My casual faith in America is the part of me -- thoroughly grounded in white privilege -- that has believed without overmuch reflection that our country values equality of all races at its core; that our laws and policing are color blind in their practice; that the efforts of politicians, business leaders and clergy are sincerely geared towards serving all the people; and that America is steadily progressing on the path towards a 'more perfect union,' to quote our president. My 'faith' in America was based on things hoped for but as yet unseen (to borrow from Hebrews 11:1). But more importantly, it was based on things hoped for, but not worked for -- at least not very hard.
The lawyer's work and that of the detective's long hours is how many mysteries have been solved -- or not. And then DNA entered criminology to add to the writer's magical box of solutions. Here is an example in my own case.
Mothers across the country are taking to the streets to demand accountability and change in American policing that criminalizes African Americans regardless of actual crimes committed. The deplorable failure of a grand jury to indict Darren Wilson for killing unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown is just the latest evidence that the system is beyond broken.
The surest way to avoid ever having your most private photos shared publicly is to not take them in the first place. This is the philosophy behind the most common advice given to teens, among whom the rates of "sexting" continue to rise. Trust no one. Share nothing. Even better: Take nothing. It's ridiculous logic.
The first year, I didn't cook Thanksgiving dinner or shop for Christmas presents. I had other children, sure. But I didn't have Emma, and that defined me
It's past time to fix it, and the church must stand alongside a new generation of young leaders and help the nation find the way forward.
The easiest way to shorthand Margaret and Walter Keane's story is to call it "stranger than fiction." Perhaps we fought for ten years to make a film about them, because this was truly one of the most insane real-life tales we'd ever encountered.
There is overt violence, and there is structural violence. The video of Eric Garner's death shows us an act of overt violence. The larger events which led to his death were acts of structural violence.
The bottom line is that anti-vaccine sentiment and associated conspiracy theories are a luxury accessible only to societies largely spared the historical toll of dreadful, vaccine-preventable diseases. If our children were still prone to polio, any anti-vaccine evangelists would be trampled by the mob rushing to the immunization clinic
Anderson is the embodiment of hate and makes the late Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church look like Ghandi.
The program is a winner. Congress should support the loan program or, even better, create a long-term, self-sustaining, energy infrastructure bank modeled on the very program some once mistakenly attacked.
The role of the prosecutor in America is a powerful one perhaps unequaled in both power and envy. They execute their duties with almost unbridled discretion and their decisions to charge or not are exercised with virtually no immediate accountability save the ballot box.
Mastering the standing posture is the first step in being able to incorporate meditation into our daily lives. Like everything worthwhile in life, it requires practice, but once we get used to it, we can do it almost anywhere -- standing on line, at the crosswalk, and in elevators.
I've been working on this piece for over a year and it's gone through many incarnations. Throughout the process, I've learned that silence doesn't make things better, but knowing that silence isn't the answer wasn't enough to get me to speak out. Rather, it was you.
We are all left wondering what will have to happen before there is accountability and an honest recognition of the enormous problem we face as a country, as the bitter taste of despair fills our mouths.
If you're going to be an alternative to Hillary, you have to be an alternative to Hillary all the way around, not just on corporate power and the economy.
I'm not the type of person who likes to keep secrets. I grew up in a house where secrets floated in the air at all times, and I never liked to keep track of who knew what. But when I realized at the age of sixteen that I was a lesbian, I suddenly had my own secret to keep track of.
How much have you considered the purpose of your dreams, and the influence they might have over your waking life? Two recent studies explore dreaming from different angles, in search of deeper understanding of the purpose of this fascinating -- and relatively little understood -- aspect of our lives.
We are both sobered and saddened by this steady drumbeat of horrific news about our colleagues trying to do their jobs. We realize that the rules of field reporting, particularly in places such as Iraq and Syria, have radically changed.
The latest greatest swindlers in the cybercrime racket know you're onto their digital three-card monte, and they've made a few adjustments, putting yet another wrinkle in the corporate-hacking game by targeting top-level employees for major profits.
I have come to the understanding that in many ways, looking up has been a convenient distraction from looking around. It allows me to opt out of facing the darkness here on Earth.
It's curious that four crucial aspects of war, American-style, were missing from the blitz of Hagel reportage. Here's a rundown.
I was in Bhopal, India 10 years after the 1984 disaster in which a now infamous Union Carbide pesticide plant released 27 tons of a toxic chemical into a crowded sleeping city, killing 8,000 people immediately and over 20,000 to date.
The reflexive community antagonism of the Giuliani years has given way to a much more subtle way of denying justice to the street. Rather than immediately demonizing the victims, Bill Bratton said there would be retraining in the wake of Eric Garner's death, and he almost said "our bad," on Akai Gurley, publicly emphasizing his innocence.
Call the system of racial inequality in the United States what you will: the "two nations" of black and white, the new Jim Crow, or just plain ugly. But if the term "apartheid" shames the establishment into acting -- and prompts pundits to utter the word "race" when discussing inequality -- then by all means let's use the unflattering comparison.
I took this trip because of a perpetual heartache I felt, a lack of connectivity with myself and with the world. I needed to step out of my comfort zone and decided to do that halfway across the world. And there is where I found a tribe of individuals who felt exactly the same way.
The "Did you smoke?" question is offensive, of course, because it implies that the person deserves their cancer more than other types of cancer patients and thus merits less support or inferior medical care.
At a public meeting I recently attended, a woman stood up and asked me a question that gave me some pause: Why do the Arabs hate us so much? On its surface, hers was a simple, straightforward question. But when you stop to really think about it, the question is rather complex.
With the same predictability and inevitability of a House vote to abolish Obamacare, Bill O'Reilly yet again has declared his false war on the faux war on Christmas.
As voters we must be careful about believing the rhetoric of anybody who stands to gain or profit on the backs of our children. Each of us is responsible for developing a better understanding of why we support or oppose major reform initiatives such as the Common Core State Standards.
Our nation is cracking wide open on the fault line of race. In order to repair what is broken, we need each other. We need to heal, to connect, and to be the change.