Tag Archives: Oroonoko

Caution against Purity Policing

Monday One of my conservative readers wrote me recently asking me how I felt about leftist insistence that Virginia governor Ralph Northam resign for having posted a racist picture in his medical school yearbook years ago. After all, hasn’t Northam lived a fairly exemplary life since then? The reader also sent me a Quillette article […]

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Lit for Handling a College’s Race Problems

After a series of arson fires and racist incidents, I turned to works in each of my courses to address the situation. In Intro to Lit, Lucille Clifton’s poetry; in Early British Literature survey, Aphra Behn’s “Oroonoko”; in British Fantasy, “Perdido Street Station.”

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The Minefield of Talking about Race

More thoughts on how to address difficult questions of race, again with the help of Aphra Behn.

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Race Disagreements amongst Friends

The intricacies of the debate between Chait and Coates on the culture of poverty can be sorted out by applying Aphra Behn’s “Oroonoko.”

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Behn & Friendships across Race Lines

Recalling an interracial friendship from my days in my newly integrated high school, I turn to Aprha Behn’s “Oroonoko” to understand why such friendships are so difficult, even for the best intentioned people.

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How Racism Sullies Everything

If race has been the subject of these past two weeks of posting it is because, as a Sherrilyn Ifil article notes in the on-line publication Root, we are having a hard time talking about race this summer, what with the furor over the Sonia Sotomayor nomination and the Henry Louis Gates affair.  I haven’t […]

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