In all seriousness, as if the United States skipped abolition, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Era, and the last four decades of Reconstruction Part Deux, American Christians are debating whether White supremacists are the new outsider whom they’re compelled by grace to welcome. It’s an odd scenario to represent as merely hypothetical when one […]
Not magic but science
Mechanical engineer Bill Nye, also known as The Science Guy, has a new popular science program on Netflix called Bill Nye Saves the World. During the first episode, Nye dons a light blue lab coat and demonstrates the mechanics of climate change and the greenhouse effect. “As I hold the bulb of this thermometer,” Nye says, “the liquid […]
It’s hard out here for a stumbling block
It seems like every couple of months, female employees across industries are trading stories about organizational culture and “fit.” Far too often, these stories boil down to them not fitting at all. At Uber: A serial harasser has a Human Resources department that protects him despite years of complaints from peers and junior employees. At […]
Not so different and not all the same
In the lead-up to the Oscars, I missed something: directors nominated in the Best Foreign Film category issued a joint statement on Friday, and it’s quite remarkable. The fear generated by dividing us into genders, colors, religions and sexualities as a means to justify violence destroys the things that we depend on – not only […]
Just degrees removed
For the last twenty years, Hollywood’s cliché has been that everybody’s somehow connected to the actor Kevin Bacon. Tracing the six or fewer degrees between community nodes like Bacon and other community members can be a fun way to prove that Disney was right: It’s a small world, after all. I’m two degrees removed from […]
Proximity does not make a community
I’m not going to watch the breaking of the second seal in Washington, D.C., tomorrow. Instead, I’m preparing to host two training sessions this weekend, and I’m thinking about what constitutes sound community. Among people who consider themselves progressive, those committed to the deep social transformation that actively creates space for typically marginalized people to […]
