Las Vegas hits close to home When the news about Las Vegas broke, I decided that I was not going to write about another American gun-infused tragedy. I felt the resignation and frustration about which Steve Israel, a former congressional representative from New York, wrote in a New York Times column… Read More
Category Archive: Government
Ending DACA: A terrible idea
The wrong thing to do I had a fantasy last weekend as the media kept reporting that the president would announce an end to the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration program. I fantasized (in retrospect) that his exposure to the people of Houston, in their time of distress… Read More
From 1918 flu to African Americans in WWI to Silent Sam (again)
Why historical context is critical I am reading Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I (Harvard University Press, 2009), by historian Adriane Lentz-Smith, PhD, associate professor of history at Duke University. Dr. Lentz-Smith is an alumna of Yale University who completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UNC-Chapel Hill. I found… Read More
Silent Sam “talks” too much
Enough already, Sam! In the past few days, I said I wasn’t going to write about Silent Sam, the Confederate memorial statue on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus since 1913, unless there were new events. That was before a day filled with multiple conversations with people in our school, email exchanges… Read More
Angry, afraid and anxious after Charlottesville violence
College towns not insulated from violence Saturday, the news was barely out about clashes in Charlottesville, Va., between white supremacy groups and demonstrators against them before we started hearing from people who were anxious and upset about the events. Then, when violence erupted, and Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old local woman,… Read More