Together

What About Trayvon Martin's, Oscar Grant's and Marissa Alexander's Civil Rights?

According to Wikitionary, "civil rights" are personal liberties established by the 13th and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Our quest for civil rights started as a movement that began in the 1900s, which was primarily led by blacks in an effort to establish rights for individual black...

What Happens to a Dream Deferred?

As we stand on the precipice of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, it is natural, almost reflexive, to look back and attempt to measure the extent to which we have come closer to that dream so beautifully articulated five decades before. Have we yet arrived at the day in which all of...

Fifty Years On: Toward a Politics of Inclusivity

My 5 year-old son and I have had two conversations about the police -- or “la policia,” as we call them – already this week. In the first, he declared to me that “all police are not bad.” That’s part of a larger and ongoing post-Trayvon talk we’ve been having this summer (more on that here ). Then...

Are All New Mothers Endowed Equally?

There could be a lot of reasons I see everything through a race lens. I have a biracial son, for instance, and I know I’m going to get questions about why a whole lot of folks who look like his mother seem to live differently than the folks who look like his father. I’m also a political scientist...