In the days following Sept. 11, 2001, reactions to the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and inside United Flight 93 ranged from grief to rage. As it became clear the culprits were a band of 19 fundamentalist Muslims working for a terrorist group that draped itself in a violent version of Islam, some Americans blamed all Muslims. Within days, several individuals were killed in the U.S. solely because of they were Muslim or perceived to be Muslim. One Sikh man died apparently for the suspect activity of wearing a turban; a Coptic Christian storekeeper died because he was Egyptian. ... Read More
Why Again Are We Asking About ‘Don’t Ask’?
August 10, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The Pentagon has invested considerable money and muscle surveying the troops this summer on their feelings about a potential — err, eventual — repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Last month, 400,000 representative service members were emailed a 103-question colossus. They were asked — according to a copy of what the Pentagon hoped would be a confidential questionnaire — about everything from unit morale to open-bay showers. Troops have until the end of this week to weigh in, although it's unclear exactly what anyone will learn from the data. From the beginning, the entire exercise ... Read More
The Revolution Will Be Mapped
December 28, 2009 • By • 14 Comments
To get to the headquarters of the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities, visitors have to navigate a lengthy dirt road past white picket fences, grazing horses and a variety of outbuildings in various stages of disrepair. Set in a one-room former Primitive Baptist church on a 43-acre spread in rural Orange County, N.C., the institute holds a collection of old, ergonomically incorrect wooden desks and metal filing cabinets. The only signs of modernity are computers atop the desks. Institute founders Allan Parnell and Ann Joyner, who live in a modest country house a stone's throw ... Read More
New Evidence Links Stress With Racism
June 25, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Chronic exposure to racial discrimination is associated with increased levels of anxiety and depression. That's one finding of a newly published study that adds to evidence that racism may be taking a toll on the health of African Americans — the subject of an in-depth cover story in the July/August issue of Miller-McCune magazine. A research team led by psychologist Anthony Ong of Cornell University collected two weeks' worth of daily diary data from 174 highly educated African Americans. (One-third had earned a doctorate degree, while two-thirds were enrolled in a doctoral program.) ... Read More
Mother’s Travails May Appear in Offspring’s DNA
February 18, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
For years, scientists have wondered why African Americans die of cardiovascular disease and diabetes complications at much higher rates than European Americans. Despite advances in health care and living conditions, African Americans succumb to heart disease at a rate 1.3 times higher than that of whites. But even after accounting for income differences and known risk factors, researchers find there is still an unexplained "racial" disparity. Some scientists have argued that the difference must be due to some underlying genetic difference between races, while others contend that the ... Read More
Make Real Racial Progress
December 22, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
There are few places where the United States is further away from achieving "post-raciality" than in our prisons and courtrooms. For instance, though blacks make up roughly 12 percent of the population (and roughly 13 percent of casual drug users) they made up 35 percent of all drug-related arrests in the United States, 55 percent of all drug-related convictions and 74 percent of all drug-related prison sentences as of 1995. Similarly disturbing statistics abound in the areas of racial profiling, death penalty convictions, state executions and nearly every other arena of criminal justice. It ... Read More
Dream Deferred: Fair Housing Act Turns 40
April 29, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Four decades after the passage of landmark federal legislation meant to eliminate race-based housing discrimination, the practice hasn’t died — it’s just evolved. While the blatant practices of years past, like restrictive covenants and insurance redlining, are far less common, housing discrimination today may take a more subtle form, such as linguistic profiling — identifying home seekers with a particular race or ethnic group according to their national or regional accents and then discriminating against them on that basis. The federal Department of Housing and Urban ... Read More
Equality For All (Most of the Time)
April 11, 2008 • By • 2 Comments
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal. Or do we? Law professor Edward McCaffery and economist Timor Kuran have been looking into that issue for the better part of a decade. Americans tend to proclaim their allegiance to the egalitarian ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence, but, in private, do we believe discrimination is appropriate in certain situations, against certain types of people? Getting an honest answer to that question isn't easy, given the social unacceptability of such views. But if there was ever a time recently when primal ... Read More
