White privilege, as you may know, is a sociological concept describing the advantages enjoyed by white persons beyond what is commonly experienced by the non-white people in those same social spaces (nation, community, workplace, etc.). It differs from racism or prejudice by the fact that a person benefiting from white privilege need not hold racist […]

One presidential candidate is lighting up the New York Times Opinion page with impassioned attacks and defenses. No, it’s not Barack Obama, Ron Paul, Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Jon Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Dennis Kucinich, or Mitt Romney. It’s Ronald Reagan. The crucial question of the day, if you’re reading the New York Times Opinion pages […]

When you look around at the world, it’s easy to be angry. There are socio-political problems all over: Darfur, Myanmar, Iraq, China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Somalia… the list could go on and on. There are also the scourges of poverty and hunger that never seem to leave us. And the more mundane but pervasive problems […]

The Race Beat: the Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff tells the story of the role and influence of the media in covering the black civil rights from its beginnings to 1965. Essentially, as their subtitle suggests, the authors make a convincing argument that […]

Today the Roberts Court struck down the ability of school districts to use voluntary race-based busing policies to try to create greater diversity in their school (story here, opinion here [PDF]). That news reminded me of this encounter: It was Martin Luther King Day. I was in downtown Denver that morning. Riding the shuttle to […]