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Category: American Society

  • Alex Haley and the “Roots” Effect

    By Alondra Nelson | As a wide-eyed girl watching Roots, and wondering about mine, I never could have dreamed a future where one day I’d have the surreal experience of having my genealogical results revealed to me before a crowd of African diaspora VIPs and civil rights leaders, and with a prominent actor, Isaiah Washington,…

  • Expanding Social Security to Protect Millennials and Future Generations

    By Steven Hill Social Security will always have somewhat of a perception problem among younger Americans. For a certain number, it will always be viewed as “money for old people who get it from the government.” For people of any age who are working and having taxes deducted from their paychecks, Social Security is a…

  • Apple Pie and Vanilla Ice-Cream Go Together, Not Olympics and Sacrifice

    By Ginny Gilder Marching into Opening Ceremonies is a big moment for athletes all over the world, a public, and oh-so-welcome acknowledgement of the extraordinary effort and amazing accomplishment required to land in the middle of this global phenomenon. Unquestionably, it’s the right time to extol the assembly of top athletes, to marvel over their…

  • The End of the Olympics?

    By Ginny Gilder The Rio Games mark the end of the twelfth decade of the modern Olympics, an impressive track record, yet far outstripped by the tenure of the original Games, which started in 776 B.C. and lasted nearly twelve centuries. Given the most recent news that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) may now consider…

  • NBA Jam: Deciding Which Protests are Palatable

    By Laura Erickson-Schroth, MD, MA The most recent show of support for LGBTQ causes in professional sports was the July 21 announcement by the NBA that the men’s All-Star Game would be moved out of North Carolina because of the state’s new anti-LGBTQ law, which includes a section barring transgender people from using bathrooms that…

  • Two Strategies for Overcoming Racial Bias in Policing

    By Alex Dixon Studies in neuroscience and psychology have shown that the brain is wired to respond quickly to possible threats, and in American culture at least, people may have been socially conditioned to see black male faces as one of these threats. This process can even affect people who consciously shun racial bias in…

  • The Reverend Dr. William Barber II: Reviving the Heart of Our Democracy

    The Reverend William J. Barber II brought the crowd to its feet with his rousing speech last night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. His impassioned call for a moral awakening to combat divide-and-conquer politics with justice illustrates the foundation of Moral Mondays, the fusion movement he helped start to bridge America’s racial and…

  • What Pokémon Go Tells Us About Our Media Future

    By S. Craig Watkins Over the last few days, several people have asked me about the Pokémon Go phenomenon, especially friends who are not likely to play the game but are curious about why so many others have joined the crowd. In my own research, I’m constantly exploring how our engagement with digital media transforms…

  • Busting the Myths About Guns and US Gun Policy

    A Q&A with Dennis A. Henigan: Certainly the horror of the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in which twenty first graders and six adults were struck down, has been a key turning point in the national gun debate. The loss of those innocent young children shocked the conscience of the nation. Prior to…

  • Resisting the Virus of Prejudice: Sex Workers Fight the AIDS Panic

    By Melinda Chateauvert Three decades before “Nothing about us, without us” became the axiom for policymaking by the sex workers’ rights movement, the national prostitutes’ rights organization COYOTE conducted a “Prostitute Study” which demonstrated that community-based participatory research had the power to revolutionize scientific paradigms. At the start of the AIDS epidemic, almost no one…