racism 
Fri Jun 20, 2008 at 16:11:17 PM EDT
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( - promoted by Hannah Farber)
In the wake of last week’s flooding of the Iowa River, which has displaced 38,000 people and led to the deaths of 24, the usual comparisons are already inundating the airwaves. News reporters have been comparing the flood to Iowa’s 1993 flood, which was called the kind of deluge that only happens every 500 years. And then others have done the unthinkable – harkening back to Hurricane Katrina. Even R. David Paulison, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called the Iowa floods the biggest disaster that FEMA has dealt with since Hurricane Katrina.
There is no doubt in my mind that what occurred in Iowa this past week is devastating to all of Iowa’s inhabitants. Yet at the same time, these comparisons are dangerous. Hurricane Katrina was not just a natural disaster. It was a social disaster of biblical proportions. Hurricane Katrina, more than any other event in recent history, showed in stark relief how deep the racial gap in our country still is – almost fifty years after the Civil Rights movement. The sight of thousands of people – mostly black people -- made homeless, deserted by the authorities – local, regional, and national – was a sight that will never be erased from our national conscience, and never should be erased. Perhaps that is why we compare, because we cannot forget. But comparing Katrina to Iowa’s flooding diminishes the very nature of Hurricane Katrina, a national disaster, which shows how much work we have left to do.
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Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 15:49:03 PM EDT
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With the primary election coming up in Pennsyvania, everyone is trying to find out what is going on in the mind of the state's working class white voters. The New York Times Magazine added their two cents this past weekend, sending a reporter from the very white, very working class town of Levittown, PA back home to write about his home town. As it happened, the reporter, Michael Sokolove, is Jewish. In the article, he describes his and his family's experience living in Levittown:
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Mon Apr 07, 2008 at 17:46:12 PM EDT
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Good conversation today on Racialicious about whether we ought to give older people a pass when they say things that are out-and-out offensive. Pondering an uncomfortable experience with an older man in a grocery store, Aaminah Hernandez writes: He’s old enough to have learned tact, to have figured out that we don’t have to speak everything that pops into our heads. That in polite society we sometimes curb our tongue. I’m pretty reasonably sure that his mother taught him these lessons, because they were common lessons in his generation. In fact, contrary to what it may seem, they’re still pretty common lessons that parents teach their kids.
Encountering people like this in public is one thing, but it becomes even trickier when the person who missed the memo is literally or figuratively in one's own family - an issue that's certainly been in the news of late. Most of the responders to the above post seem to think that older people are a lost cause. But I'm actually drawn to the opposite idea - that nobody should ever get a free pass because they're old. Older people are still citizens - often, they're still politically active or otherwise connected members of their communities. And if they're still part of the conversation, we shouldn't pretend to be deaf when we hear them say things that are no longer acceptable. I never had the courage to confront the oldest and most offensive of my beloved forebears, but now I kind of wonder what would have happened if I had.
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Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 15:38:38 PM EDT
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On April 4, 1968, I was a senior in college, home for Spring break in South Florida. There I was born, raised, attended segregated public schools, and worked though our synagogue on integration and voter registration in the African-American Liberty City ghetto of Miami. Our family was preparing for a Passover Seder that would link our observance with the battles we had fought in our community on behalf of equal justice for all. Even before Arthur Waskow published the first Freedom Seder; the following year, Martin Luther King was part of our family Passover tradition and the cause of civil rights was the Exodus struggle of our time. His assassination saddened and angered us, but his life and his words continued to motivate us to persevere, even if we ourselves might never reach the Promised Land.
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Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 15:48:39 PM EDT
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Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., March 28, 1968, sermon preached at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C.
Dr. King was not just a great individual leader. He was a moral force for organizing and for the struggle for justice. Sometimes he becomes "sanitized" in the re-telling of his impact. In his memory, we are encouraged to do good deeds and volunteer and repeat his inspiring words. All of these are beneficial. But Dr. King was (and is) much more.
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Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 11:36:21 AM EDT
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On April 4, 1968, I was visiting Washington, D.C. with my parents. I was a senior in college with a job awaiting me in Washington following graduation, and my parents were helping me during my spring vacation to look for an apartment to rent.
I got a telephone call in my hotel room from a college friend who was now a private in the Army, stationed at a military base in the southwest section of the District. “Turn on the television!” he said urgently. “Martin Luther King has been killed and Washington is burning!” In my parents’ hotel room, we watched television and, from the window, saw the smoke rising over the city. It seemed unbelievable that my college career was to be bracketed by two brutal tragedies, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and now of Dr. King. With protests against the war in Vietnam on the rise, the draft ready to snatch my male friends, President Johnson seeming ever more out of touch, and the cities burning, it truly felt that the country had lost its way.
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