Search results for: black wealth

The Average Black Family Would Need 228 Years to Build the Wealth of a White Family Today

Just as past public policies created the racial wealth gap, current policy widens it. By Joshua Holland AUGUST 8, 2016 WN: The poor are invariably blamed for their poverty. This article, applicable to other “democracies,” challenges this perverse blaming of victims. excerpts: [su_dropcap]I[/su_dropcap]f current economic trends continue, the average black household will need 228 years to […]

The Racial Wealth Gap Is Leading to An Almost-Nonexistent Middle Class

With people of color projected to make up the majority of Americans by 2043, a new study warns against policies that keep many black and Latino households out of the middle class by Julia Conley, staff writer, ips-dc.org excerpts: image above: 10 Practical Steps to Bridge the Racial Wealth Gap – Institute for Policy Studies […]

Cornel West: Black Lives Matter Is an Indictment of Neoliberal Power

By George Souvlis, openDemocracy | Interview photo above: Dr. Cornel West speaks at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on April 3, 2009. (Photo: James Stewart; Edited: LW / TO) an excerpt: George Souvlis: What is the legacy of the Obama administration? Cornel West: We are at a crossroads in American history. We must choose […]

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

Book Review of: Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2020, 356 pages WN: This is one of the few times I also posted a book review to this Blog. This is a highly disturbing–and informative–book. In an interview with Religion […]

Extensive Commentary On: What white Christian support for Trump reveals about systemic racism

By Robert P. Jones | November 12, 2020 WN: Beyond tragic the pullquote to the right, this means four-fifths of American white evangelical Christians subscribe to “heresy” (an opinion, doctrine, or practice contrary to the truth—Merriam-Webster). And this not limited to America! And many religious white non-evangelicals (Catholics, mainline Protestants, other faith members, etc.) also are […]

The Great Sumas Lake Heist: A Guilty Little Secret in Plain Sight

Sumas Lake until a century ago covered about 10% of the Fraser Valley’s fertile farmland. Then it was ‘disappeared.’ Whatever happened? And what to do about it? NOTE: There are several footnotes that add related material to the article, that for some may be of interest. NOTE 2:It was exactly a year ago that the […]

All the Lawyers Who Stood Between Ahmaud Arbery and Justice

Pilar Melendez November 24, 2021  photo above: groyourwealth.com WN: An enormous tragedy . . . A muted victory . . . A deepseated racism . . . See too: Ken Sehested, Accountability for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, November 24, 2021. We read: Then my mind traversed to the penal system’s dysfunction. Travis McMichael, his […]

Thoughts on: “White People Explain Racism to Me”

By Elie Mystal Twitter November 15, 2021 photo above: (Fizkes / Shutterstock) WN: We Whites, lacking the lifelong experiences described in the article highlighted below, just don’t begin to get it. Anymore than a victim of serious and violent crime knows no one but others similarly harmed really get it. The next best, which is […]

Reflections on “Drone Strikes and Torture Will Cause Big Blowback”

November 5, 2021 by Brian Cloughley photo above: AK Rockefeller – CC BY 2.0 WN: It is ominous to read at the end of the highlighted article: Although the long-term consequences are measureless, there is no doubt that “explosive events” will blow back for a long time to come. The military-industrial complex has been manufacturing […]

Interaction With “The CIA: 70 Years of Organized Crime”

September 22, 2017 by Douglas Valentine – Lars Schall photo above by Tom Thai | CC BY 2.0 WN: Welcome to America the Beautiful. As kids, my brothers and I loved the highlighted song, as sung by George Beverly Shea–who performed in front of more people than any other singer in history. We played it […]

Legacy of Shame:

October 19, 2021 by Kenn Orphan photo above: Photograph Source: Reagan White House Photographs – Public Domain WN: Saint Augustine recounts this story of Empire: The king asked the fellow, “What is your idea, in infesting the sea?” And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, “the same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because […]

How America Fractured Into Four Parts

By George Packer July/August 2021 Issue The Atlantic image above: Lucy Jones WN: Wow! The essay is stunning as it is brilliant. At least read my excerpts below. Better though, purchase the book it is excerpted/adapted from: Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. It challenges understanding about America’s past and present place in […]

9/11 was a test:

Essay by Carlos Lozada Illustration above: by Patrik Svensson Sept. 3, 2021 WN: Below are excerpts from an outstanding essay by a Pulitzer Prizer winner for criticism in 2019. But the last lines, though intended to be hopeful, ring perversely hollow–especially given what one can read on this website about the horrors of American Expansionism/Exceptionalism/Empire: […]

This Is Why America Needs Catholicism

By Matthew Walther Mr. Walther is the editor of The Lamp, a Catholic literary journal, and a contributing editor at The American Conservative. image above: Vartika Sharma WN: Cogently presented and inspiring. Amen! excerpts: When I began reading through the archives of Triumph several years ago, I found these arguments striking. This was not because […]

The Threat of an Unvaccinated South

By Adam Harris July 22, 2021 photo above: kyma.com WN: Sadly, idiot politicians like the one mentioned in the second last paragraph (see if you can guess who!) are creating enormous smoke screens of outright lies, and thereby threaten potentially millions. For, As [Shweta Bansal, an associate professor and an infectious-disease expert at Georgetown University] […]

Gospel as Counter-Narrative to Empire

SEARCH and ARCHIVES options are at the bottom of all website pages. The website is dedicated to: The Gospel as Counter-Narrative to Empire.     More on Empire below. PLEASE NOTE: the Sitemap. There is also a list of all Book Reviews separately, and alongside each post. You may search the Blog too. Please consider […]

Tucker Carlson’s Manufactured America

By Megan Garber July 12, 2021 WN: Sick . . . Please also see an earlier piece by  Timothy Karr, April 27, 2021: Tucker Carlson’s Racism: Paid for by You. We read: Racism pays in America—especially if you’re the primetime host of a cable channel that panders to the country’s sizable population of white nationalists. […]

An American Kingdom

By Stephanie McCrummen July 11, 2021 photo above: Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth. (Dylan Hollingsworth for The Washington Post) WN: Oh dear! Oh dear! As my good Jesuit-trained friend Gerry Ayotte says, drawing on Tradition back to the Fathers and Mothers of the Church, God speaks loudest in the silence. In the fully choreographed […]

Compliance Will Not Save Me

April 19, 2021 Ibram X. Kendi, Contributing writer at The Atlantic photo above: Charmaine Edwards (left) speaks to supporters during a protest outside a courthouse in Dallas in 2017. Her stepson, Jordan Edwards, was a 15-year-old in Balch Springs, Texas, when he was shot and killed by police. LM Otero/AP WN: According to The Washington […]

Cornel West: The Whiteness of Harvard and Wall Street Is “Jim Crow, New Style”

By George Yancy, Truthout Published March 5, 2021 photo above: yankeewikis.com WN: I first became involved with men in prison in 1974, at a time the first prison I visited (Oakalla Prison, Burnaby BC, Canada) still operated under a military regimen with many ex-military hired as guards; with an ex-air force serviceman as chaplain who […]

After Attempted Coup, We Must Fight White Supremacy and Sow Revolutionary Love

After Attempted Coup, We Must Fight White Supremacy and Sow Revolutionary Love By adrienne maree brown, Truthout January 10, 2021 Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels WN: These are beautiful words, and a call to “revolutionary love” not only for fellow Blacks, but for all–Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beloved Community”. All I can add: Amen!!! […]

Jesus Was a Victim of Empire. Acknowledging This Should Transform Christianity.

Jesus Was a Victim of Empire. Acknowledging This Should Transform Christianity. By Christine Mungai, Truthout Part of the Series: Religion’s Role in the Struggle for Justice December 16, 2020 photo above: howafrica.com WN: This is the central theme of this website! A significant portion of what follows is from the previous highlighted part. There is […]

The Unraveling of America

by Wade Davis August 6, 2020 Wade Davis holds the Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. His award-winning books include “Into the Silence” and “The Wayfinders.” His new book, “Magdalena: River of Dreams,” is published by Knopf. WN: This is an exceptional article! There is however a […]

Life Under the Bomb Means a Life of Resistance

Published on Thursday, August 06, 2020 by Common Dreams by Rev. John Dear photo above: “Our message over the years has been simple and urgent: Nuclear weapons have totally failed us. They don’t make us safer; they don’t provide jobs; they don’t make us more secure—these are age-old lies. Instead they bankrupt us, economically and […]

The Case for Reparations

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole. Story by Ta-Nehisi Coates June 2014 Issue WN: NOTE: This piece appeared in The Atlantic  6 years ago. It […]

An Open Letter To Joe Biden

Dear Mr. Biden. If I might be so bold, I wonder about connecting some dots at this incredible kairos moment of U.S. and world history. I was moved by your empathetic videoed message to the Floyd family during the funeral service in Houston. You have deeply suffered multiple losses as this article sensitively points out: […]

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, High Crimes and Misdemeanors of the Fading American Century

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, High Crimes and Misdemeanors of the Fading American Century The Real Cover-Up: Putting Donald Trump’s Impeachment in Context Posted by Andrew Bacevich at 7:28am, October 8, 2019. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch. WN: Mr. Bacevich I find always on target and persuasive. excerpts: As this process unspools, what politicians like to call […]

Beyond Impeachment: Remove This Regime from Below

October 1, 2019 by Paul Street photo above: White House – Public Domain WN: This is a powerful broadside against the Ultimate Bad Guy on the Planet: the Evil Empire of the United States of America! The vehemence is found not only in the colourful language, but even in the typos . . . Mr. […]

Ronald Wright: Can We Still Dodge the Progress Trap?

Author of 2004’s ‘A Short History of Progress’ issues a progress report. Ronald Wright 20 Sep 2019 | TheTyee.ca Ronald Wright’s 10 books include Time Among the Maya, Stolen Continents, and the award-winning dystopia A Scientific Romance. His Massey Lectures inspired Martin Scorsese’s 2011 documentary Surviving Progress. See also “‘Which Will Win, Wisdom or Greed?’“. For the […]

AOC’s ‘Squad’ Represents Me As An American Jew – More Than Any Republican

July 16, 2019 by Shoshana Hershkowitz photo above: Getty Images WN: White American “Christian” Evangelicals, meet real (Judeo-)Christian values! Amen! excerpts: For me as an American Jew, seeing a diverse group of young women who are focused on progressive policies inspires me. As a Jewish woman, social and economic justice are inextricably connected with “Tikkun […]

How Can We Celebrate “Freedom” While Kids Are in Concentration Camps?

How Can We Celebrate “Freedom” While Kids Are in Concentration Camps? By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout Published July 4, 2019 photo above: Pro tip, flag-waver: Your July Fourth “freedom” narrative is a bald-faced lie.Lauren Walker / Truthout WN: And damned if anyone out there for the most part cares!… I have a close relative who […]

A Centuries-Old Idea Could Revolutionize Climate Policy

[irp]A Centuries-Old Idea Could Revolutionize Climate Policy The Green New Deal’s mastermind is a precocious New Yorker with big ambitions. Sound familiar? Robinson Meyer Feb 19, 2019 illustration above: John Trumbull / Caitlin Ochs / Eric Vidall / Reuters / Thanh Do / The Atlantic WN: The Deal continues to sound hopeful! However, as we […]

The case for capping all prison sentences at 20 years

The case for capping all prison sentences at 20 years America’s prison sentences are far too long. It’s time to do something about it. By German Lopez; @germanrlopez; german.lopez@vox.com Feb 12, 2019, 7:30am EST image above: Christina Animashaun/Vox WN: The article highlighted is eminently reasonable, the evidence-based research solid, the way forward worldwide hopeful in […]

Tucker Carlson has sparked the most interesting debate in conservative politics

Tucker Carlson has sparked the most interesting debate in conservative politics “All I’m saying is don’t act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God.” By Jane Coastonjane.coaston@vox.com Jan 10, 2019, 5:00am EST   photo above: Tucker Carlson, host of Tucker Carlson Tonight, in his Fox News Channel studio in New York on […]

Millennial Evangelicals Diverge from Their Parents’ Beliefs

The separation of families at the border, climate change, and various progressive causes have galvanized young Christians. By Eliza Griswold August 27, 2018 WN: I have a white Canadian Evangelical friend who expresses being fed up with white Evangelical-bashing — in particular towards white Evangelicals south of the border1. I argue on the contrary that […]

The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism

The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean August 24, 2018 Slavery and the Origins of Capitalism by Louis Proyect WN: I wrote the following in introduction to a book similar in its findings about 19th-century American capitalism to 17th-century colonial capitalism, entitled The Half  Has Never […]

Pope revises catechism to say death penalty is ‘inadmissible’

Commits the church to working toward its abolition worldwide1 Aug 2, 2018 by Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service Theology   photo above: Pope Francis gestures before speaking about the death penalty at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, at the Vatican in this Oct. 11, 2017, file photo. […]

The Last Real Evangelical: Evangelist Billy Graham

Feb 23, 2018 photo above: Evangelist Billy Graham speaks in Dallas at the 1974 Southern Baptist Convention. (AP) by Mel White / MelWhite.org1 WN: On the day of Billy Graham’s death (February 21, 2018), I posted a critical commentary on Graham. Today I post a positive reflection by Mel White, who counted Graham as a […]

The Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, and American Exceptionalism

Posted on July 21, 2015 by christian hegemony Challenging Christian Hegemony Practical tools for recognizing and resisting Christian dominance WN: Every time I read an essay so well presented as that highlighted below (and so beyond tragic!), as a committed follower of Jesus, I know that I don’t have to wear the blame, but I […]

Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race

For years, racism has been defined by the violence of far-right extremists, but a more insidious kind of prejudice can be found where many least expect it – at the heart of respectable society Listen to the audio version of this long read Tuesday 30 May 2017 05.30 BST (Last modified on Wednesday 31 May 2017 […]

Don’t Just Protect Affirmative Action From Trump—Demand More

Racism’s economic effects are pernicious.​ August 24, 2017 By Bryce Covert WN: Similar realities obtain of course in Canada. Please see for instance a trilogy edited by Steve Heinrichs of Mennonite Church Canada. Affirmative action – railed against by a close family member – is a drop in the bucket for what is needed. As the […]

We Are the 99 Percent—Except for the Top 20 Percent of Us

 In a new book Dream Hoarders, Richard V. Reeves argues that members of the upper middle class, not just the ultra-wealthy, are making our society profoundly unequal. By Bryce Covert JULY 3, 2017 WN: What the author calls for in the article highlighted below is what biblical Jubilee Justice repeatedly heralds: that for everyone “enough should be […]

Worried About Those Global Cyber Attacks? They Were Started by Washington

Worried About Those Global Cyber Attacks? They Were Started by Washington The notorious US spy agencies invented this monster, first with the Stuxnet virus against Iran—but then they lost control over it. By William Greider JUNE 30, 2017 WN: Of course, the United States has never been the “peacekeeper that upholds the world’s higher values”, as […]

Obama: a Hollow Man Filled With Ruling Class Ideas

Obama: a Hollow Man Filled With Ruling Class Ideas JUNE 2, 2017 by PAUL STREET WN: The review below of the recent massive biography of Barack Obama is scathing with reference to Obama’s supreme narcissism (matching Trump’s one could argue, though not in constant bombast). Paul Street powerfully demonstrates how Obama, in a long line […]

Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

September 26, 2014 by CHARLES R. LARSON WN: There is someone of my acquaintance who rails against the US Black community for its violence of Black on Black, while almost completely downplaying police violence against Blacks. He also rails against them for their poverty: they just are not enterprising, and therefore deserve their state, end […]

Restorative Justice

  NOTE: Some of what follows is excerpted from Chapter One of Justice That Transforms: Volume 1 WN: From a Canadian vantage point, Dr. Herman Bianchi, a Dutch criminologist, is one of the three “grandfathers” (if one must use that term) chronologically of Restorative Justice, together with Mark Yantzi and Dave Worth, the first and longstanding […]