If I understand the evolving racial rhetoric of our times, it goes something like this: You are either a racist or an anti-racist. There is no position of neutrality. Using this device permits adherents to dispense with nuance and divide the world in good and evil at the snap of a finger.
As a white man, I am told, I enjoy a privileged position in society, the beneficiary of systemic racism. This structural advantage colors, no pun intended, everything I do. If I fail to acknowledge my privilege, I am being willfully blind and therefore am “complicit” in...
July 7, 2020
I’m thinking we’re on the cusp of what I will call our “Concord Moment.” That’s when a shot fired in anger will be heard coast to coast, if not around the world, as were the shots fired in Concord, Massachusetts in 1775. The 1775 shots galvanized the seething frustration in the colonies, and drew a line that led to independence from Great Britain. Our shots may mark a similar divide.
I don’t know whether the shot will come from a homeowner defending his or her property, a motorist harassed while going about their daily rounds, or a...
July 3, 2020
"If this country doesn't give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking ... figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It's a matter of interpretation.”
That’s Hawk Newsome talking on Fox News the other night. He is described as a president of the Greater New York Black Lives Matter. He glared into the camera in a black – of course – t-shirt, sporting a white cap emblazoned with the words Soul Not For Sale. He draws a too-cute and legally unnecessary distinction between the literal...
June 27, 2020
We finally learned what all the fuss has been about for the past month. It’s not about police reform. It’s not about systemic racism. It’s about race-based transfer payments, or reparations. At least it is according to the ideologues calling the shots at The New York Times.
What are reparations?
How about a cash payment of $350 thousand dollar to every African-American. That’s a good start, according to Robert Johnson, founder of the Black Entertainment Network. This money is necessary to help promote equality between white and...
June 25, 2020
May 28, 2020
Oh, to be a digital overlord, a master of the social media universe, occupying an office at Twitter, or Facebook, or Google. The money...
May 29, 2020
Machine learning transforms computers from tools performing rote operations to devices sharing attributes we associate with human...
June 5, 2020
It will take work to assure that Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Keung and Thomas Lane receive fair trials. The four Minneapolis police...
November 13, 2019
UNITED STATED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT
CAMERON L. ATKINSON, Plaintiff, :
v.
FACEBOOK, INC., : MARK...
May 18, 2020
Just in case you’ve not had enough of all things pandemic-related, I recommend Lawrence Wright’s, “The End of...
June 23, 2020
I had planned to have this read for me on Saturday at the rally to preserve the Columbus statue on Wooster Square in New Haven. But it turns out New...