Need Black History Month

Carter G. Woodson was born in Virginia, 10 years after the fall of the Confederacy. Working as a sharecropper and a miner, he rarely had time to attend school until the age of 20. But he sure made up for lost time. Woodson would devote the rest of his life to...