Race and Class Discourse from an Ivory Tower in Connecticut

Our nation's health care system is broken. More than 45 million Americans are without health insurance. Many of the uninsured pay dearly for their lack of coverage. Experts estimate that roughly 22,000 people die annually because they are not covered by an insurance plan. Like most Americans, I've had a very difficult time following the health care debate in Washington. The competing claims about what ails our health care system are nearly as difficult to follow as the competing policy prescriptions being offered to fix it. What I am most certain of, however, is that repairing our nation's health care system is of critical importance to communities of color. A report released earlier this year by the Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG) as part of Heath Care for American Now (HCAN) – a coalition of over 1,000 organizations – makes a compelling case that communities of color would benefit most from comprehensive health reform. "Throughout the nation's history, ...

According to a new report released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities , based on an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, the rich are getting richer while the poor... well, you know the rest. Income inequality is not a new phenomenon in American society. But, as Piketty and Saez find, we have not seen such large shares of income go to the nation's top earners in a very long time. "Two-thirds of the nation's total income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1 percent of U.S. households, and that top 1 percent held a larger share of income in 2007 than at any time since 1928," write the authors of the CBPP summary of the Piketty and Saez research. To my astonishment, they add that during this period, "the inflation adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households grew more than ten times faster [my emphasis] than the income of the bottom 90 percent of households." Income inequality has been growing since the ...

The death of Michael Jackson has made me think a lot about the problem of mental illness in the black community. On the one hand, Jackson's talents were indescribable. He mesmerized (including me) crowds across the globe with his singing and dancing for decades – I nearly broke my ankle trying to do that damn moonwalk back in the 80s. Jackson made it all look so easy. Without a doubt, he is one of the greatest entertainers to have ever lived. But, it has been nearly twenty years since Jackson had a bona fide hit record. His stardom and the public's obsession with his life, however, did not fade away. Sadly though, Jackson stayed in the media for all the wrong reasons: the bizarre effects of numerous cosmetic surgeries, the child molestation charges, the designer surgical masks, the strange looking clothing, the brink of bankruptcy despite making hundreds of millions of dollars over the years, and dangling his infant son over a railing at an hotel, just to name a few. Jackson wa...

Almost 150 years after the Civil War, and the day before Juneteenth – which commemorates the emancipation of slaves in Texas who did not know that the Civil War had ended two years earlier – the U.S. Senate finally approved a resolution apologizing for slavery. The resolution passed in the Senate on a voice vote, said it was important for Americans to apologize for slavery “so they can move forward and seek reconciliation, justice, and harmony for all people of the United States .” The Connecticut General Assembly recently adopted its own apology for slavery. The General Assembly’s resolution: urges schools, colleges, universities, religious and civic institutions, businesses and professional associations to do all within their respective powers to acknowledge the transgressions of Connecticut's journey from a colony to a leading state in the abolition efforts and to learn the lessons of history in order to avoid repeating mistakes of the past and to promote racial equal...

During the past couple of weeks, I read several articles that really made me think a lot about racial inequality in our country. One article that really caught my attention appeared in the New York Times . I like the Times article, " Bank Accused of Pushing Mortgage Deals on Blacks ," because it sheds light on a key, yet rarely spoken, reason behind the collapse of the nation's housing market in cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, and Gary, Indiana. Though they don't name it, the problem identified by the Times is systemic racism. It is really rare for me to find in the mainstream media – unless I am looking especially hard – reporting that focuses on how race continues to shape outcomes and opportunities in America. But, before I dive into the Times article, I have to write a little about my home town, the Motor City. How bad are things in Detroit? A January 29, 2009 article in the Chicago Tribune reported that the median price of a home sold in Detroit last Decem...

President Barack Obama’s nominee to the U. S. Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is under attack by three lunatics to the right of the fringe right of the Republican Party for comments she made during a speech during a 2001 lecture at the University of California-Berkeley. Referring to former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's saying that "a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases," Judge Sotomayor said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Because of this statement, the “three horsemen of the loony right,” Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are calling her a racist and are demanding that she withdraw her name from consideration for the nation’s highest court. Judge Sotomayor will make history if she is appointed to the High Court; she is the first Latino(a) to be nomina...

According to the authors of, The Silent Depression: State of the Dream 2009 , an annual report by United for a Fair Economy , people of color are suffering through a “Silent Depression” because although the evidence of its devastating effects are everywhere, it is going largely unseen, unrecognized and unaddressed. Instead, the country’s attention has been focused on the year-old recession afflicting the nation. People of color, however, have been experiencing a recession for the last five years, which has evolved into a full-blown depression where they live. “But there has been no recognition of this depression by the Congress, the President, or the mainstream news media. There has been no bailout, no aid package, no rule changed to reverse this disaster,” write the co-authors of the report. This year’s report, released on the 80th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., presents some jaw-dropping statistics about unemployment, and income and wealth inequality in American society: --...