Category: Race / Racism


  • B’Elanna

    Years ago, I wrote about half-blood characters being role models. I missed one. B-Elanna Torres was half Klingon and half human. I was reminded about the omission by watching Voyager again. In the episode, an alien divided her into two individuals. As stereotypes of her races, she epitomized the war I sometimes feel about myself…

  • Because representation matters, I am looking forward to this spin-off of Black-ish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcnQjti7hlc

  • Like the Boondock’s N-word moment, but you know, hopefully productive. The teachable moment is an expression of how what someone said can be a mine field they are unaware of. I should have gotten my PhD, because “Doctor Freelove” has a nice ring to it. But more than that, I love explaining things. New server…

  • Saw a story that got me wondering what the reaction would be under the current president if the test had come back positive. An unidentified patient who was kept in isolation at a Philadelphia hospital while being tested for Ebola has been confirmed as not infected with the deadly virus. Thoughts and prayers? That seems…

  • Read an article about pay disparities by gender in the system by which I am employed which mentioned research that students get along best with faculty members who look like them. It made me laugh out loud. I cannot recall a teacher who looked like me: male, tall, and half-white / half-black. Or at least…

  •   After going toe-to-toe with commenters on Youtube, he created a fake profile using John Carter and pretended to be one. It gave him insights into how the other side thinks. If you cannot see the above, then try A black man goes undercover in the alt-right.

  • We built monuments to display our pride of winning or mourn our loss. They represent what we considered the great things about our society in the past as lessons for the present and future. In that light, defacing a historical marker such as both of Emmett Till’s shows the opposition that honoring the person is…

  • Supreme Court decisions often have clear have day-to-day impact in one’s life. This one, though, has all the impact in the world to me. It allowed my very black father and very white mother to marry. Without, I could have still existed, but it would have been much more challenging for them to date and…

  • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is a couple hundred pounds of chains bearing down on the reader. A father who writes about the race in America in the time just before #BlackLivesMatter attempts to put into words what it means. This stands out as…