Uncategorized Archives - Page 3 of 53

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The Matzneff Affair: Should Love Have No Age Limit?

Sex and the Sixties, from Lolita to Vanessa Springora’s consent

March 16, 2021 • by Mitchell Abidor

_____ Almost every allegation of sexual aggression that has been made in these years of #MeToo has had “he said she said” moments. The woman accuses, the man denies or excuses, and the public chooses who they believe. The 1986 affair between the then 14-year-old Vanessa Springora and 50-year-old writer Gabriel ...

The Matzneff Affair: Should Love Have No Age Limit?

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How Shame Plays a Productive Role in Racial Justice

Rejecting “the hollowness of American life”

March 11, 2021 • by Benjamin P. Davis

_____ I want to suggest here that shame can be more than a feeling that ends in self-judgment. It can also be a spur to live differently. In other words, shame is not simply, as is sometimes asserted, a political dead end. On the contrary, shame can be politically productive in ...

How Shame Plays a Productive Role in Racial Justice

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How “White Privilege” Obscures Black Vulnerability

There is a crucial distinction between the laborer and the capitalist, but the psychological security that a white person gains from the objectification of the Black Other is of a different sort.

March 11, 2021 • by Mukasa Mubirumusoke

_____ The idea of white privilege has become indispensable in both academic and public conversations about race. It is the ultimate trump card to play when one wants to concisely and incisively describe the often unseen roadblocks that white people erect, which can thwart the thriving of non-white people. Undoubtedly you’ve ...

How “White Privilege” Obscures Black Vulnerability

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#OprahMeghanHarry

The mother of popular antiracism presents these retired royals, and their pain, as a lesson to us all

March 11, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ Is it surprising that Their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (otherwise known as Harry and Meghan) chose to make their first public statement about their decision to become private citizens on an Oprah Winfrey special? No: it is predictable. Any American who believes they have anything important to ...

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Democracy Doesn’t Happen By Accident

Black Americans fought for the Voting Rights Act, and Joe Biden wants it back

March 11, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, but the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So in 1963, Black organizers in the Dallas County Voters League launched a drive to get Black voters in Selma registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating ...

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What’s the Greatest Story Dolly Parton Ever Wrote?

Beginning to understand a hero’s journey from Appalachia to pop-culture icon

March 9, 2021 • by Tressie McMillan Cottom

_____ I started the reading for my Dolly Parton passion project with Sarah Smarsh’s She Come By It Natural for no other reason than it was new and in stock at my local bookstore (Flyleaf Books). That is to say, for no good reason at all. I don’t intend to review these books, including ...

What’s the Greatest Story Dolly Parton Ever Wrote?

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Why Spit-Hoods Should Be Banned

A relic of slavery, they are inhumane and often deadly

March 4, 2021 • by Leslie Reagan

_____ In September, the world saw a video of Rochester, New York, police putting a spit hood over Daniel Prude’s head and face as he sat naked and handcuffed on a cold, wintry street. The mentally ill man was dead a week later. His death, the medical examiner declared, was homicide due to “complications ...

Democracy

The United States Is in Recovery

What Texas, white supremacy and coronavirus can teach us about American history

February 18, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

"In the exchange, Americans saw a president who cared, and a government that finally, after its previous leaders had told them to get out of a terrible catastrophe on their own, responded to their needs."...

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Bernie’s Mittens

This, we imagine, is how Bernie really is (or at least looks) no matter where he is, and this image of reality strikes us and amuses us like a common dandelion growing amidst a swathe of bougainvillea

February 2, 2021 • by Gwenda-lin Grewal

The image of Bernie Sanders at the 2021 presidential inauguration already seems to have launched more ships than Helen of Troy. Senator Sanders, or more casually chic, “Bernie,” appeared wearing repurposed Fair Isle mittens made by a Vermont school teacher, Jen Ellis, and a very practical coat from the Vermont-based ...

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Dear Kobe Bryant: a Threnody

Wake up. Grind. Repeat. Become Better.

January 26, 2021 • by Anna Reagan

I. All the instruments we have agree, the day of your death was a foggy grey day. The day before you died, I was rescuing my sister-in-law from her drug dealer’s house. It was very early in the morning because addiction is never convenient. On the 5 Freeway as I drove past ...

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Vesna Kesic

In memoriam

December 31, 2020 • by Elzbieta Matynia

Photo: taken by Stephanie Damoff (provided by Elzbieta Matynia). Elzbieta Matynia is a Professor of Sociology at The New School for Social Research and Director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies.

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The Adultification of Santa Claus

He’s not just for children anymore — and never has been

December 17, 2020 • by Yvonne M. Vissing

During the pandemic lock-down I needed something to lift my spirits and went to my go-to place of childhood happiness — Santa Claus. As a mom and child rights policy chair with an international group of human rights scholars, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what ...