Island of Light, Island of Shadow

“Here’s where the hurricane tore off my roof,” she pointed upward. We look at exposed wood beams under open sky. “It was horrible,” Ruth crossed her arms. “Doors shook. Water came into the house.” Her son tugged on her pant leg and she lifted him. “We hid in the bathroom.” Patting his head, she leaned …

The Road to the Sun

Published in The Indypendent September 19, 2017 Issue 29 U.S.–Mexican Border “People are dying,” the reporter’s voice cracked. At his feet, skeletal families raised thin arms. He pointed to the refugees around him, tens of thousands, panting with cracked lips, dying in the dust. Their eyes gazed north, to the soldiers and the great wall …

Can’t Beat Hate with Hate

“Now I’m afraid,” she said. “I wasn’t before. Too privileged to feel fear.” The protest at Trump Tower was loud, so we, leaned in to each other as if whispering secrets. Another war chant rose from the people at the barricades. “After seeing the car hit the marchers. Kill that girl,” her eyes fixed on …

Trapped in a Burning House: A Review of “I Am Not Your Negro”

"It's not a question of what happens to the Negro," Baldwin said in an early [episode] of "The Dick Cavett Show." Eyebrows arched, he looked at Cavett, "The real question is what's going to happen to this country." The film cuts to cops arresting Black Lives Matters activists. Peck edits Baldwin speaking in the past, alongside today's protests throughout I Am Not Your Negro. It drives the overall theme that our nation is again at a turning point. The US will rise or fall to the degree it heeds Baldwin's warning. The film commands: Look beyond the self-serving stereotypes of Black people or collapse from the weight of your hypocrisy.

White Anxiety: Rachel Dolezal, Dylann Roof and the Future of Race in America

The media overlap of the Aryan race warrior and the race traitor showed two people driven to opposite ends of whiteness by anxiety over their identity. The American Dream is collapsing just as we tip into a non-white majority, intensifying racist nostalgia for some, dissolving it for others. The Confederate flag-waving Roof and kinky-haired Dolezal tried to solve private crises with self-recreation. Unknowingly, they exposed the fractured state of whiteness.

Killing the Future: The Theft of Black Life

"Tell me of the night your son was killed by the police," I asked. She sat up and a deep sorrow moved in her eyes. "I had a habit of looking out the window to see my son," Danette Chavis said. "But that night, I said to myself, 'oh leave the boy alone' and took a nap. The phone woke me up and my daughter was rushing out of the door. I followed her and saw police tape, cops standing around a body. I yelled to see if it was him. But they wouldn't let me close. Later, I went to the morgue and identified my son."

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

On December 20, a Friday, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley eyed a parked NYPD cruiser where Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu sat; he pulled out a silver, semiautomatic gun and shot them dead. First and foremost this is a human loss that, like the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, has left families broken by pain. But quickly their murders were transformed into a political spectacle used by interlocking sectors of the ruling class to delegitimize the Black Lives Matters movement.

Fear Factor: Ebola and the Politics of Paranoia

Paranoia is the first symptom of a plague. When news of an infectious disease like Ebola, SARS or swine flu breaks, the risks quickly ignite underlying social fears that themselves become a danger. When the disease passes, carrying off however many or few to an early death, what remains is the bigotry. Today it is West African immigrants, yesterday it was gay men during the HIV panic and hundreds of years ago, during the Black Death of the 14th century, it was Jews.

Hands Up! Don’t Shoot! Death and Visibility in Black America

On August 9, about a month and a half ago, we heard news of police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, shooting an unarmed black teen, Michael Brown. Instantly, we people of color saw in him our sons, our brothers, our friends, uncles and fathers. The bullets that killed Brown ricochet throughout Black America and it felt like our spirits were bleeding drops of gasoline on the smoldering coals inside. And when the rage erupted, we filled the cities yelling, "No Justice, No Peace!"

Mikhail Kalashnikov, or, How to Honor the AK-47

Born a peasant, the Lt. General knew hunger and how bluish hands turned frozen soil, once he found a child’s skull, holed by a bullet in a field under a darkening sky. Kneeling beside it, he tried to hear the last word death utters as shadows cast by clouds passed over him, blacking the land like the boot prints of soldiers.