Why It’s Hard To Talk About Race

The Article: The challenges of talking about race by Harvey Young in Al-Jazeera.

The Text: Race is a topic that most people would prefer not to address. The widespread reluctance to talk about race frequently stems from the anxieties and stress that occur with the admission (or confession) that we not only perceive differences in complexion as well as cultural and religious practices but also apply meaning to them.

To enter such a difficult dialogue would threaten our credentials as twenty-first century thinkers who have advanced beyond last century’s logic of the “colour line” and possess the capacity to see beyond the rigidly defined racial categories of the past.

To talk about race feels dangerous. There is the possibility of slippage, a verbal gaffe or, perhaps worse, a sincere and honest opinion that does not jibe with contemporary group think. Will we say something that may evidence that we may not be as enlightened as we imagine ourselves to be? Will a slip of the tongue accidentally give both credence and a sense of materiality to a concept (race) that we know does not really exist and is simply a fiction invented to divide people?

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The MANY Faces Of Minimum Wage Workers

Just teens? Just fast food? Just a second job for a few moms who have more free time than they do pottery classes? Hardly. If you want to abolish minimum wage–or gripe about the “unwarranted” demands of those who attempt to live on it–you should probably talk to them first and have your self-serving misconceptions soundly debunked.

Some Helpful Hints About Welfare Fraud

The real frauds are those who, in the face of facts, still choose to believe that individuals receiving a little over a hundred dollars worth of aid a month are greedy mooches yet take no issue with corporate welfare doled out to already thriving “people” to the tune of billions. Welfare queens exist, but you’re not going to find them in housing projects.

Solitary Confinement Is Cruel And Ineffective

The Article: Solitary Confinement Is Cruel and Ineffective in The Scientific American.

The Text: Some 80,000 people are held in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, according to the latest available census. The practice has grown with seemingly little thought to how isolation affects a person’s psyche. But new research suggests that solitary confinement creates more violence both inside and outside prison walls.

Prisoners in solitary confinement—also known as administrative segregation—spend 22 to 24 hours a day in small, featureless cells. Contact with other humans is practically nonexistent. Because solitary confinement widely occurs at the discretion of prison administration, many inmates spend years, even decades, cut off from any real social interaction. More than 500 of the prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison in California, for example, have been in isolation units for over a decade, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

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How “Hard-Hitting” Interviews Have Killed Journalism

When “serious journalists” are around equally serious lying, preening and self-promoting politicians, their techniques will naturally be affected. The result is either an insipid, tail-between-legs sequence of nods, feigned laughter and facile banter about the family cocker spaniel (a la Barbara Walters) or shouting bouts where the so-called journalist must prove his ego is the size of Canada or immediately perish (re: Bill O’Reilly). The point is that neither approach lends itself to meaningful, truthful and intellectually-charged discussion, and those who suffer most are the people who care enough about the state of affairs to tune in. We can do better, guys.