|
The more things change,
the more they stay the same
Ray McNiece
Poetry Co-editor
The election of Barack Obama was supposed to be THE big change, a biracial president ushering in a post-racial America— if not erasing the legacy of slavery, at least assuaging it. Let the healing begin. That was the hope. So what does post-racial America look like: the contorted, vein popping, bugged eyed faces of disrupters at Town Hall Health Care meetings screaming "Socialist! Baby Killer! Communist! Nazi!" As I watch this mobocracy of Birthers, Deathers, gun-nuts, anti-abortionists and self proclaimed counter-insurgents, I flash back to black and white news footage of angry whites lining the streets of Little Rock, Selma and Boston, who also feared “their country” was being taken over, hurling similar epitaphs.
|
In Love With Second Chances:
The Reinstatement of Michael Vick and What That Says About Us As a Nation, And I Don't Mean How We Feel About Our Pets
Phil West, Columnist
August 27,2009. Passing: 4-for-4, 19 yards. Rushing: One carry, for one yard.
Yes, that’s me starting a column with football statistics, and pretty unspectacular ones at that. But they’re stats that have been anticipated for months, or even years, depending on your perspective. Especially those parts of your perspective that involve a love for dogs, your feelings on masterminds of an interstate crime ring, possibly some race issues, the performance of a backup quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles playing an exhibition game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, and certainly the great debatable hypothesis that America is the land of second chances. |
