390 Years 100 Days

Coming to terms with race and resolving racial disparity in America feels like an insurmountable, unfinished task, because it is unfinished. The work was started and abandoned, started and abandoned many times by generations before us. But it’s only insurmountable to the degree that we tell ourselves the work is finished - or "finished enough"- choose to leave the rest of the work to those who will come after us.

But if it seems hard now, it will only be harder then. Yet it’s easy enough to start, once we assess where the previous work stopped.

More »»

Now, what did he do that for? That was my first thought when our newly-minted attorney general reached for his own rhetorical handful of elephant, as in the previous examples. Not because I thought he was wrong, but because he was saying what was virtually unsayable to a country still basking in, and congratulating itself for, the election of its first African-American president.

He was not only lifting his blindfold, but taking it off entirely while tugging at ours, and telling us, "There's still an elephant in the room. Take off your blindfold and just look."

More »»

In many ways, the discussion of race in America, particularly as it relates to today's issues (the economy, health care, education), brings to mind the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Different people have a firm grasp on part of the truth in the middle of the room — be it the tail, the trunk, an ear, or a leg — but no one seems able to look at the thing itself.

More »»

National Urban League head Mark Morial recently described the state of black America today as "the best of times and the worst of times," and he's right.

More »»

It's absurd to judge Obama's success at cleaning up messes that were decades in the making, based on his first 100 days in office. It's equally absurd to expect the first 100 days in the administration of an African-American president to change 390 years of racial history in this country. But it's an opportunity to asses were we really are, where we're headed and how far we've yet to go.

More »»