TRIGGER WARNING: This article or section, and a page it links to, contains information about sexual assault and abuse, which may be triggering to survivors. One man put his hand on the head of another, someone took a picture of it, and the image set off a social media frenzy. Yes. An image. This image. … Continue reading »
African Americans
The Charleston massacre: What is the meaning of black life in America?
“Was already weary. Was already heavy hearted. Was already tired. Where can we be safe? Where can we be free?” I excerpted these words from a tweet that Solange Knowles (Beyoncé’s younger sister) posted on June 18th at 6:49pm, the evening after Dylann Roof walked into Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, … Continue reading »
Slavery’s heavy hand
In an earlier post, I mused about the notion of the “heavy hand of history,” the idea that long-past conditions pull us in certain directions even generations after the fateful events. One of the very earliest users of the phrase, in 1944, was an eminent psychologist who was trying to understand the situation of African … Continue reading »
The Army of black liberation
“Red Tails,” George Lukas’s action movie celebrates the path-breaking Tuskegee Airmen, the African-American fighter pilots who earned distinction in the European Theater of World War II. That they served in a segregated unit of a segregated army made their success bittersweet. In that respect, however, the airmen were one group out of many: black soldiers … Continue reading »