racism

  • Echoes of Jim Crow: The War On Drugs and Presidential Politics

    In her sensational work, The New Jim Crow, civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander uncovers the manifold parallels between the contemporary regime of mass incarceration and the era of Jim and Jane Crow.  We at WIT have reflected upon the racially unjust character… Continue reading

  • White Supremacy, U.S. Citizenship, and the Body of Christ

    This week marked the 2nd anniversary of the Haiti earthquake and the 51st anniversary of the CIA-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba–the Congo’s first democratically-elected leader following its independence from Belgium.  Also this week, the school district of Tuscon, Arizona decided… Continue reading

  • Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Last year on Martin Luther King Day, I reflected upon MLK’s radical critique of U.S. imperialism, an aspect of his legacy which is often forgotten. This year, I would like us to remember that racism continues to pervade nearly all aspects… Continue reading

  • Racial Inequality and Health

    Thanks to Meghan Clark of the blog Catholic Moral Theology (you can check out her latest post here) for introducing me to a very important documentary series, entitled Unnatural Causes, which chronicles the interconnection between racism/classism and health disparities. Thankfully for… Continue reading

  • Is Affirmative Action ‘Reverse Racism’?

    UC Berkeley’s College Republicans are putting on a “pay-by-race bake sale” in order to demonstrate what they consider to be the straightforwardly and obviously unjust nature of affirmative action, especially when used in the college admissions process. Their pricing menu… Continue reading

  • “Ethnic” Hymns in White Churches Take Two

    I want to follow-up on Sonja’s excellent and thought-provoking discussion of the singing of “ethnic” hymns in white churches by adding a few thoughts of my own. Before answering the question of whether predominantly white Christian communities should sing Negro… Continue reading

  • What the War on Drugs and the War on Terror Have In Common

    What does it say about us as a nation when even the killing of sleeping children is incapable of making us change our course? As Amy Davidson of the New Yorker reports, U.S. led NATO forces have killed four Afghan… Continue reading

  • Does God Bless the USA?

    United Statesians have always claimed to live in a nation blessed by God–white Americans interpreted the near complete destruction of certain Native American communities by smallpox as a sign of God’s blessing, believing that God had cleared the land of… Continue reading

  • The Cross and the Lynching Tree

    In this 2007 interview with PBS’ Bill Moyers, James Cone argues that the lynching of African-Americans throughout the 19th and 20th centuries was an almost literal crucifixion because “the cross was a first century lynching.”  Lynching, like the crucifixion, was a… Continue reading