Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
There has been a sudden spike recently in expressions of racism in French public life—one that has provoked a national debate and may lead to legal action this week. It began last month, when a candidate for the right-wing National Front likened Christiane Taubira, the Justice Minister, who is black, to a monkey, pairing…
Defending free speech and free press rights, which typically means defending the right to disseminate the very ideas society finds most repellent, has been one of my principal passions for the last 20 years: previously as a lawyer and now as a journalist. So I consider it positive when large numbers of people loudly invoke this principle, as has been…
After only a couple of months in the adult industry, 21-year-old Lebanese-American Mia Khalifa took the crown for most-searched-for star on PornHub from the legendary Lisa Ann of “Nailin’ Paylin” fame. It was a surprise win for the newcomer, who took to Instagram to humbly celebrate with a blushing emoji and caption reading, “nothing but…
The shattering events of 2014, beginning with Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, in August, did more than touch off a national debate about police behavior, criminal justice and widening inequality in America. They also gave a new birth of passion and energy to a civil rights movement that had almost faded into history, and…
Defenders of the police department too often ignore credible evidence that its treatment of minorities leaves much room for improvement. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters A dozen years ago, City Journal, the quarterly magazine of The Manhattan Institute, published “The Black Cops You Never Hear About” by Heather Mac Donald, one of the sharpest, most eloquent, and zealous…
Is ‘authenticity’ another word for exclusion? The tech and design industries, like Portlandia, are worryingly minority-f… Brooklyn Beta vs. Afro-Futurism — Human Parts — Medium.
An explosion outside an NAACP office building in Colorado on Tuesday morning that rattled neighbors was caused deliberately, officials say. An improvised explosive device was detonated against the exterior wall of the NAACP building on South El Paso Street in Colorado Springs around 10:45 a.m. Mountain time. No one was injured, said Amy Sanders, a…
Two stories dominating my social-media feeds of late have begun to run together in my mind: the nationwide protests against police brutality toward Black citizens, and the unfolding story of an alleged rape at University of Virginia, which may or may not have happened as reported in a recent Rolling Stone article. Both reveal our…
The fourth time a Poughkeepsie police officer told me that my Vassar College Faculty ID could make everything OK was three years ago. I was driving down Wilbur Avenue. When the white police officer, whose head was way too small for his neck, asked if my truck was stolen, I laughed, said no, and shamefully…
In one of the most famous passages of the New Testament, the apostle Paul writes to the Christians of Corinth, employing a complicated series of metaphors on the theme of transformation: from childhood to adulthood, from ignorance to knowledge, from sinfulness to a state of grace. “When I was a child, I spake as a…