Race Archives

Monica has written here before about her days as investigator for the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the NYC agency that looks into allegations from civilians about police misconduct. She dropped by NPR’s Code Switch — my day job — to talk about what it’s been like to watch all these videos of police officers choking Read More

The Brewster-Douglas Housing Projects were built by the city of Detroit between 1935 and 1955 and were intended for the “working poor.” In the 1960s and 1970s, crime in the projects became prevalent and they fell into disrepair. (via Juan N Only, CC 2.0) There’s very little new in American politics, and that’s especially true Read More

The latest entry in Gawker’s series on interracial dating is the most interesting one, as it grapples clearly with one facet of interracial dating: Family. And specifically, starting a new one.

Yes, HBCUs can do a better job of alumni outreach and customer service for their students. But that alone isn’t going to ameliorate the problems of history.

  Last night at Pratt Institute, some poor dude asked Spike Lee if he might see “the other side” — that is, the good side —  of  Brooklyn’s gentrification. While I don’t know for sure that Spike’s sleepy eyes got big and buggy, I like to imagine that that’s what happened as this went down. Read More

I told him that I resented it. That I wasn’t even from D.C. and it still got on my nerves. That the people who had endured the crack heads and the crack-related shootings and the crack smoking mayor wouldn’t be the ones to enjoy the spiffed up buildings and the patio brunch specials. That the freshmen at Howard would probably be more inclined to get money than get involved on campus, because Froyo aint cheap and neither are those bright red Capital Bike Share bikes. And this, I said, and that, I said, and don’t forget about the other thing, I said — just like I had the night before, standing in the exact same spot, with a different homie, off a different kind of Jack.

A Facebook friend of mine whom I don’t know at all posted this image. I couldn’t let it slide without saying something – partially for fear that if I didn’t say something, no one in his circle would.

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