Category: American Society

  • A Discussion with Thomas Norman DeWolf and Sharon Leslie Morgan | I absolutely feel like there should be reparations. But I feel they do not have to take the form that people immediately think about, which is, “Write me a check.” Because if you write a check, you’re absconding. You’re not really engaging the process.…

  • A Q&A with Hilary Levey Friedman | I have never competed in a beauty pageant, but my mother was Miss America 1970, so pageants have always been a part of my life. My mom and I are different and we our own people—for example, I am a bookworm and she was not the best of…

  • By Lori L. Tharps | In 2016 my book about colorism, “Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families” was released. In that book, I wrote about how colorism manifests in Asian American, African American, Latino, and Mixed-Race Families. While I have been tangentially writing and talking about colorism as long as I…

  • A Q&A with Sumbul Ali-Karamali | I grew up Muslim and bicultural (Indian and American) in a time and place where I happened to be the only Muslim most of my acquaintances knew. So I got saddled with answering all their questions! Not only did I become good at answering questions about Islam in a…

  • By Kavita Das | America, “the land of the free, and the home of the brave” has long been a beacon to people around the world who journeyed to this country seeking freedom from political, cultural, or religious tyranny. We tout ourselves as a country where everyone is free to be who they are and…

  • By Jonathan Rosenblum | Pressed by a relentless working class movement, the Seattle City Council on July 6 adopted a first-time-ever tax on Amazon and other big businesses that will bring in at least $214 million a year to fund affordable housing, Green New Deal projects, and union jobs. The win was a stunning turn of events: just…

  • This year, the Americans with Disabilities Act has a thirtieth candle to blow out on its birthday cake. The ADA is the widest-ranging and most comprehensive piece of civil rights legislation ever passed in the United States, and it has become the model for disability-based laws around the world. We reached out to some of…

  • By Polly Price | Heartening news from Alabama—Governor Kay Ivey ordered face coverings be worn in public, an emergency measure to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus there as the state reached a new record daily death toll. A recognition in the midst of a still unfolding disaster that face masks work.

  • By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker | Sociologist James O. Young writes that cultural appropriation happens when people from outside a particular culture take elements of another culture in a way that is objectionable to that group. According to Young’s definition, it is the objection that constitutes appropriation, as distinguished from cultural borrowing or exchange…

  • By Howard Bryant | America prefers to view itself as a civilized society and, as such, the latter is the obvious, proper, and decent response. Yet judging by its obsession with law enforcement, America acts as if the former is its natural order—that violent crime is but a bad mood away and only the shield,…