racism

Fielding off-putting questions and comments is a regular part of the mixed-race experience around the world. Yet this social phenomenon is especially common in places with a legacy of institutionalized and cultural racism. That includes the South.

As much as you want to believe people are all the same, we don’t have the luxury of being seen as the “default” in the same way white, straight, cis people often are. We don’t have the luxury of dismissing our painful history and systemic issues for the sake of everyone getting along, because we’re still in the middle of them.

It is a very difficult and dangerous job, and it does require officers to have the ability to make good split second decisions. None of that should mean that it’s OK to be incompetent, or that we should all rush to justify, ignore, or excuse incompetence, racism, ableism, and the inappropriate use of force.

Let me begin by saying a name: Charles Kinsey. Mr. Kinsey is the latest Black man to be shot by police while a bystander filmed the incident with a phone. Unlike so many others, Mr. Kinsey — thank the heavens — has lived to tell the tale.

Do you know what silence in response to blatant bigotry feels like? It feels really lonely. It feels like no one gives a shit.

In a story that's eliciting multiple side-eyes across the globe, Dutch immigrant children are demanding more “white classmates” in their schools.

This man was terrifyingly comfortable making an underhandedly racist statement to my face.

Please buy a dictionary and look up “censorship.” The definition is not “brief note concerning the subject matter of the following text.”