Do you know who Dixon White is? The proud, self-proclaimed “redneck” is a former racist – and a YouTube phenomenon. His viscerally honest, rough, intense, cuss-filled (NSFW), incredibly discomforting video “I’m a Redneck and I Love America” has already gone viral with millions of views. In the clip, he picks apart “a White supremacist culture that caters to White people,” calls for Americans who aren’t people of color to “reject White privilege” and “to take some responsibility for undoing racism.” And he rails against hollow claims that we live in a post-racial......
Continue Reading
To paraphrase Baltimore native H.L. Mencken: “For every complex question there is a simple answer. And it’s wrong.” It’s entirely human to want to understand something like the rioting in Baltimore by reducing it down to a single point, or at least a small but closely related universe of points. We should resist that temptation, because Mencken was right: We’d be wrong. A conservative commentator: “I hate to say it, but this is the outcome of creating a class of citizens who become increasingly dependent on the government for their well-being. The......
Continue Reading
There was a powerful confluence for me while studying last week’s assigned Torah portion alongside news coverage about the April 19 death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray. In Baltimore, Gray locked eyes with police and ran; when he was apprehended, officers radioed for a vehicle for transport. By the time the police van pulled into the precinct station, Gray had three broken vertebrae and a fractured voice box. He died of spinal injuries a few days later. Demonstrations drew thousands of peaceful protesters. But in the aftermath of Gray’s funeral, Baltimore burned (a......
Continue Reading
Grief & Coping, Wisdom Warehouse |
April 30, 2015
From Standing By to Understanding: Black Lives Matter
I have been in and out of sleep all night. I wake automatically reaching for the remote to see if it has gotten any worse. I hold my blanket up so that only my eyes can see, pretending somehow that if I cover enough of myself, only parts of the news will infiltrate my soul. It’s too late, though. All of me is infected. All of us are infected. Baseball, the telltale sign of hope springing eternal, played in a silent Camden Yards – fans locked out for fear of violence. Curfews......
Continue Reading
