On Jan. 2, 2023, Damar Hamlin, a Buffalo Bills defensive back, made a tackle, got up, then collapsed from a cardiac arrest. Hamlin was rushed to the hospital, and the Monday Night Football game was suspended. A recent article in Scientific America by Duke University professor Tracie Canada was subtitled…

Did Thomas Jefferson High School make a one-time error? In 1958, sociologist Michael Dunlop Young wrote a dystopian book called The Rise of Meritocracy. Young depicted a future where merit, defined as intellectual talent and achievement, will be the central organizing principle of society. …

Presidential speech writer Michael Gerson coined the phrase: the soft bigotry of low expectations. Gerson was referring to white progressives who expect less from black youth because they suffer from the historical effects of racism and poverty. Gerson’s concept was on full display during the early stages of the Black…

From 2015 to 2022 — In 2014, Michael Brown, a black teenager, was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. This incident led to harsh criticism of police officer training and tactics. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, a group with chapters in many cities that works to stop police brutality, put out…

It’s difficult to have an honest conversation about racial disparities. Especially when it’s suggested there are aspects of “black culture” that contribute to racial disparities more than systemic factors. Too many black thinkers dismiss the “cultural argument.” For these thinkers, the “cultural argument” blames black victims for outcomes that are…

Part Two — President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 Howard University commencement address is one of the most celebrated speeches of the sixties after Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech delivered at the March on Washington in 1963. During MLK’s famous speech, he compared America’s founding documents to a “promissory note” that guaranteed all Americans…

Part one — During the Civil War, the big question was: What will white society do with the black slaves once they were freed? White Americans feared ex-slaves would not be able to take care of themselves and wondered how they were going to manage “the Negro problem.” Former slave and abolitionist Frederick…

Recently, a black columnist warned her readers that the Supreme Court was going to strike down affirmative action like it did Roe v. Wade. Students for Fair Admissions, a group that represents 20,000 students, parents, and others, challenged Harvard University’s affirmative action policies for violating the equal protection clause, eroding…

When the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, abortion wasn’t banned nationwide. The reversal lets each state decide the legality of the procedure without federal intrusion. Pro-choice advocates complained that the Supreme Court’s decision banned federal protection for women from male-dominated state legislators that would outlaw abortion, with no exceptions. …