Tag Archives: race relations

Harris’s Literary Favs Reveal a Vibrant Soul

Kamala Harris’s favorite lit reveals a woman engaging in foundational exploration, especially regarding race and gender.

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Black vs. White Responses to “Raisin”

“Raisin in the Sun” was a hit with both white and black audiences when it appeared in 1959 but for very different reasons.

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Butler & Grappling with White Privilege

The figure of the white husband in Octavia Butler’s “Kindred” captures many of the blind spots of white privilege. Examining him led me to examine how I myself have benefitted from America’s slave past.

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Why Baltimore Blacks Are Down and Out

Black poverty in Baltimore has racial causes that are invisible to most people. Dickens would understand.

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Defeating the White Whale of Race Hatred

With a little imagination, “Moby Dick” can be dramatized as a story about race relations.

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Trapped in Race Narratives

  It’s not everyday that an affair involving an English professor is the hottest topic in the national news.  In this case, the Professor Henry Louis Gates/Officer James Crowley incident, where America’s leading black intellectual was mistaken for an intruder and arrested in his own home, trumped even the health care debate.   The fact that […]

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Empowering Conversations about Race

As I look back over this past week of entries, what conclusions can I draw? First, that literature can serve the cause of race relations in this country. The friendship between Huck and Jim spurred my dreams of black-white friendship when I was a child being raised in segregated schools in the south, and it […]

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